Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

wbur.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 558 posts

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#131

Post by hyperman1 »

skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

Are any of these textbooks available? Preferably not in Russian, I can read English, French, German and Dutch.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#132

Post by Const-me »

andi999 wrote: post #100
credit_guy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sample problem for K-1 [1]: "Jane fills a bag with three types of chips. There are 3-point, 4-point and 7- point chips. Jane picks 3 chips worth 15 points. Which chips did she pick?" Sample problem for grades 5-6 [2]: "Pinocchio drank half a cup of black coffee. He then filled the cup back up with milk and drank one third of the mixture. Again he filled the cup to the top with milk, drank one sixth of the mixture and…

I don't like the second question. Probably the kid is supposed to see the 'trick' :he drank a full cup of coffee since he didn't refill coffee and drank all. He added 1/2, 1/3 and 1/6 of a cup of milk and drank it all, so (3+2+1)/6=1. He drank the same amount of coffee and milk. I think it is ok as a brain teaser, but there will probably be one kid in the class to see it and all the other kids feel dumb or whatever.…

> 2 also seems to rely on a trick

Pretty sure students are supposed to switch( n % 3 ), and solve for all 3 possible values of the remainder.

> probably just trying out numbers

You can't solve a 4-degree polynomial equation by trying out numbers. It has up to 4 solutions, not guaranteed to be real, let alone rational or integer.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#133

Post by rtpg »

skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

I doubt the calculators were the problem. People going through the "AP class" route with calculators finish up all of the math (and more!) that gets covered in a french high school math class (from experience of moving to France in High School and learning zilch for 3 years).

Totally on point about the "analyticial and quantitative lenses". Multiple-choice questions and lack of "real" questions really hobble a lot of math classes.

I was lucky in middle school in particular to have classes that used textbooks with a much more indepth look at why we would do X/Y/Z than the average book (along with a system where you would work through exercises in groups of 3 or 4, so better people could help out people who were struggling more). But I had to do a hell of a lot more "work showing" in France.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#134

Post by codetrotter »

skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

> I can pull up some photos if anyone is interested.

Yes please!

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#135

Post by mettamage »

hyperman1 wrote: post #131
skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

Are any of these textbooks available? Preferably not in Russian, I can read English, French, German and Dutch.

Even if they're in Russian I'd be interested, I'll use Google Translate. I bet that most of the time I could understand the problem well enough.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#136

Post by lordnacho »

ardit33 wrote: post #71
pjc50 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since everyone was the same ethnicity, you can't blame 'systematic x'. It was all equal. This is certainly an advantage that Albania had over Alabama. There are still people alive who remember the school system having to be desegregated under armed guard. The struggle continues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/1...

yeah, but you are missing the point completely. I gave you a real life example: Even if everyone is equal, and has the same conditions, some people are just born smarter than others, and will put more effort and do better. Equality of conditions is a good thing to ask for, equality of outcome is stupid, as even in a murderous communist regime, was impossible to achieve as it goes against basic human nature. That's wh…

It seems unlikely that there's just a smart/dumb setting inside of each kid.

Material conditions being equal don't mean that everything is equal. Some people have parents who value certain things and push their kids. Other people have some anxieties to get over before they can perform. Some people like being ahead of the class and put in effort to stay there.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#137

Post by b112 »

skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

What's happened in Canada, is that curriculum is designed to teach to the weakest student in a subject.

This is thought of as being fair, of helping, for of course everyone is intellectually equal.

Thus, those who can accel, are denied their future, for those which will leave high school, and never touch (for example) advanced math again.

Equality comes from recognising our differences, and enabling best outcomes for all. Not pretending we are all identical.

Sadly, this seems lost on many.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#138

Post by [deleted] »

leto_ii wrote: post #101
inter_netuser wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PISA ranking? China and Singapore are at the very top. If you think what's described is brutality, you should watch tiger moms push their children. I've also went through what could be considered a "brutal" system, very similar to whats described, although i wouldn't use that specific term. We had ~40 problem sets to solve every evening for homework, hours of work. I don't think anyone ever got an A+ in anything. If…

> China and Singapore are at the very top. If you think what's described is brutality, you should watch tiger moms push their children. There are a bunch of different approaches that can lead to top scores in that ranking. notably Finland does well with a non-brutal approach. > a "brutal" system, very similar to whats described, although i wouldn't use that specific term. the term was used by the parent, not by me. W…

[deleted]

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#139

Post by spoonjim »

b112 wrote: post #137
skzv wrote: post #121

When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th gr…

What's happened in Canada, is that curriculum is designed to teach to the weakest student in a subject. This is thought of as being fair, of helping, for of course everyone is intellectually equal. Thus, those who can accel, are denied their future, for those which will leave high school, and never touch (for example) advanced math again. Equality comes from recognising our differences, and enabling best outcomes for…

Bam. That’s why my kids (of very different academic prowess) are in (two very different) private schools.

Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)

#140

Post by laputan_machine »

lordnacho wrote: post #116
laputan_machine wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK maths teaching is fairly terrible. Not only do they start later, it's almost never taught meaningfully, instead relying on memorising rote formulae. I grew up hating maths, it wasn't until YouTube came along and the sheer amount of _good_ maths content on there that I started to 'get' the bits I just never understood as a teenager. Most of my friends will still say things like 'I just don't get algebra / I don't d…

What are the relevant channels? My kid is very interested in it but the 3B1B type stuff is a bit too far ahead. He wants to learn algebra next.

Mostly it came from Khan Academy, https://www.youtube.com/c/khanacademy/playlists
Post reply on HN