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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)

#181

Post by 24fps »

This is a sore point for me.

I graduated from a tony American private high school, and went on to graduate from an ivy league college.

The last math I learned was basic trig in eleventh grade.

Somehow I was allowed, encouraged even, to avoid math. I never had to say the word math in college or graduate school.

As a result I do not actually know what calculus is, and while I’m sure you don’t invoke it while calculating a tip, I often struggle with that exercise.

Regrettably. I’m sure my predicament is not unique.

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

#182

Post by lucas_codes »

credit_guy wrote: post #49
lucas_codes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is dumbing down science teaching the fault of extreme progressive left and not, say, reduced education funding, favouring religious teaching, or even more likely, nuanced policy difficulties that don't fit nicely into a left/right divide?

Take New York City (which I'm familiar with, but it's likely the story is similar in many other places): - each public school has the same budget per student. There is no "reduced education funding" for schools in district X vs district Y, or for any school, because the budget per student is equal. Each school's budget is public, and published on the web. - favoring religious teaching: at least at the school my kids…

Thank you for such a detailed comment. Maybe then I'm just missing the American context. Having lived in the UK and Australia (which have their own lion's share of education issues), to me it's obvious that students struggling should get support, and students who excel should be able to go further, and I don't think anyone imagines a system where everyone is always in one classroom with 100% the same learning.

I'm very against the idea that struggling students should just be "sacrificed" for the advanced student, however, which some of the other comments seem to be implying.

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

#184

Post by petre »

seer wrote: post #102
petre wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever wondered how it's possible that the same "stupid" Americans that don't learn integrals and group theory in highschool somehow manage just fine in university and later on in life? Most people will do just fine with basic math training because it's what you normally need later on in life. Most of my math training in the Eastern European school system has probably gone to waste. I only saw the point of a…

I think its not that it has to, its just more challenging and rewarding. I’ve read a lot about bulling and social problems in USA schools, but so almost none of that myself i Eastern Europe. I think the subjects where so hard that it forced kids to cooperate, smart kids where considered a resource that potential bullies didn’t like to harm, as they would help them in the future. Additionally there was this sense of ……

> bulling and social problems in USA schools, but so almost none of that myself i Eastern Europe

This has changed for the worse with capitalism and social inequality. We had some bullying back when I was a primary school student but it was physical bullying by higher graders towards younger students and it was mostly done outside the school. We had none of the psychological bullying that you see in the US and to a greater extent in Korea or Japan. We had roma and very poor students in our class. There was also almost no bullying during high school. The more odd kids were usually ignored and had friends of their own.

> I think that those hard problems were actually very rewarding

Well, maybe rewarding for some. I didn't like them and would rather go outside and play or ride my bike in the neighbourhood. Math for math's sake was never my thing. I only started to really like math in university when I saw its potential to solve real world problems.

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

#185

Post by tsukikage »

fallingknife wrote: post #62
dehrmann wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy into having a deeper understanding, and in both work and school, it's pretty clear who has a deeper understanding and who's going through the motions. That said, how is it that there's such range in pedagogy? So many people have studied teaching that you'd think we'd have a better idea of what works. Or maybe it's that goals are different.

The goals are different. The goal of the Russian school is to teach math. The goal of public schools is to dumb down the curriculum until everyone is equal.

That's an interesting take, since the Russian school's teaching methods originate in Soviet public schools.

If that's the difference, why were the goals so different there, and how do we make US public school goals more like the Soviet ones?

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

#186

Post by selestify »

paganel wrote: post #66
rob74 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Romania too (finished school in 1992), and at least during the communist regime I can't really remember a culture of studying hard to escape poverty, because that simply wasn't how you escaped poverty - it was more a mix of "choosing the right parents", the people you knew, a bit of luck, a bit of corruption and maybe some shrewdness, but Romania definitely wasn't a meritocracy at that time (that may how…

I finished highschool in 1999, grew up in a mono-industrial city which had just seen its only, well, industrial place in town close down and sold for scraps, in my case (and in the case of many of my colleagues) learning maths and getting into university with free admission was really one of the few escapes available from said town and, hence, from poverty. I think those 7 years (1992 vs 1999) made a hell of a differ…

> imo it greatly explains some of the political tendencies we see today

That's very interesting, could you please expound on that?

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

#187

Post by mkl95 »

thinkingemote wrote: post #180
boomskats wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Serbian and moved to the UK when I was 10. A lot of this is a bit hazy now, but I really clearly recall my bewilderment during the first class-wide 'mental arithmetic' tests in year 5 where I thought the whole class was playing a prank on me. In Serbia I remembered doing quadratics and even touching on differentiation in the afterschool classes, but over here in the UK they were expecting me to take 20 seconds to…

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;…

In my country (and I'd say this happens in some other EU countries), you do a ton of basic algebra as a kid, then take some rushed calculus and linear algebra 1-2 years before uni.

Once you pretend you have mastered the basics, there is a sudden, strange focus on advanced Calculus heuristics and obscure linear algebra techniques, effectively making most people hate these subjects. The way you are taught the stuff is basically a crime against Mathematics since it drives talented people away from STEM careers.

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

#188

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

tw20212021 wrote: post #154
rogalact wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Romania, from what i recall, it was usually the beatings. Didnt like math? The teacher would simply use the pointing stick to smash your hands. I was fortunate enough to have liked math but some weren’t. And so there were the beatings. Those attending “olympiads” were brainwashed into thinking that somehow they were superior and at some point we had to look down upon those whom, god forbid, chose something else bu…

You are exaggerating, I've never seen a beating in school (from a teacher to a pupil). Was in school in Bucharest from the 90's to 00's, had loads of maths and other stem classes. If you didn't keep up you'd get a bad grade, if you didn't pass the year you'd have a chance to correct it during summer school, and worst you'd repeat the year. Nothing uncommon here. And I don't share your hate against the ones competing…

He's not exaggerating at all.

I was in school in roughly the same period as you and although beatings from teachers to pupils were very rare, they did exist and happend if the pupil was very unruly and caused trouble in class (I had one classmate who nearly assaulted a teacher during class because he didn't like the bad grade he got), but usually the teacher had the "blessing" from the pupil's parents to perform such "corrections".

Beatings were much more common in the poorer parts of the cities/country with poor performing schools and broken families (alcoholism, domestic abuse, poverty). At top schools in big cities like the one you probably went to with alumni that go to Harvard and Google, beatings were not common at all because usually the children came from mid/upper-class families. But that's very small percentage of the pupils in Romania that are in such a performant environment.

When my dad was in school in the 60's, from what he told me, receiving beatings in school from teachers was very common all around even for stupid reasons as some teachers would go on aggressive power trips if you stepped on their nerves.

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

#189

Post by dmurray »

jusssi wrote: post #169
andi999 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 5a looks dodgy (probably just trying out numbers) You can find the 4 zeros of the left side by eyeball, and use that to construct the rest of the equation group you need. It's expected you've seen and solved this type of problem before taking the test. Not that many kids can come up with a working solution strategy on the fly.

"Trying out numbers" seems like the simpler approach to me. You have to multiply four consecutive numbers to get 1680. One of them must be 7 (since 7 divides 1680), one must be 5 or 10 for the same reason. That leaves only 3 possibilities, and you only have to check the middle one (5 x 6 x 7 x 8) since if the result too big or too small, you'll know which of the other two it is.

OK - you weren't guaranteed the solution was an integer or even real, but you should strongly suspect there's a simple answer because you didn't get generic fourth-degree polynomials in your class. Depending on the class, you might be expected to find one, two or all four solutions - but once you have the first one the rest are much easier.

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

#190

Post by petre »

tw20212021 wrote: post #154
rogalact wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Romania, from what i recall, it was usually the beatings. Didnt like math? The teacher would simply use the pointing stick to smash your hands. I was fortunate enough to have liked math but some weren’t. And so there were the beatings. Those attending “olympiads” were brainwashed into thinking that somehow they were superior and at some point we had to look down upon those whom, god forbid, chose something else bu…

You are exaggerating, I've never seen a beating in school (from a teacher to a pupil). Was in school in Bucharest from the 90's to 00's, had loads of maths and other stem classes. If you didn't keep up you'd get a bad grade, if you didn't pass the year you'd have a chance to correct it during summer school, and worst you'd repeat the year. Nothing uncommon here. And I don't share your hate against the ones competing…

Depends on the teacher I guess, but we never got corporal punishment unless there were grave discipline issues like beating girls with snowballs or weaved scarves. Math? No. You just got a bad grade.

Most of our olympics are currenty researchers abroad or tech leads in the country. Entrepreneurs not so much, maybe the networking types.

The hardest math problems we encountered were from the USSR olympics. There was a magazine with math problems which collected such gems.

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