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

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

#241

Post by dubcanada »

rtpg wrote: post #133
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…

> Why do you doubt calculators were the problem?

The way I see it, learning to do basic math in your head is just as important if not more important then learning a procedure via a calculator. A calculator doesn't teach you anything, it just teaches you how to use a calculator.

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

#242

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

My second child is suffering this in a UK school - the maths is too easy, his primary school had an 'advanced' group (quotes because it wasn't really advanced, didn't go as far as I did at primary school in normal class) to push the most able kids a bit. Now high-school they're back to doing absolutely remedial basics of arithmetic.

So much wasted time in school, he's frustrated not to make progress and bored with 'maths' (truly it's lack of maths, but to the young mind that gets confused with the subject and then you lose them).

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

#243

Post by dougSF70 »

sega_sai wrote: post #210

It's a weird article. I think this idea of 'Russian math' is very nebulous, and is probably used as marketing tool nowadays by some schools abroad. I have graduated from one of the top physics/maths high schools in Russia, and yes we had great math education there, but that was an outlier. Outside a handful of schools the math education is pretty dismal. And even in the good math schools there are different ways of t…

Somehow American Math doesn't have the same connotations. I am witnessing public schools take math out of the curriculum at elementary, middle and high schools. It is a wasted opportunity for young people to learn the beauty of math.

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

#244

Post by markus_zhang »

damagednoob wrote: post #237
markus_zhang wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially large part of education falls onto the shoulder of parents, which is natural. I'm even preparing to sharpen up my Math/Physics/Electronics skills for the future. Time to re-learn those things that I mostly forgot!

> Essentially large part of education falls onto the shoulder of parents, which is natural. Have to disagree. A parent can't be simultaneously up to speed on Math, English, a 2nd language, Biology, Science, History or any of the other subjects that a child will learn in school School is meant to teach, parents are meant to socialise. Unfortunately that seems to have been swapped around somewhere along the line.

I mean it's impossible to master everything but to find something that motivates the kid and keep him focused is largely parent's work. It's really difficult to ask too much from the public education system nowadays :(

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

#245

Post by robbiep »

lordnacho wrote: post #136
ardit33 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is your argument that everyone has the same capability?

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

#246

Post by confidantlake »

javajosh wrote: post #208
thinkingemote wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brit, I was never any good at mental math at school, I still cannot do that hardest one without a calculator. But later on, I swam like a fish in water in geometry, trig, logic and loved algebra and moved from the last of my year to one of the top. I was doing integration etc a good two years before it was being taught in the higher classes. These skills are good for programming and computers. There was a limit;…

I felt the same way, but I noticed professors I admired often doing arithmetic in their head, clearly because they enjoyed doing it. So since then I make an effort to mentally calculate. And you know what? It's a more interesting hobby than you'd think. Whatever technique you adopt (or grow, in my case), it's a good, concrete, occasionally useful exercise in breaking down a problem into smaller parts, and then combin…

I feel that in the US any cashier that could do mental math would soon move on to a better paying job.

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

#247

Post by omginternets »

maga wrote: post #97

I went through the Soviet/Russian school system with all the advanced topics being covered in high school as others described here. My moment of zen was on my third year in one of the top tech universities in Moscow. There were quite a few students coming from Novosibirsk University who were comfortably ahead of the curve when it came to math. When they showed their transcript ("zachetka"), they had ~3000 hours of Ca…

My wife went through the French "classe préparatoire" system and describes a similar degree of raw effort that was put into her studies (and in particular, mathematics). She talks about spending 10-12 hours a day either in class or studying at home, and I have to admit the amount of knowledge in that woman's head is absolutely astounding. Her education is elite in the same way that a sports team or military unit can be elite.

There are obviously issues with pushing young adults this hard, but my overall feeling is that American schools need more of this.

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

#248

Post by confidantlake »

rcxdude wrote: post #196
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…

The main issue is the curriculum and exams emphasize this kind of rote learning (across the board, not just in maths: one stupid reason for this is many of the markers for the exams don't actually have any qualifications in the subject they're marking and need to be able to just pattern-match off a mark sheet). And because teachers and schools are judged so heavily on exam results, they are not just incentivised but…

Ah that is lame that you had to go through that. I remember in my calc class the teacher said we would spend no time learning for the government standardized test. If you can't already pass it you have no business being in the class.

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

#249

Post by pbhjpbhj »

damagednoob wrote: post #237
markus_zhang wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially large part of education falls onto the shoulder of parents, which is natural. I'm even preparing to sharpen up my Math/Physics/Electronics skills for the future. Time to re-learn those things that I mostly forgot!

> Essentially large part of education falls onto the shoulder of parents, which is natural. Have to disagree. A parent can't be simultaneously up to speed on Math, English, a 2nd language, Biology, Science, History or any of the other subjects that a child will learn in school School is meant to teach, parents are meant to socialise. Unfortunately that seems to have been swapped around somewhere along the line.

In the UK, by law (Education Act), parents are responsible for educating their children - this has slipped considerably, I wish it were still a central ideal : under such a regime schools should be a service that parents can use to educate their children. I'd like to, for example, use school for some things, other groups for others, and home schooling for other things (essentially Flexischooling). This is in theory an option in the UK, but it's left to individual headteachers to dictate their ideals to parents (regardless of the Edu.Act) so you have to be lucky to get a headteacher who supports your chosen pedagogy.

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

#250

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

nicolas_t wrote: post #150
gnat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data or anecdata on the effect of repeating an entire year? In many modern Western schools that'd be frowned upon as punitive and as likely to provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.

Anecdotal but both my parents repeated a year (that was in the sixties in France), they went on to become a teacher teaching primary school teachers how to educate children for one and a headmistress at a relatively large primary school for the other. Both of them looking back thought that repeating a year was a good thing for them, they went from being struggling average/below average students to top of their class…

> but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions)

Come on, of course it hasn't. Entry requierements haven't changed.

The highschools providing the largest contingents of students to these elite institutions respect neither the national curriculum nor the ban of sorting students by ability without any consequences. Unsurprisingly the two most famous of these highschools are also exempt from the French purely geographical students draft and the places most politician children attend. As usual in France, the rule for all is not the rule for the elite.

In effect, the dumbing down of the national curriculum has just made a system which was already one of the most unequal in Europe even more unequal. But everything is fine. The French system only uses entrance exams and entrance exams are always fair, aren't they?

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