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

Everything was about rote memorization, to the level i couldn't imagine in the US. Physics? Nope, memorize everything, you don't need to understand why or how formulas relate to each other or what they mean. Math? Nope, no need to understand logic behind anything, just memorize the formulas. Even with something like programming, we had to memorize bubble sort in TurboPascal, without the algorithm ever explained at a higher/pseudocode level (it was introduced in TurboPascal right off the bat and you had to memorize it line by line, I wish I was kidding; we were graded on how line-by-line it matched the given solution, not on whether the implementation actually worked/was valid). It was pain, I barely learned anything, and was convinced that I am destined to never do well in physics, thinking "this was just not for me, i am not smart enough to get it".

Then we moved to the US, and I felt like my eyes were opened. Physics were explained from bottom up, from actual phenomena and how they worked, and formulas were just a glue connecting those phenomena and their interactions together. There was zero actual need to waste time memorizing those formulas, despite formula sheets not being allowed on the exams, because they actually explained the logic/reasoning behind it all, so it was no issue at all to simply derive those formulas on your own during the exam.

Same happened with math and programming. I actually finally understood what I was doing, rather than robotically recalling appropriate strings to put on paper from memory.

In the russian school I went to, logic didn't matter, only correct answers. For a specific example, in every single physics course I ever took in the Russia, if you got the calculation wrong for one small part of the problem (which propagated to the final answer being incorrect), but you got the rest of it right, you get 0% for that problem. While in the US high school/college, I could even omit a small part of the problem that I didn't know how to solve, put a placeholder number there, and then solve the rest of the problem correctly, and I will get points for the parts I got right. Which makes sense, because if I forgot how to solve one out of many subproblems, but know the rest perfectly, or if I miscalculated a single variable, i just lose points for that portion. It isn't "all or nothing, the only thing that matters is the final answer." I get part of the reason the "all or nothing" system was done in my russian school, it makes grading much easier. But it also introduces tons of both false positives and false negatives. You know how to solve everything, but screwed up one small calculation? No points for the problem. Oh, you got the right answer at the end and wrote a bunch of gibberish to "get" to that answer (because you just copied the answer from someone else without knowing how to solve it at all)? Well, you got the answer right, so we will give you almost all the points. Cheating was off the charts. And that is at one of the most "prestigious" and highly ranked specialized gymnasium schools.

Of course, high school in the US still had plenty of memorization, but not even close to 100% like it was in Russia for me. And once US college hit me, it became even better.

>A teacher when asked a question once said "I don't know, I have to check it". Holly f... Someone who openly admitted they don't know something, no freaking way!

This, so much. Professors/teachers behaving like humans instead of "even if i was wrong, I am marking you down because you argued with the teacher, and the teacher is always right", that was incredible for me.

P.S. sorry for the long rant, but it bottled up, especially after seeing comments proclaiming the exact opposite of what I, and every single person I know in real life who went to high school/university in Russia, have experienced. Oh, and no comment on "Russian schools in the US" (as I feel like they could indeed be great, but the "russian" part of them is imo just a marketing trick), as that's a very different beast that I have zero experience with. I was talking only about Russian schools in Russia.

> The child of immigrants might have learned a different way to solve a problem because that’s how their parents were taught where they grew up. If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life. If we take the opportunity to explore why there are different ways to approach the same problem, it can be a learning moment for the entire class.

I certainly had this experience in school! I did many math problems mentally, using the method taught in schools today where a problem like 23 x 7 is split into ((10 * 7) * 2) + (3 * 7). As a result, showing my work was challenging, because the teachers of my time wanted us to write out the long multiplication and I didn't know writing the above expansion was an option.

You are of course correct, but I think the parent comment is implying that this is a rather unfortunate situation. I agree with him to a large extent.

My experience with the French system has left me with the sense that American schooling has to some extent cheated me out of an education. On the other hand, I look at my wife (and other "prépa" students as well) and conclude that they suffer from a certain lack of imagination and intrinsic motivation, both of which have personally benefitted me greatly, and which I attribute to something in American culture.

As my wife puts it (I'm paraphrasing, obviously): "We were never asked what we enjoyed doing; if you were a good student, you were put on the good-student-track, which was a math/science-heavy curriculum. To this day, I don't really know what I want to do; I just know what I can do, and I feel an obligation to excel at it." She's an absolute brute at math, but she doesn't like it, and I think she would have been much happier studying something like literature.

So my feeling on the matter the French educational system is one of ambivalence, overall. Nevertheless, I am convinced the US has strayed much too far in the other direction.

Honestly, it is more direct at the instructors instead of the mathematics itself. I am not good with math because of the instructors' pedagogy. Honestly, I do like math and enjoy doing it (Khan's Academy helps a lot!). It is their approach with mathematics is the issue. Their pedagogy are not standardized enough to have consistency with each level of mathematics. There are instructors who dismissed their student's previous instructor because their former instructor gave them the shortcut or a shorter method while the new instructor are doing the same thing. Now you have a student who have a jumbled information of mathematics and that is difficult for the student to be able to relearn a new information while they can't erase/forget the previous method.

Also I am curious why it is difficult for instructor to explain HOW and WHY that solution is the correct answer? It is like they don't want to teach the concept of mathematics which is vital for critical thinking, IMO. When I asked the instructor of this question (this is in college), their answers is "It is the way I was taught in school" and I felt that is dismissive and hand-waving away the question.

Instructors are not entirely at fault because they also received the similar education in the past as we do. The mathematics pedagogy and the curriculum need a massive restructuring and cohesive way to teach the students to ensure that the students can use the previous knowledge to the next level of mathematics for consistency without changing or influencing the students to forget everything.