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Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

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Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#451

Post by imtringued »

growlist wrote: post #356
gambiting wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same, but I went from the Polish education system to a British university, and it also felt like it was a massive downgrade. What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in…

If a person is horrified by the idea that some children are superior learners due to genetics and yet this person sees their attempts to develop inferior learners fail, their only option to achieve equality is then to socially engineer the superior learners downwards to match their political viewpoint. And it's also great business in a deindustrialised nation to milk gullible students for tens of thousands of pounds…

I'm not sure why the reason for superior performance matters. Genetics are just one tiny factor. Good parenting and nutrition are often more important.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#453

Post by imtringued »

mwcampbell wrote: post #450
missosoup wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school studen…

On the anti-intellectualism and bullying of nerds, how do we fix this? (I'm American.) I'm not a parent myself, but my brothers and sister are. Should I suggest to them that they home-school their kids to shield them from this toxic culture?

That doesn't solve the problem at all.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#454

Post by paganel »

new2628 wrote: post #410
paganel wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Sava person in the wild :) My significant other went to Lazar and I wasn't aware of the rivalry between the two high-schools until I met her, I personally grew up in a small-to-medium town where these school rivalries were pretty much absent. It's also sociologically interesting because Sava/Lazar/Vianu people (or, generally speaking, people who went to good Bucharest high-schools, it's probably the same for other…

> Like I said, we don't have that thing in small-ish cities. It's definitely a thing even in smaller cities with good highschools. Reunions for 10,20,30,40 years are very common and attended by all, including teachers still alive, etc.

We all have reunions, but I was saying that apart from them we don't keep that well in touch and we don't seem to show that 'esprit de corps' showed for example by OP (who mentioned his high-school) and by other people who went to prestigious high-schools from bigger cities.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#455

Post by captain_price7 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #299
lsh123 wrote: post #80

Disclaimer: I graduated from one of the top math high schools in Moscow in early 90s, I have MS in Math from Moscow State University, and a half finished PhD from the same place. I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible. Either country doesn’t really require much to finish school and many kids just do the tests without understanding what is going on. What separa…

I'm from slovenia, a small, former yugoslav country. We don't have special schools for math here, and elementary schools (7-15yo in my time) were the same for all, and you went to the closest school to your home... but our highschool ("gymnasiums" - 15-19) used the grades from elementary school + standardized testing scores to rank students, and somehow best students went to certain schools, 'the middle' got accepted…

I spent 6 years in one of those highly selective schools, and I have mixed feelings about this.

One problem is that Small-fish-in-big-pond-effect, a good chunk of us realized there that we weren't special anymore, there wasn't the honor and praise for being top- and consequently that drive was lost.

Plus, once some schools become well established and start to attract highly talented kids- kind of kids who can do well by themselves without much external help, the school itself, I mean teachers and administrators, doesn't have to be very good. Their success starts to depend more on their ability to attract talent, and less on actually nurturing and developing them. Past success bring more success- a sort of virtuous cycle.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#456

Post by babuskov »

michaelt wrote: post #378
missosoup wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school studen…

> AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school students. Can anyone comment on how this translates into results in adulthood, in the current age? Do we see more discoveries in fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses? As I don't speak Russian or Chinese, I don't really have a fair view and it would be easy for me to mistakenly under-estimate…

> fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses?

University education fixes these problems. People who only finish high-school rarely do science later in life.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#457

Post by g-erson »

agent008t wrote: post #428
Symbiote wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> British universities bizarrely seem to often reward/celebrate athletics more than academic achievements. I'm not sure how you get that impression. American universities do this, but (with a couple of famous exceptions, like the traditional boat race between Oxford and Cambridge) British universities don't care about sport. The social hierarchy was just separate, and had no bearing on anything academic. I didn't car…

At Oxford, for instance, social life mostly happens at colleges. The way things are set up, you simply do not get to spend that much time with your course-mates - you do not interact with them during lectures, and then everyone goes back to their colleges. And social life in colleges is (sadly) dominated by drinking at the college bar, drinking in clubs, and dinners in the dining hall, where everyone seems to sit acc…

I do think it's worth adding, though, that from what I've heard (and given my own experiences), the culture in Oxford/Cambridge is not at all representative of University culture generally in British Universities.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#458

Post by gambiting »

GuB-42 wrote: post #405
gambiting wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same, but I went from the Polish education system to a British university, and it also felt like it was a massive downgrade. What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in…

> What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything"... I think it is a good thing. There is a big difference between doing well on a test and understanding the subject. You may think you know basic algebra because you can find the correct value for x, but chances are that you don't really know what you are doing. So having a refresher course telling yo…

Yeah, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, just that I was really surprised by it. In the entirety of my Polish education it was drilled into our heads that we had to be super good at algebra for example, because "no one at university will wait for you to learn, you have to know it before you start" - and then I went to a British uni, and well, people did wait for us to catch up, which lead to me having a very relaxed 1st year, while I know from my friends that at Polish unis the 1st year is actually the worst one as that's where a lot of people get kicked out for failing exams and there is a lot of catching up to do. In a British uni it was the opposite - I have no idea what you'd need to do to get kicked out of the course in 1st year, I've never heard about that happening to anyone, while in some Polish courses the attrition rate is above 50% in the first year.

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#459

Post by alboy »

lsh123 wrote: post #135
Endlessly wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what do you and your peers that were feed into a well defined path so early make of it now understanding that is not how all children reach advanced skills in mathematics?

I liked to read and found (and understood) my farther’s calculus books while in elementary school ;) I was honestly bored in math classes through elementary and middle school. Teachers preferred to ignore me and especially my questions. I got through some math competitions with average success, then got invite to a qualification testing into a couple math high schools. Was selected in the last round of testing to the…

> btw, I don’t know how I actually got these invites. Either from math competitions, or through my math teachers who found a way to get rid of me ;)

Almost certainly from the math competitions. Nikolay Konstantinov [1] had his apartment full of boxes of punched cards with data on every high school student who produced at least a partial solution to any of the advanced problems at those competitions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Konstantinov

Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)

#460

Post by egwor »

gambiting wrote: post #313
missosoup wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school studen…

Not the same, but I went from the Polish education system to a British university, and it also felt like it was a massive downgrade. What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in…

There's a big difference in quality of British universities
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