The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#51

Post by kbart » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 3:08 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #50

kbart wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but I'm from another Eastern Europe country where education level falls fast and dramatically. Few key indicators of that: 0. I was attending an elite gymnasium and we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were much more advance level than modern ones. Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11…

Curious. Instinctively, I tend to factor in a certains bias for "kids these days." Seems a lot of us have a tendency to think educational standards and/or kids' level of knowledge is poorer than before. That said, in the 80s/90s I had a lot of Russian school friends in my neighborhood. Even for primary school age, they had special "russian math" classes taught by a neighborhood parent in the afternoons. They basicall…

You are right. Soviet education system was aimed to teach only basics to the average pupils. They were not expected to continue studying after 8-9th grade and went to vocational schools or stayed in army (it was mandatory back then at the age of 16). Studying at university was only for the very best (or those whose parents were respected Party members), so the whole system was designed that 9th grade and up was for children with above average skill-set and abilities. Art was virtually non-existent back then and only used as propaganda tool, so it was mostly orientated towards learning various techniques, not creating original ideas. Of course, it was different times and different world back then, it would not be optimal to just copy-paste earlier system, but I believe, there's much to learn (or remember) from it.

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#52

Post by zoltaan » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:27 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #15

tehlike wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you give couple examples that are most prominent?

János Bolyai [1], Theodore von Kármán [2], Leo Szilard [3], Dennis Gabor [4], Edward Teller [5], Paul Erdős [6], John von Neumann [7]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1nos_Bolyai [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_Kármán [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul…

Interesting list since they received quite heterogeneous and many times mixed education, home vs. institution, Hungarian vs. foreign, also their adult achievements were many times reached/mastered in other than the educating country. As long as the measure is the production of little children inside one of the historic borders of Hungary (or maybe elsewhere by at least one Hungarian-born parent) who later contributed to mathematics notably, this or that way, here and there, then Hungary is really good at math!

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#53

Post by karllager » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

A friend of mine enjoyed her first years in school in the Pannonian basin; I am not sure, whether they did something special - but it was enough to get her into a selective German high-school specialised in maths and sciences later in her life. Always admired her for the experience, as she repeatedly speak of it if it has been fun and games.

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#54

Post by ots » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #33

loriverkutya wrote: post #24

As a hungarian, I'm pretty surprised by this article, since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level. And however in the past, math education was world class, now the "old school" teachers are retiring and other than a handful of elite schools (Fazekas, Eötvös, Radnóti etc) most of the school…

> since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level I always wondered what good metrics are to measure the quality of education. Since you say “worse and worse” can you share any insight to that? I mean you could potentially refer to the OECD world rankings but somehow I don’t trust those lists,…

Another Eastern European here. Unfortunately, the same trend of degrading education is happening in my country of origin, Bulgaria.

Another metric, particularly for math education is the representation of the country at International Mathematical Olympiad.

Bulgaria used to score almost always in top 10, even being number 1 in 2003, beating China, USA and Russia, until the beginning of the new Millennium. Now can barely make it in the top 20.

https://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#55

Post by chatmasta » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

My high school did something similar [0]. We never had math textbooks, only a book of problems. Each night we had 10 problems we had to solve. When we showed up in class the next day, each student would present a problem on the board and discuss their solution.

It worked well for the really disciplined, rigorous kids who were super interested in math and already had a solid background in it. But for someone like me, who never quite did all the homework, it became a game of getting to class first so I could present the one problem I did last night.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_table

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#56

Post by digi_owl » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #42

leni536 wrote: post #30

I would like to point out two of my favorite high school competitions in Hungary. One is KöMaL [1]. It's a monthly journal, one has to send back solutions to the problems. The competition is during the whole school year. It has problems from math, physics and computer science, these are separate contests. I did the "P" (theoretical physics) competition. Sometimes I took a look for the "B" math problems and I could ne…

Russia (Soviet Union actually) had somewhat similar mail in programs that IMO we're very useful to stimulate those with high interest in specific fields beyond what a school would do. IMO stimulating and developing top end is something sorely missing in US education, which is mostly focusing on helping those behind to catch up. That is useful, but pushing 1-2% of best students as far as possible is just as important…

And mail in may be better than extra classes or similar, as it may avoid various "tall poppy" issues.

And these days it can even be done electronically.

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#57

Post by mncharity » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

pliny wrote: post #46

patkai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is not just worth understanding in itself but it would be essential to ask at many levels, as science education is becoming the key to the survival of humanity. As a Hungarian who left the country 20 years ago I have been fascinated by this surprising success of the country, partly because I did not personally get a good science education there. Actually, it was very unbalanced, with most of it barely m…

>Anyway, it is possible to do this again and with two small kids I'm very interested to know how. Here's a context-relevant place to start: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-gen...

I wonder if the review is missing some aspects of "concentrate on one subject"?

On one subject, a mentor can be a master, and master instructor. And such instruction is crucial for developing deep expert understanding. But in the future, with better content, and improved learning infrastructure, one might imagine these becoming available for more than one subject.

Both the concentration on one subject, and that subject being chess, contribute to the effort having nice properties. Like non-superficiality. An integrated and deeply organized body of knowledge and skills. Developing transferable knowledge (within the subject at least), rich feedback, and reflective building of mastery. But it's the properties that matter. Chess, or another one subject, might be taught in a way that fails to have the nice properties. And as learning infrastructure improves, the nice properties may become available without the "one subject" or "and it's chess" restrictions.

There's a long history of exceptional masters teaching their field/craft to their children from a young age, who in turn become exceptional masters. The challenge is to scale that.

The straightforward "a gaggle of masters in everyone's pocket" is AI-complete implausible. But the art of the next decade is crafting human-computation hybrid systems. Things like eye tracking, and big data, provide opportunities that no master mentor has ever had. We just need to get around to building on them.

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#58

Post by riffraff » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

fogetti wrote: post #49

kbart wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but I'm from another Eastern Europe country where education level falls fast and dramatically. Few key indicators of that: 0. I was attending an elite gymnasium and we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were much more advance level than modern ones. Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11…

> Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11-12th grade back then. (Foreword: Hungarian here) I didn't know that this happened in other Easter European countries as well. We used to have the same thing, that people in 11-12th grade learned (around 70'-80') the first-second year university curriculum. But by the time I got into secondary and university education the system…

I don't believe the Bologna process has any impact on degrading education, at best it's a chance for people who want to cut on education, but it doesn't imply it.

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#59

Post by mncharity » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

patkai wrote: post #28

koube wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Hungarian math so forward looking but not the other subjects? Is Hungary especially good at math?

This question is not just worth understanding in itself but it would be essential to ask at many levels, as science education is becoming the key to the survival of humanity. As a Hungarian who left the country 20 years ago I have been fascinated by this surprising success of the country, partly because I did not personally get a good science education there. Actually, it was very unbalanced, with most of it barely m…

> with two small kids I'm very interested to know how.

My few perhaps-non-obvious bits:

If you find yourself saying "really, really (physically) small", or "N times smaller than a human hair", the approach at the top of this[1] might work better.

Estimation is now taught down to K... but oh my is it done badly. PBSKids: "estimate how many jellybeans are in the jar: look at the jar; then write down a number!" (really). But it's been a few years since I looked, so maybe there's something competent now. My suggestion is to emphasize bounding, as it supports better conversations. "How many people are reading HN today? Is it more like 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10k, 100k? Who can suggest a bound? Oh, I'm reading HN! So a hard lower bound of 1! Does everyone buy that? ...".

Toddler-initiated predictable conversations by pointing out selected elements of the environment. Eg, "a map!" and "rust!". "What does it show? Where are we? Where are we going?". "What's the thing rusting? How's the oxygen getting in? What's the rust doing? What did we have for breakfast, that we're oxidizing now?". The map one works best with urban mass transit and museums and such. Rust is everywhere.

[1] How to remember the sizes of small things, top of http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms

Re: The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015)

#60

Post by naasking » Mon, Nov 13, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

kbart wrote: post #44

baxtr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level I always wondered what good metrics are to measure the quality of education. Since you say “worse and worse” can you share any insight to that? I mean you could potentially refer to the OECD world rankings but somehow I don’t trust those lists,…

I'm not the OP, but I'm from another Eastern Europe country where education level falls fast and dramatically. Few key indicators of that: 0. I was attending an elite gymnasium and we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were much more advance level than modern ones. Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11…

> Anecdotally, but all teachers complain that every year students are getting less motivated, performing poorer, having shorter attention spans.

Most of these points smack of rosy retrospective bias. Kids have great attention spans if content is delivered to them in a way they can engage in, for instance, interactive computer games. Teachers are just out of touch with kids, and really they always have been. It's why kids almost always like younger teachers more.