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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)

#311

"Russian Math" seems to just be "More Math". The basic education concepts at ploy here are well known, just not widely deployed. Why? IMO it's because of what I think is the sole problem with american education - parents themselves not caring if their kids actually know anything. It's actually common, extremely common, for american parents to think that the point of education is to get a piece of paper (degree) or to…

Is there evidence that knowing how to do math is actually beneficial to most people? I think it's easy to criticize when ignoring the possibility that much of what is taught in American schools is actually just useless and very little of it is retained after schooling ends.

What I said applies to all topics. Including ones that you personally value.

As for whether math is useful or not... I'll just say I REALLY wish more of my coworkers knew their math. I work in a factory, and it's useful WAY more often than you may think.

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

#312

Also the number of people who need advanced math is so small in USA, so it’s more of a hobby than education. And people who need advanced math need more probability theory and statistics than calculus. In China, on the other hand… I might be extrapolating.

I'd be very curious to see what a primary and secondary school math program that aggressively focused on the "what will I ever use this for?" question, for most people, not just future physicists and math majors, and tailored its curriculum to that with mostly applications-based problem sets, looked like. I suspect it'd provide a lot more value to ~99% of students while never providing more than a "here's what these other branches of math you probably won't need are for, so you know what to look up or when to go learn them, on the off chance you ever do need them" survey for much of what's covered from ~8th-12th grade now, but maybe I'm wrong. I also doubt it would discourage many future math majors.

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

#313
post #211

This notion that “American” math and sciences lag behind the world is one of the greatest lies ever told in my lifetime. And for the record, there is no “Russian” math or “Chinese” math. Mathematics is mathematics. Where the US approach differs is that they are not requiring high level of math on general public. However, if you are gifted and/or motivated, you have access to unparalleled resources.

If you count Khan Academy and MIT's OCW, sure the Anglo-sphere has unparalleled resources. But a minor point of the article is how the way Americans are taught in conventional public school is just to do the basic work. Math is treated as a hurdle to clear rather than the lifelong mental sport.

But here's a point I would have liked examined further in the article: where does one find material or instruction that would give you a competitive structural thinking needed to grapple Olympiad or Putnam-level content beyond enrichment courses? In China, the best students are scouted early by teachers and prepared by the Chinese government through special camps and their own difficult examinations. I'd assume the same thing happened/happens in Russia. In the United States, by default (and probably by design), its difficult to know on what level a student can stand in regards to everyone else until the very end. At least in a public school.

Parents and students can use proxies like how early AP subjects are offered, USA today rankings, or the success of past alumni. But, unless you're in a well-endowed private schools, magnet/exam schools, or private enrichment program like AoPS (Art of Problem solving) or Talent Identification Programs (many of which are now shutting down) there are few ways to know how well the instruction one receives as a precocious and motivated high school compare to those of the best among the nation or the world.

One could argue if you have to wait until high school to understand where you stand, it's too late. But that's my point, many students may have resources and talent but the lack the expertise to deciding where to and how begin in those crucial first years. Few states have strong "gifted" programs and the one's that do aren't really any better than "normal" instruction in China or Japan.

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

#314

My college had a decent-sized contingent of Bulgarian & Romanian international students. The difference in their math abilities upon entry was striking. While most of my American-born classmates struggled in discrete math, linear algebra, and vector calc, my Bulgarian friend was like "I learned this when I was 9." They were frequently tapped as TAs by the professors, because they understood the material on a level th…

I am Bulgarian. I moved to the UK when I was 12. I had to join primary school halfway through Year 6 (the last year of primary school). The level of mathematics shocked me. They were still learning factorisation, something I had learned years ago. It was a breeze. Of course, in secondary school (ages 12-18) the content eventually caught up with me. Part of me wishes I could have somehow kept studying the Bulgarian wa…

I graduated high school in the USA in the past decade. I was never taught Calculus. I wasn't even very good at algebra.

Eventually I went on to get a math minor in college to go with my computer science degree, but I didn't even learn the first thing about Calculus until I was 21.

Math and Science education in the USA is really really abyssal until college, and then it's sink or swim.

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

#315
I'm from Russia, and in the US I attended GCPM - a "correspondence program" with math assignments sent to me by mail and later graded by a university professor. Was a great learning experience (the program had dedicated books and interesting math problems to explore).

https://www.egcpm.com/ - Gelfand Correspondence Program In Mathematics

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

#316
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a British university, CS course, at the age of 19, having completed my education in Poland. I had a very similar experience(except no one cared whether you wrote x or .) - basically at university it was like going back 5-10 years in terms of maths level. We were already doing advanced calculus in Poland in my last year at school(and being constantly told that we have to know it well or no one at university…

>British university, CS course Hmm.. In my experience this would have been discrete math at best which is normal in CS classes. You'd have to have taken an engineering elective or math elective to get linear algebra. Today, with AI being so hot, I'd bet that the programs include math for engineers e.g. matrices and linear algebra. Maybe an intro course in stats and probability.

That wasn't my experience in doing a CS degree in the 1980s - we basically did the same maths as the engineers for two years and then diverged into more discrete maths in 3rd year of a 4 year course. And this isn't even counting the pure CS mathematical components such as lambda calculus etc.

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What definitely exists in Russia (or at least some big cities) is a system of free after-school classe I've been studying in a "respected" Soviet / early post-Soviet school. These classes were super elitist and had a huge disconnect in their level from what you were taught in regular classes. I was a straight A student and was shut off very quickly. The problems were enormous in their difficulty and teachers had ze…

sorry to hear you were not oplymiadniks material :(

I know you're trolling yet this approach turned off not only me but lots of talented kids from math and technology for years.

We thought we were "bad at math" when in reality our parents couldn't afford to buy teachers' unofficial private time.

Education (or diplomas and connections to be exact) was a huge status symbol in USSR.

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

#318

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.

> I am witnessing public schools take math out of the curriculum at elementary, middle and high schools.

Is that for real? If true, this is ridiculous. Do American authorities want to introduce some kind of education for plebs?

How is such low standard for basic education is even acceptable in the modern world? It’s not only about “beauty of math” but at least basic math is required to help develop some specific cognitive and thinking skills. You can’t leave that part of children’s brain underdeveloped.

And cutting out math from schools you are deleting the future for a huge number of kids. No more future engineers and scientists and programmers etc.

I don’t understand.

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

#319

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.

Wait, why I have been hearing non-stop astro-turfing about "CRT in schools" in the last 6 months and I've never heard once about math being taken out? This sounds really serious, is there more I can read about Math being removed from public schools?

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

#320

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…

> What definitely exists in Russia (or at least some big cities) is a system of free after-school classe I've been studying in a "respected" Soviet / early post-Soviet school. These classes were super elitist and had a huge disconnect in their level from what you were taught in regular classes. I was a straight A student and was shut off very quickly. The problems were enormous in their difficulty and teachers had ze…

Yeah same. Our town had a "smart kids" school and a dozen of ordinary ones. I once won the town's informatics Olympiad in my age cohort, so to prepare for the regional stage they dispatched me over to that school's auspices for training. The teacher literally ignored my presence; so in the next competition I had to use both IBM PC and Pascal for the first time in my life. Scored something like 12th out of 40, but the teacher gloated on the way back.

I seriously think the "no child left behind" type education so derided here produces better general outcome. Holding up resources for a few select students is quite the opposite of meritocracy.

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