Lots of comments asking what is "Soviet/Russian Math" actually like, and how is it different. I was lucky to get an education in three systems (Soviet Math, Romanian Math School (influenced by both French and Soviet Math school), and finally in a world top 40 university in North America. I would summarize the Soviet/Russian Math/Physics approach like this: - understanding of the mechanism/intuition behind the equatio…
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)
#452Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#453Lots of comments asking what is "Soviet/Russian Math" actually like, and how is it different. I was lucky to get an education in three systems (Soviet Math, Romanian Math School (influenced by both French and Soviet Math school), and finally in a world top 40 university in North America. I would summarize the Soviet/Russian Math/Physics approach like this: - understanding of the mechanism/intuition behind the equatio…
I had a chance to compare the systems, too but my conclusions are completely different. Teachers at the physics/math lyceum I studied at were emotionally unstable psychopaths with mood swings. They could switch from calm "kids, if you don't understand something, please, don't hesitate to ask" to the screaming at the top of their lungs of "are you a stupid imbecile? what a moron you're to ask that" just a minute later…
Math was boring as hell. Worse was only literature with essays.
Except that at lyceum we did have good teachers who could admit they didn't know, and the physics teacher did anti-test, where we could pose him a (correct) problem and if he couldn't find the answer, he added +1 to quarter mark, which was a great bonus.
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the curious: > 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…
Part of schooling is learning and showing you can follow a specific set of instructions. As long as one was taught how to do long multiplication, I do not see the purpose of taking into account what every kids' parents taught them if the purpose of the exercise is to learn a certain method and then show that you learned that certain method by doing it.
> If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life.
I certainly disengaged from some subjects in school due to frustration with "thou shalt" methods of teaching. I was even removed from an upper level English language class because I didn't draw the same conclusions as the teacher from the material.
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Calculators in calculus probably aren't a problem. But in the US, calculators are used at almost all grade levels. My son's school allowed them while he was in elementary school, while still learning basic algebra. As for math education in general (in the US), it's pretty terrible. The lack of practical applications of "advanced" maths is a big problem. Basic calculus didn't "click" for me until I started taking econ…
I vividly remember self-studying calculus because I absolutely wanted to know how to find the area under a polynomial curve. I knew how to find areas of normal geometric shapes, but finding the area under the curve seemed like black magic that I _had_ to learn. If schools could somehow give this to students, there would be no need for "practical applications".
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#456I came to Canada mid-way through high school, and breezed through with little to no effort until my 2nd year of university.
I remember math class in elementary school, how everything was explained, and if you were clever enough you could see where the teacher was going with the rest of the story, because everything inherently made sense.
This type of learning instilled in me a deep comfort with math - knowing that you can always break down a problem into a set of familiar problems, that proofs are kind of like nested Russian dolls, and that you can synthesize a solution out of first principles if you're persistent enough.
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have always liked math, but have never been great or very good at it. I graduated from a US public school gifted program, and a top 30 US university. The biggest problem I always had with math education is they didn’t teach the “why” nearly enough. I was lousy at memorizing formulas/methods (esp. in calculus), so I often found myself dead in the water during exams.
I used to suffer from the lack of "why" too until one day it dawned on me that there really isn't a why, or maybe, the why is always the same: for engineers doing classical physics solving problems by hand, it's convenient to define it that way. No more, no less. When I was a math tutor in school, everyone would complain about lack of why. This was my approach to address the issue. I would describe a problem relevant…
My mother was a public school teacher.
She passed her test on the first try, which was extremely rare at her school. She was taught in India, and became an American teacher as an older woman. She was an outlier. She graduated from a major public teaching program in our state of California (CSU Fullerton).
Most teachers fail their tests on the first try. This is not advanced calculus... this is elementary mathematics and reading.
The issue is that accolades in the education department do not translate to results. The state creates a monopoly on teaching via its certification process, with means education departments are guaranteed funding regardless of their results, given that once you have the credential, you're considered 'equal' to other teachers.
Despite my mother doing very well on her tests, she was fired and not granted tenure because she didn't follow her principal's teaching methodology. Even though her students were passing their own exams at higher rates and doing better (And of course my mother taught two boys who went on to make careers in science and mathematics), she was fired for not following the failing methodology.
This is what is wrong with American schooling. It's a race to the bottom and the teachers have no idea what's actual achievement because they've never achieved basic elementary schooling, much less seen it in others.
Here are example questions: https://www.mometrix.com/academy/praxis-math-practice-test/
These are not difficult, at all.
EDIT: in some ways america is doomed by its own success, in that, for those who can actually do math, reading, and writing, there are significantly more lucrative fields than teaching. Unfortunately, since teachers can't teach those skills, it's really a new aristocracy formed by parents who do know those skills passing them on to children.
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of schooling is learning and showing you can follow a specific set of instructions. As long as one was taught how to do long multiplication, I do not see the purpose of taking into account what every kids' parents taught them if the purpose of the exercise is to learn a certain method and then show that you learned that certain method by doing it.
Because in practice, that causes students to disengage from the learning process: > If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life. I certainly disengaged from some subjects in school due to frustration with "thou shalt" methods of teaching. I was even removed from an upper level English language class because I didn't draw the same conclusions as the teacher from t…
>23 x 7 is split into ((10 * 7) * 2) + (3 * 7)
was the wrong way, then that is harmful. But if the purpose of the test was to see if you can do long multiplication, and you were not able to do it because you did not want to or like to do it that way, then that is a personal problem.
The reality is that school (non university level schooling) is not purely about education or exploring the 18 million different ways something can be right or wrong. It is also an exercise in navigating one's way around other humans and their expectations and playing the game that you will have to for the rest of your life.
There is also the constraint of limited budgets and schools having to make do with perhaps not the most qualified educators. And there is certainly lots of improvement to be made, but this "racist math" stuff seems to be counter productive.
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#459When 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…
Re: American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017)
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maths do not have a why.
If maths don't have a why, then programming languages don't have a why. They're both abstractions.