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Married 50 yrs. 2 children; 2 grandchildren. They are even better than physics!
Did you send your kid to a private or public elementary school? Do you think it made a difference?
When my daughter Betsy was in public school 2nd grade, we discovered she hated math. That came as an inexplicable surprise; I am a physicist, and my wife had majored in math. So we investigated, and determined that she had become bored. Betsy had learned a great deal of math, from us, on her own, but her class was way behind. She was ready to study long division, and her classmates were learning about numbers and how to count.
We visited with her teacher, who told us that she would like to give Betsy separate exercises, but public school policy in Berkeley forbade that. All children in the same class were to study together. If one student was more advanced, then that student would help the students who were behind.
But our daughter was bored. That was terrible. Nothing is more devastating to the love of learning. The teacher agreed, and said she would make an exception. She would give Betsy exercises to work by herself as other students worked on more elementary material.
That seemed to work, for about two weeks. Then we got a letter from the teacher. She had been caught and was being punished. The school Principal had visited her classroom, found Betsy off in a corner by herself, and discovered that the teacher had been breaking Berkeley school policy. So the teacher was being disciplined, and Betsy was once again teaching other children how to count.
No child left behind? One way to achieve that is to let no child slip ahead.
Within a month we had transferred Betsy to a private school. We believe in public schools, but were not willing to sacrifice our daughter for our beliefs. Betsy went on in college to major in mathematics (with a second major in literature). She is now the CEO of Berkeley Earth, as well as the CEO of a technical startup company called Deep Isolation. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had not intervened in 2nd grade.
(When she grew older, Betsy decided to be called Liz or Elizabeth. Elizabeth Muller is well-known on Quora: see link Elizabeth Muller. See her answer to this same question: Elizabeth Muller’s answer to Did you send your kid to a private or public elementary school? Do you think it made a difference? )