American parents are sending their kids to 'Russian math' (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by extropy » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

gnat wrote: post #36

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…

Do you have data or anecdata on the effect of repeating an entire year? In many modern Western schools that'd be frowned upon as punitive and as likely to provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.

As a parent (in Switzerland of all places) I actually consider this a very good option for kids struggling. And took the opportunity for one of our kids and it worked out great.

Edit: Switzerland has a different approach where children are segregated by their ability starting from 7th school year. So you go to Gymnasium, A level, B level, C level.

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

#52

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:18 AM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #30

bnjms wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share what did you do with the students that could not do algebra physics and chemistry in junior high? I’ve always thought yours was the right way. There are some students which will do the minimal but will manage if challenged. Seems the equitable way leaves them behind.

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…

> Since everyone was the same ethnicity, you can't blame 'systematic x'. It was all equal.

This is certainly an advantage that Albania had over Alabama. There are still people alive who remember the school system having to be desegregated under armed guard. The struggle continues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/1...

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

#53

Post by rob74 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

gnat wrote: post #34

paganel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romanian here, the "I learned this when I was 9" might have been a slight exaggeration so that your friend could make a point, but as an another anecdata I can say that I distinctly remember one of my first calculus classes while I was in 9th grade (I think I was 15 years old at the time) and our maths teacher trying to explain to us how real numbers are defined and, more importantly, what that definition really mean…

Do the students bring any motivation to the classroom? Like, is there a culture of "study hard and pay attention in maths and sciences, because that's how we escape poverty" or something like that? Here in New Zealand, middle class parents put a high premium on being happy and fulfilled, and most (that I've seen across several schools) don't really prime their kids for academic success by saying "this is important, w…

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 however have changed since, at least to some degree). However, kids that studied hard and were very good in school weren't looked down upon and disrespected as they sometimes are in the West.

At University (after the regime changed), studying hard did become more common, but it was directed at scoring a job in Canada/USA/wherever, not at escaping poverty in Romania itself...

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

#54

Post by noisy_boy » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

gnat wrote: post #36

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…

Do you have data or anecdata on the effect of repeating an entire year? In many modern Western schools that'd be frowned upon as punitive and as likely to provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.

I skipped a class (went from 3rd standard to 5th) because I could clear the entrance exam during changing schools (I also topped the exam, mainly because my tutor made me work hard). In college I failed a paper because I was lazy and didn't work hard. The first incident made me happy but didn't make me think that I was very smart and the latter didn't make me think I was dumb. I knew the reasons exactly. We under-estimate how much we know ourselves.

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

#55

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

platz wrote: post #12

gfaure wrote: post #6

If the article is accurate, one Japanese equivalent of this, known as Kumon, is almost its polar opposite -- remembering my own experiences with it as a kid, it was very much about rote memorisation and doing the same sheet of arithmetic as quickly as possible. One of the exercises Kumon made kids do at the age of 5 is to simply place shuffled magnets with the numbers 1 to 100 in order on a 10x10 board. I can't say t…

So you're saying you're in the cohort that was kumon-schooled and ended up loving math.

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by bllguo » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

rejectedandsad wrote: post #33

ardit33 wrote: post #7

My sister sent my niece to one, as even her 'private' middle school in Newton, MA, was just not strong enough. She did sign up my niece in every summer class she could, without overloading her. It was always my nieces' choice, and half the time she choose arts and half science. Now, my niece is able to do college entry level data science classes (she is about to become a Junior in HighSchool), and she actually likes…

> It is bound to hurt poorer but smart kids, that can't afford private tutoring and have to rely only on public schools Why should I care about them? The internet exists. Let them learn on their own if they’re so interested. Why am I being forced to subsidize people that will just grow to resent me as a leech on society due to my “inferior mathematical ability” as you surely do? Poverty is a far bigger problem than s…

> Why should I care about them?

We should obviously care about improving education, for the good of society as a whole, for innovation, for pushing the economy forward, etc. It's dumbfounding that this would even be asked, I'm not sure anyone outside of America (i.e. no pervasive anti-intellectual culture) could conceive of a question like this

> Why am I being forced to subsidize people that will just grow to resent me as a leech on society due to my “inferior mathematical ability” as you surely do?

Why is American society so centered around appearances and perceived judgment? You'd rather damn an entire state to stagnation than risk being looked down upon by some hypothetical elitist? And math is only one of many, many subjects.. I firmly believe everyone is good at something.

> Poverty is a far bigger problem than some Virginia schools not teaching Geometry in 8th grade

And how is terrible education supposed to help with poverty? Education is a great way, arguably the primary way, that people lift themselves up.

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

#57

Post by ardit33 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:21 AM UTC

gnat wrote: post #36

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…

Do you have data or anecdata on the effect of repeating an entire year? In many modern Western schools that'd be frowned upon as punitive and as likely to provoke a "well screw YOU!" response or ingrain "I must really be stupid" mindset.

You have to fail two classes in order to repeat the whole year. If you fail only one, you'd still could pass (but had to go to additional schooling). But if you had failed two, then there was something wrong going on with with the whole year, and it had repeated.

Usually it was kids that had some discipline problems. Perhaps ADHD, etc... but at the time, no-one cared about those aspects as school psychologist were not a thing at all.

If you failed more than one year in a row, then the teachers will just give up on you and let you just slide the next year as long as you just showed up.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:22 AM UTC

rejectedandsad wrote: post #38

arthur_sav wrote: post #32

Somehow the American education system keeps getting worse while they poor more money into it.

There’s a limited amount you can do when everyone around you is destitute. I seriously doubt future coal miners were taught sophisticated math in high school in the USSR - they took tracking and specialization to an extreme, whereas this is culturally verboten in America (for good reason).

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by ZeroGravitas » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #27

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?

Here you go: https://www.noodle.com/articles/let-s-get-rid-of-special-edu... Inclusive classrooms raise scores of the lower performing students. That's probably true. It glosses over what it does to people on the other end of the spectrum. As someone from the other end of the spectrum, growing up never having to put any effort, having few or no peers close to my level, and being constantly encouraged by the people ar…

Why isn't it deeply offensive for you to want to slow them down if the reverse is true?

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

#60

Post by dilyevsky » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

lentil_soup wrote: post #31

dragosmocrii wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied in a top school in Moldova which follows a curriculum whose foundation was defined during the Soviet union times, so could be pretty close to the Russian curriculum. Just as an idea, in grade 10-11 I was studying limits, complex numbers, derivatives, grade 12 was dedicated to integrals and solving problems with them. Math got progressively harder starting with grade 5. I remember I was filling about 2-3 not…

How old is grade 10-11? I always get confused with these as each country numbers grades differently

Can’t speak for Moldova but had what seems to be same level (specialized math school) in Russia and 10-11 was 15-17 yo (you could start at different age back then)