WHERE IS THE CAMP GOING TO BE HELD?

The camp will be held at Krea University, Sri City, Andhra Pradesh.

[This section on Enrichment Program was written by Dr. George R. Thomas, founder of Epsilon Camp, who has worked for over a quarter century with precocious students]. [1]

​

Math enrichment means richer learning in Math. It might take a long essay to explain what this means for students showing high promise in Math. It is easier to list the things that are not enrichment.

​

a. Enrichment is not rote learning (Rote learning means, learning facts and acquiring skill through repetition).

Rote learning, however, does have its place, especially in practicing to put to memory a procedure or information that will be needed often, an example being multiplication table. But repeated tasks involving either the application or clarification of a concept is the rote learning that is not enrichment; an example is the use of quadratic formula.

​

b. Enrichment is not acceleration or compaction. 

​Acceleration means taking a higher-level course. Compaction means compacting or reducing the time allowed to master a course. In acceleration as well as compaction, the course proceeds in a shallow way. Both of these are easily made available in any school setting and are the easy go-to, but they are not sufficient due to lack of depth.

​

c. Enrichment is not math competitions.

This is what teachers and parents' resort to for a child who is highly gifted in Math. This is appropriate and fun for precocious children, but it is not enrichment.

​

"These competitions are fun, interesting, and educationally effective for the people who are successful in them. But they also have a downside. The competitions reinforce the notion that either you ‘have good math genes’, or you do not. They put an emphasis on being quick at the expense of being deep and thoughtful. They emphasize questions which are puzzles with some hidden trick, rather than more realistic problems where a systematic and persistent approach is important. This discourages many people who are not as quick or as practiced but might be good at working through problems when they have the time to think through them. Some of the best performers on the contests do become good mathematicians, but there are also many top mathematicians who were not so good on contest math. Quickness is helpful in mathematics, but it is only one of the qualities which is helpful" [2].

​

So, what is Math enrichment for the precocious? A model proposed is for enrichment to allow "quicker students to work through the material in greater depth and to take excursions into related topics, before racing ahead of their age group" [2]. But this is not possible in a general classroom setting even if the teacher possesses a bedrock of conceptual understanding, for not all students in the class in most schools are at the same level of precocity unlike those in a summer program for the precocious.

​

In an enrichment program for students showing high promise, topics must have depth and rigor and lead to confidence and capacity for the student. When the very source of a concept is seen, one can begin to appreciate it in a fundamental way and also see the connections with other areas. An enrichment program of this kind needs two parties: students showing high promise and mathematicians who are excited about mentoring the future mathematicians and who have taken particular care to be non-assertive mediators. This is the practice goal of Epsilon Camp.

​

Mission of Epsilon Camp: Epsilon Camp connects precocious children to professional mathematics and builds a supportive community with peers and families.

​

[1] George R. Thomas, “Why Mathpath," https://epsiloncamp.org/math-education

[2] William P. Thurston, “Mathematical Education,” Notices of AMS, 37(1990)844-850​​