It’s so frustrating how worthless it all is too.
if his situation is anything like mine was, then the answer is likely to maintain good grades to support future educational prospects.
which is unfortunate as this system encourages the pursuit of the grade over the pursuit of knowledge. it took me many years to shake that mindset.
(Indeed, one reason homework may be harmful is the way it can create an adversarial relationship with teachers and condition students to ignore teacher suggestions and feedback).
For my boys, we went outside school to various providers of math offerings for gifted kids. But quality is rather variable.
Being ahead academically doesn't mean you're ahead developmentally. Rote practice to avoid mistakes and do really systemic work is useful sometime around ages 12-14 -- during first algebra classes for kids on the normal plan. But courses for gifted 10 year olds taking Algebra I at e.g. CTY tend to lean even more into the "rigor", which my kids survived but it was unnecessarily difficult. Instead, they should be looking for ways to shorten problem sets and approach problems from various angles.
That is, whether you can keep a 9 term polynomial straight and avoid swapping signs or coefficients is really a measurement of attention span and focus, not understanding of algebra... and students that are way ahead in math are probably slightly ahead in attention span and focus, but not to a degree commensurate with their mathematical knowledge.
(We really like Art of Problem Solving, though it's pretty intense).
You have to excel in all coursework on the default track to competing in race of society. There are opt-outs/alternatives popping up, but they're not mainstream.
There are two cultures in the US.