I don't know how you think that school systems, especially in the west, place more emphasis on "how" than "why". Western schools most definitely place their emp

I don't know how you think that school systems, especially in the west, place more emphasis on "how" than "why". Western schools most definitely place their emphasis on "understanding" rather than "doing". I think that all this does it create a false sense of understanding. Students think they understand why something is done, then when they go to do an actual problem they are totally lost. I think this is a big reason why american students rate themselves as being very confident in their understanding, but performing rather poorly compared to other nations. I'll have to look for the citation to back that up. Just my 2cents. edit: http://www.newgeography.com/content/003840-high-confidence-not-translating-high-math-scores-american-and-european-students http://www.newgeography.com/content/003840-high-confidence-n... there were other more recent surveys on this topic, this is all i can find right now