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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)

#471

Post by iammisc »

nickloewen wrote: post #282
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oregon governor Kate Brown has signed a law that allows students to graduate without proving they can read, write or do math. The law had overwhelming Democrat support & is justified on the basis that it will benefit non-white students. https://thepostmillennial.com/oregon-governor-signs-new-law-...

The Post Millennial story on this is quite light on details. Here’s another article with more: https://katu.com/news/local/oregon-legislature-passes-bill-t... And here’s the text of the bill (PDF): https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Downloads/Meas... And here’s the Department of Education’s page on the Essential Skills Graduation Requirement: https://www.oregon.gov/ode/educator-resources/essentialskill...…

How is your interpretation any better than the editorialized 'brown drops education requirements'. The pandemic is no excuse to lower standards. It short changes these kids. If anything, public schooling should be extended as an option for those above 18 to freely learn what they missed. This is an immense loss for these children. The last two years of High school are extremelyy important.

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

#472

Post by horsawlarway »

iammisc wrote: post #461
hhlbf wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maths do not have a why.

You are being downvoted but you're correct. Consider the natural numbers. There is no 'why' behind them. There are axioms behind them, and -- given those axioms -- there are statements about the natural numbers that can be logically reduced to the axioms, but the axioms have no why. Moreover, it is provable the axioms have no why, because they cannot have a why, because the axioms cannot be proven except in relation…

Again - correct but misguided in the general sense.

> It is the same reason the word for 'dog' in English is taught as being spelled D-O-G. There is no why behind it.

I agree with you completely, but I think you're guilty of speaking the wrong language in response to the question (and it would behoove you to consider it from the perspective of someone outside the field).

The question "Why" in maths almost always gets asked by someone new to the field, and they are not asking from a mathematical perspective - They are not asking you for a formal/provable "why", they're asking you what is the utility of learning this thing.

So lets go back to D-O-G. The utility is clear - I have this hairy, 4 legged animal that keeps licking me that I'd like to discuss with you. We can agree that D-O-G (or perro, or 개) refers to it.

But with math, SO MANY PEOPLE (especially those established in the field) jump right into the "Here are the rules of this system of math" without ever taking the time to talk about why someone might give a flying fuck.

It would be like me going and making up my own language and forcing you to learn it. No one else speaks it, it's got no books/literature/history, there are no works of art that reference it - it's literally the language this random person made up that serves ZERO purpose except for talking to that person.

No wonder so many kids don't like math!

Instead you need to explicitly start with the utility of math - ideally in ways that are entertaining and fun. Once a person has an application for some of the rules, they become SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING! Suddenly I care about why this rule might impact that rule over there, or why A and Z are related, or what sin/cos/tan mean.

Basically - sell me on the value proposition of your fucked up whacky language - That's what "why" is asking. Once you know those rules do something useful, it becomes a much more engaging field of study.

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

#473

Post by jdgoesmarching »

lumost wrote: post #448
ksd482 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I was reading the summary, I was thinking "well, of course -- that makes sense. Any teaching curriculum has got to be like that so what is so special about Russian math curriculum?". Then I read in other comments about US math curriculum and I was shocked to learn that not only they were NOT doing this, but they didn't have a better alternative. This is mind boggling. It seems almost idiotic. My schooling was done…

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that most Americans experience k-12 math as an exercise in memorization. Even relatively simple algebraic manipulation such as quadratic equations are drilled for factorization first.

Yep, it’s like teaching someone how to cook by quizzing them on recipes. I didn’t understand the purpose of calculus until grad school despite having “learned” it several times by that point.

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

#474

Post by iammisc »

horsawlarway wrote: post #472
iammisc wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being downvoted but you're correct. Consider the natural numbers. There is no 'why' behind them. There are axioms behind them, and -- given those axioms -- there are statements about the natural numbers that can be logically reduced to the axioms, but the axioms have no why. Moreover, it is provable the axioms have no why, because they cannot have a why, because the axioms cannot be proven except in relation…

Again - correct but misguided in the general sense. > It is the same reason the word for 'dog' in English is taught as being spelled D-O-G. There is no why behind it. I agree with you completely, but I think you're guilty of speaking the wrong language in response to the question (and it would behoove you to consider it from the perspective of someone outside the field). The question "Why" in maths almost always gets…

You are correct, but this explanation is cultural and sociological, not logical.

We must motivate math, absolutely. And to do so in my opinion starts with socratic questioning. You must convince the student that such an inquiry is even worthwhile.

One thing I'll point out is that we're not just seeing this in math. We see it in every field. More and more kids every year are insisting ( and their teachers are agreeing) that we can do away with inquiries into the English language and the humanities as well. There is a small, but continuing, effort to remove the knowledge of English masters like shakespeare and classic philosophers and treatises from the curriculum.

As a whole, American schooling fails to motivate learning of any kind. Math was the first victim, but the other subjects are also failing.

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

#475

Post by akomtu »

a-saleh wrote: post #48
ardit33 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it was a communist country, everyone had the same conditions (crappy), and everyone had the same fricking clothes (only two clothing factories on the whole country), and same teachers (and no private schooling allowed), and we had the same books, and no calculators. And it is clear, if all conditions are equal, still people are not born equal. Some kids are just smarter than others, and some are just dummies, o…

T.b.h. as somebody from ost-block country, I did hate the cast-system based on the performance. In my school we had a class that selected for the worst students, and surprise, it created a class where so many people failed. I was in class that had an even mix, some really smart kids, some not so much, and some comparable to the worst of the D-class. Like third of the of my classmates went for the sports-focused high-…

Eh, I remember I was put in a D class. Math classes there were like "today we are going to study addition, who wants to ask this student to add two numbers?" so I volunteered and asked the guy to add 5 to 7 - I understood that the class somehow struggled with two digit numbers and wanted to see this in action. The teacher, though, realized what my plan was and said we can't do this level of complexity right now. That day I learnt something important though: that the crowd follows "the rules" without questioning them and that being a smartass isn't rewarded. We were 6-7 year olds then.

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

#476

Post by rudnevr »

filoleg wrote: post #445
mantas wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being schooled in post-Soviet 90s/00s... Overall both class and teachers didn’t like memorizers. On the other hand, it was possible to pass pretty well by memorizing. Sometimes teachers would put in random bits in tests to throw off memorizers. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All in all, memorizing and actual learning lived side by side. The main difference from what West looks like, the Soviet-ish system w…

>Overall both class and teachers didn’t like memorizers. On the other hand, it was possible to pass pretty well by memorizing. Sometimes teachers would put in random bits in tests to throw off memorizers. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All in all, memorizing and actual learning lived side by side. I find it hard to believe, given my personal experiences and the fact that having to memorize a poem or a shor…

I backup the original claim.

I've been in several provincial schools in 1990s, good and bad, and we've always had strong anti-memorizing sentiment in math classes, despite in literature classes memorizing was mandatory.

Both make perfect sense.

Now I heard it's turning more to the Western model, though.

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

#477

Post by jacobolus »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #473
lumost wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that most Americans experience k-12 math as an exercise in memorization. Even relatively simple algebraic manipulation such as quadratic equations are drilled for factorization first.

Yep, it’s like teaching someone how to cook by quizzing them on recipes. I didn’t understand the purpose of calculus until grad school despite having “learned” it several times by that point.

If anyone wants a book focusing on the purpose of calculus, check out http://www.math.smith.edu/~callahan/intromine.html

This is significantly different style from Russian textbooks. If you want a nice one of those translated into English (albeit not the easiest to find a paper copy of), I like Piskunov’s book. https://archive.org/details/n.-piskunov-differential-and-int...

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

#478

Post by Dracophoenix »

lvl100 wrote: post #331
Dracophoenix wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 woul…

Ok. And what did those programs actually achieve for Russia and China? Is that why they send their best to the US/UK to study? Interesting.

Those programs produced Nobel prize-winning scientists, Field prize-winning mathematicians, computational whiz kids, and CEOs of billion dollar companies, etc. I'm sure you've heard of Perelman.

But even the non-Perelmans - the "regular" students - who didn't rise to the peaks of intellectual rigor still have a stronger background in today's knowledge economy then most of their contemporaries stateside.

As far as their children are concerned, the Russians and Chinese send their best 18 year-olds to Ivies, Ivy-likes, and Oxbridge just as they send their best 18 year-olds to Moscow State and Peking. Many of them prefer an American degree for the business opportunities, better income, and the prestige of working for an American firm. A more relevant question to ask is how many would send their best 14 year-olds to the average public high school in the US, or the average comprehensive school in the UK, as full-time students for at least 3 years?

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

#479

Post by mantas »

filoleg wrote: post #445
mantas wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being schooled in post-Soviet 90s/00s... Overall both class and teachers didn’t like memorizers. On the other hand, it was possible to pass pretty well by memorizing. Sometimes teachers would put in random bits in tests to throw off memorizers. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All in all, memorizing and actual learning lived side by side. The main difference from what West looks like, the Soviet-ish system w…

>Overall both class and teachers didn’t like memorizers. On the other hand, it was possible to pass pretty well by memorizing. Sometimes teachers would put in random bits in tests to throw off memorizers. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All in all, memorizing and actual learning lived side by side. I find it hard to believe, given my personal experiences and the fact that having to memorize a poem or a shor…

We had those literature assignments as well. But in 12 years that happened a couple times most. Now don't get me started on literature writing assignment that are strongly advised to start in certain ways and it's best to just memorise the beginning off examples and just change few words....

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

#480

Post by chrisseaton »

starkd wrote: post #365
caffeine wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the same thing. The policy is to remove educational disparity. Naturally force flows along the path of least resistance - rather than raising everyone up, which is hard, we are simply removing anything difficult from the curriculum, which is much easier (at the expense of actually educating anyone, a goal that nobody cares about much any more). The easiest way to make equality is to multiply both sides by z…

Many in teachers' unions don't want to be rated on how badly public schools are doing. It's not all the fault of teachers, granted, but incentives of the union here is not always aligned with the students. Many don't want to hear it, but it needs to be said as a factor. There are a lot of these initiatives - like Russian math - popping up serving as test cases for how to teach subjects. I think online programs are in…

> incentives of the union here is not always aligned with the students

I don't know why this would surprise anyone.

The union represents the teachers. It absolutely doesn't represent the students - none of them are members!

As far as a rational teaching union is concerned, the government, the general public, schools, parents, and students, are all the enemy.

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