I had a student from the Soviet Union in my class. He said they had no funding for all the nice things we had in chemistry class. But that the difference was that he had never seen so many people unwilling to learn anything, as he had noted of American students.
Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
321–330 of 684 posts
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#322Earlier 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…
> One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. It was the same thing in Romania, at least in the '90s, when I went to school/high-school. It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids…
It even went further: in Romania, there was a popular movie in the 80s where the main plot is a high school student going to the math olympiad and his classmates cheering for him (with additional romantic threads of course).
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bourbaki school of thought. Read Dieudonné - not a single( I think to remember) illustration. Kindergarten starts math education with set theory. This was the imaginated ideal.
Not a bad idea at all. You can have a separate class called “Arithmetic” and that can be used to learn arguably the most boring application of mathematics: operations on numbers. Maybe distinguishing mathematics from arithmetic will make people hate the subject less. Set theory alone you can get to continuum hypothesis. I’m sure children would find the idea that some infinite sets are bigger than other infinite sets…
> Set theory alone you can get to continuum hypothesis.
Ironically, her independence from ZF would make the classical Bourbaki group shiver. The same way the earlier, better known, work of Goedel did.
I don't know, if you are aware of Bourbakis spirit. There is something much more important in this context as the content-wise difference between sets and numbers. I never would argue against applying naive set definitions in a suiting way. But Bourbaki had an agenda, and this agenda is not for everyone (certainly not for me).
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And indeed 57 looks a bit prime for some psychological reason It tricked me, until I read the link.
No one taught me this in school, but if you add up the digits (5+7=12) and the result is divisible by 3, then so is the original number. It works recursively.
"What is Mathematics" by Courant and Robbins teaches some more divisibility tricks, might be useful sometimes. btw, we learned divisibility by 3 in 5th or 6th grade (not the proof, of course)
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#325Here is an interesting paper [1](PDF) by a Russian mathematician who has taught mathematics in Russia, USA and Brazil. He compares the "very successful usage of word problems in Russia and contradictory, inefficient and often immature treatment of word problems in USA." [1] http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf
Singapore's maths curriculum for primary-level students is full of word problems. It may be confusing at first but it lets students get good with interpretation of the situation and derive the essence of the problem from the scenario which is a useful skill irrespective of level.
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#326Earlier 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…
> One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. It was the same thing in Romania, at least in the '90s, when I went to school/high-school. It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids…
I also went to high-school in Romania in '90s.
But I think you are wrong on "nerd" thing. Which doesn't mean technical excellence or excellence on a particular subject. "Nerd" means being weird while somehow interested in some technical matters.
There were a lot of "cool" kids doing great at math, physics or programming.
According to Mirriam-Webster, a nerd is "an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person".
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#327I had an exchange year during High School where I moved from Germany to Florida for a year and attended a public school.
I hate to say this but to me the classes were laughably easy. While I was a 10th grader in Germany I could have easily graduated there.
I do however favour the US system of individual classes where you could advance in e.g. Mathematics but if you had trouble with language you could take a less-intensive course.
This doesn't work in Germany. You either advance with all subjects at once or you don't. One of the most stupid things that I have witnessed. In our 11th/12th grade we would have a huge difference between grades. About 20% of people were getting straight A's while over a third struggled to even pass. Barely anyone in the mid-range. Terrible system which makes it really really hard for teachers to teach a class.
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Denmark, universities (and possibly high schools too, I don't know for sure) get paid by the government based on the number of students passing exams every semester. I think this is part of what's called "new public management" where you attempt to bring market-like incentives to the public sector.
Interesting, universities in Czech republic went through a simmilar scheme, but they'd get disproportionately more funds per head-count of first-year students (on-boarding, I guess?) Several universities switched from entrance exams to a system of "Everybody gets in, it is the first semester that will probably kill you" :-)
That actually sounds like it might work. I know a lot of people who just scraped through exams but excelled in University as well as a number who aced their exams but struggled and/or dropped out in University (admittedly this was more due to picking easy subjects in High School).
Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#329Re: Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
#330Disclaimer: 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 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…
The mathematical competence of Australian students relative to international peers has been declining for 16 years.
Australia is terrible at maths given its levels of wealth. By one measure students in Kazakhstan perform better.
This would be a national scandal if not for the anti-intellectualism that pervades the nation.
This is one of the reasons I think Australia (my home country) is in big trouble economically in the long-term.