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Disclaimer: I graduated from one of the top math high schools in Moscow in early 90s, I have MS in Math from Moscow State University, and a half finished PhD fr

by lsh123 7y ago

Disclaimer: I graduated from one of the top math high schools in Moscow in early 90s, I have MS in Math from Moscow State University, and a half finished PhD from the same place. I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible. Either country doesn’t really require much to finish school and many kids just do the tests without understanding what is going on. What separates Soviet Union (and now Russian) system is the practice of selecting kids with interest in mathematics / physics into special classes or schools for gifted kids. This government program feeds the mathematics and physics departments in the universities and allows kids who go through this program to get a very early start in mathematics. This is very similar to government sponsored sports programs with talented kids getting help with summer camps, or even all year round training schools.

asdfman123 7y ago
I remember reading about the Soviet physicist Landau and I believe they made the argument that the difference between the US and the USSR is the US tried to bring every student to as high a level in math as they could, whereas the USSR was more interested in just selecting the best math students and didn't worry so much about the rest.
jjtheblunt 7y ago
I suspect there's a huge variation within the US; Chicago area public schools do what you described in Russia, or did anyway. When relocating years later to California for work, locals seemed to have had access to far fewer opportunities in school. Besides math, as in the OP's observations, foreign language options seemed to only include Spanish, whereas Chicagoland had French, German, Spanish, Latin, and that included some ancient Greek. Just different opportunities, by school district.
m463 6y ago
It could also bet you can't stunt your growth with a calculator. I've seen current students grasping at a calculator the first opportunity they were given.
credit_guy 6y ago
My feeling is that the students in Eastern Europe (where I'm from) and very likely the Soviet Union, are very bimodal. Some are brilliant, some barely make it. If, for whatever reasons, early in your education you find yourself in the upper hump of the distribution, then it's a virtuous cycle. If not, not. In America, it feels to me ,there are plenty of programs to help the students who don't perform that well. Brilliant kids, outside of various gifted/talented programs, are left unchallenged. My son just qualified to an online math olympiad, and he told his teacher and peers about that (over a zoom meeting, obviously). The teacher was impressed, and commended him, but that's it. He will not give my son any more challenging problems, or give him any extra attention. If he does well in that olympiad, he'll congratulate my son once more, if not, he couldn't care less. When I was a kid growing up, math/physics olympiads was what I was living for. Here most teachers are not even aware they exist. Overall though, I'll go against the popular opinion, and state that I consider the school system in America (or at least in NYC) better than the one in Eastern Europe. Sure, some could point out at the ridiculous budget that schools have here ($25k per pupil in NYC [1]). But all in all, I feel my son's school experience is better than mine 35 years ago. [1] https://nypost.com/2019/05/21/nyc-spends-double-the-national-average-on-education-has-little-to-show-for-it/ https://nypost.com/2019/05/21/nyc-spends-double-the-national...
abr1000 6y ago
i agree overall, there are also high schools for 'talented' kids who can take exams/ or private schools in the US/ of course not all is available everywhere
ummwhat 7y ago
There are plenty of programs exactly like that in the US.
- lsh123 7y ago
  Not at that level, I have 3 kids of various ages from elementary school to college ;) There is a HUGE difference in the programs from who is selected into the program to program goals.
  - ummwhat 7y ago
    For the sake of example, how was Soviet Science high school different from Stuyvesant/Brooklyn Tech/Bronx school of Science? (Just to name the ones I know of).
    - lsh123 7y ago
      I am not very familiar with these schools, I am in CA. I think the biggest factor for me during my high school years was several hours per week of 1-1 discussions with currently active mathematicians and grad students. While formal math is really hard to read, a lot of ideas are very elegant and actually simple. It’s hard to find these ideas in a formal math text, but you can explain a lot of things in 1-1 setting while still allow student to “discover” core concepts on their own. Mathematics is not about solving 100 problems of one type ;)
      - novok 7y ago
        This is what infuriates me about college level mathematics from about 12 years ago at least. Why can't they also explain it like they do in those 1-1 sessions instead of making calculus textbooks that assume you know set theory before set theory is taught in some of the worst most obtuse writing there is. I'm glad there is khan academy now, but come on.
        screye 7y ago
        You would love 3B1B. He teaches undergrad level math with his youtube videos in the most intuitive way I've ever seen on video.
Endlessly 7y ago
Curious, what do you and your peers that were feed into a well defined path so early make of it now understanding that is not how all children reach advanced skills in mathematics?
- sershe 7y ago
  In iirc 8th grade, I've placed high in the final round of a Moscow-wide physics competition, incidentally hosted by MSU. My classmate, who placed even higher, and myself have received an invitation to enroll in the MSU-affiliated maths/physics focused school (#2, the schools in Moscow are all numbered semi arbitrarily). As far as I recall, every time I'd go to one of those competitions bulk of the people in later rounds were from #2 and #57, another math-focused school. The kids from other schools who did well were, I assume, largely scooped up by those targeted schools. EDIT: Oh, and the maths/physics/etc. competitions started at neighborhood level, so every school would typically send at least a few kids, and encourage the kids who were better at the subjects to do well. I went to neighborhood biology/history/etc. competitions too, but never did very well. I assume whoever did well in those and went into next rounds could go on to enroll into a different set of specialized schools :) Also, some parents did enroll their kids straight into those schools, but I dunno how prevalent that is. They are very ability focused, unlike US private schools that I've heard of where money and helicopter parenting seem to be a major factor. As a side note, my friend did enroll into #2, and I didn't go because was too lazy to commute 40mins one way when my own school was a 3-minute walk (it was a subway trip for him as is, so I'd like to think that was the difference ;)). We've both done well for ourselves but he's definitely much better at math now.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Well, 2 is prime, and so is 57, so it makes sense those would be math focused schools. ;) [0] —- [0]: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6358/story-of-grothendiecks-prime-number https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6358/story-of-grothe...
    - arduanika 7y ago
malandrew 7y ago
Such a program will never happen in America again because some people will complain about privilege-this and equity-that. America is basically living Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron already and dooming itself to mediocrity if is doesn’t realize the damage being done and correct things. What happened with NYC’s gifted and talented programs was a perfect example of this idiocy.
- prpl 7y ago
  It did during World War II and all the physics professors I've met who went through that program were maladjusted, even for physics professors.
- sdan 7y ago
  When I was in elementary school probably a decade ago we all had to take a math placement test (not the standardized test, a different one) to determine what math class we'd be in middle school. Tons of privilege-this and that (this is normal in the bay area, pretty sure a lot more schools have similar systems) but at the end of the day kids (like me) studied extremely hard for these placement tests.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I'm honestly surprised that people have begun studying for that test; when I took it was fairly low-stress…
    - Symbiote 7y ago
      At my school in England, once or twice a year the best/worst students in each class were swapped with the class above/below, based on the teachers' decisions. I had this for maths and French. I completely messed up a French test on purpose, so the teacher had an excuse to put me in the class below. We really didn't like each other, and I did much better being in the top 25% of the middle class, rather than the bottom 25% of the top class. British teachers call splitting up a year by ability for all subjects "streaming", and just for some classes "setting", and searching with both terms shows there's plenty of debate on the merits of each (or neither) method at all ages. Since I left the UK, it looks like politicians have been trying to get involved.
bsanr2 7y ago
This happens in America; the difference is that there is an expectation that parental means play a role in success (both in the way the system is oriented and on the part of parents themselves). Most, though not all, of the time, those with clear and high aptitude are "tracked" into gifted programs and magnet schools (though the efficacy varies based on local conditions, re: school funding models in the US). For those with moderate or middling aptitude, it's up to the parents to support and advocate for their child; there is an ostensible cut-off, but it's blurred by the degree of access to tutors or coaches and by the parents' savvy with navigating qualification procedures (often including places where subjectivity can sneak in, like interviews). This, of course, favors the children of wealthy and well-educated parents. This runs through to post-secondary education. America's college admissions system is legendarily rife with corruption, even into its basic structure; you think it starts there?
hangonhn 7y ago
Yes! I was about to say something similar about China as well. In China, and maybe other former Communist countries as well, kids with talents or what seems like talents are identified very early on and only those with such aptitudes are given the resources and put on a track to nurture those talents. Same thing with sports too! My guess is that China probably borrowed a lot from the USSR in their programs and philosophy. I went to a top university in the US and there were definitely kids who arrived being much more advanced in certain areas such as mathematics than the rest of us. Maybe it is not as regimented in the US but there are definitely highly talented kids who take much more advanced STEM classes than the average student.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  I wonder how much the respective cultures and politico-economic systems of those states play into that. My dad was similarly hyper-tracked: he entered grade school at 7 and graduated at 16 (he grew up in the Philippines, but as part of the expat Filipino-Chinese community, and went to Chinese schools). When my dad tried similarly hyper-tracking me academically (suburban Boston), I got beat up, physically, by my peers. Having been traumatized into becoming a terrible student, I later found out I did much better economically than many of my more academically-diligent college classmates that ended up getting physics Ph.Ds. The U.S. is fundamentally an exchange economy: you succeed based on how well you can make other people happy. That privileges EQ and social intelligence over IQ and academic intelligence. The USSR was a command economy, and China was an export economy until very recently. Both of those privilege having specific technical skills in areas that are particularly useful to the state, many of which have mathematics and science as a precursor. It wouldn't surprise me if China starts devaluing academic achievement as it transitions from an export economy to an exchange economy. We're already starting to see it with the fuerdai, the children of the new Chinese rich.
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    > I got beat up, physically, by my peers This is a problem. Regardless of whether hyper-tracking is beneficial, no kid should have to suffer from this kind of bullying. I don't know why bullying in the U.S. is (or seems to be) so much worse than other countries.
missosoup 7y ago
> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school students. The gap only begins closing around year 11/12, sometimes not until tertiary education. One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. Doing well at your subjects in Russia put you in the cool group. Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. This permeates western culture across the board, hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect. I hear the culture of marginalising smart kids is somewhat changing lately though. The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby.
- sacks2k 7y ago
  "hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect" It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia): https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/International_broadcasts https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/International_broadcas... While I don't necessarily love the show, I've known many PHD students from China, Taiwan, and Korea that absolutely love the show. Hardly from countries that "don't value intellect". "This permeates western culture across the board," I can't speak for Australia, but I went to high school in the US during the 90s. The 'cool' kids weren't necessarily anti-intellectual, they were just more social and were well versed in the ability to make friends. Most were in the top 10 in terms of grades at our school and I didn't go to a specialized or private school. The 'nerds' and unpopular kids weren't necessarily smart either. Many had Aspergers or were on the autism spectrum, which means they most likely won't do well in social situations and most likely won't ever be popular. Others were just anti-social or were just never taught how to make friends or be a friend. Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is supposed to depict someone like this. It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else, but the actual reasons are much more nuanced. "The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby." I suppose this is just the result of living in a stable and safe country. 12 year olds aren't adults and shouldn't take on adult responsibilities. It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile, which is something you can never get back as an adult.
vladislav 7y ago
"I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible." That's difficult to believe. I went to comparable level early education schools in Russia and the US and observed stark differences in the quality of math education. Math culture is a thing, and it varies between countries, affecting the education system on the whole as well.
- squaresmile 7y ago
  I think OP's comment focuses on the average outcome and your comment is about the education process. I think both are right. While there are stark differences in the process, the average outcome is probably not much different. Students not in the US can do harder problems in their final exams but how much of that comes from actual understanding of math. How much is retained a day or a month after the exams? This is about the average student, mind you. From my short talks with math educators in the US and in a Soviet-like system, I got the impression that the average math student is a mess in math in both cases. There are probably more people on the long tail of math talent here so it's understandable their impressions on the two systems are much different. OP's comment also talked about the pipeline for gifted kids and he concurred that the Soviet style is effective for training those students.
ajsnigrutin 7y ago
I'm from slovenia, a small, former yugoslav country. We don't have special schools for math here, and elementary schools (7-15yo in my time) were the same for all, and you went to the closest school to your home... but our highschool ("gymnasiums" - 15-19) used the grades from elementary school + standardized testing scores to rank students, and somehow best students went to certain schools, 'the middle' got accepted o others, and shitty students went to shitty schools and other, non-general schools. The biggest difference wasn't separating kids into math classes and language classes, but genrally separating them by "good" and "bad". Having a random mix of students, where some can barely read, and others read two books per week (or some can barely multiply, while others code math problems for fun), is a very hard job for the professor, because in the end, they have to lower their standards, expectations, and the quantity of material until most students scrape by. Having a group of students that are good at "school stuff", means the teachers are having very little problems with the basics and can continue faster and prepare students better for university and life. If we had separation for stem-talented students, and language-talented and *-talented, it would be even better. So basically... group better students together, and you can do a lot more with them, if you don't have to pull the 'bad' students behind. I am aware that this is bad for 'bad' students, and that it should be fixable somehow (they should have options to move to better schools), but good students thrive without idiots in class.
- azinman2 7y ago
  We had that at my American high school. It’s called honors and AP classes. There are event “magnet“ high schools, or high schools dedicated to top artistic talent. They just aren’t uniformly available.
  - Koshkin 7y ago
    True - artistic (but not mathematical or scientific). But AP classes are really good at what they are meant to achieve indeed.
    - nervousvarun 6y ago
      Not sure what you mean by artistic here? Available AP classes/tests include STEM...so Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Biology, etc.
drakonka 7y ago
I moved from post-Soviet Ukraine to Alabama in 1999 and started school in grade 6 in the US. For the first 3 years or so my entire math class seemed like just a rehash of things we had already learned in Ukraine. I failed in taking math study seriously at that point as everything was so easy. When things did get hard at some point in high school and I had to learn new things, I no longer had the discipline to really commit. Also there was no strict grandmother to make me study math for hours after school or on Saturdays anymore. I really regret not having the foresight to stay committed to it now. I did end up taking "advanced" math classes through high school, but my level of commitment and understanding was never what it could have been.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  > I failed in taking math study seriously at that point as everything was so easy. When things did get hard at some point in high school and I had to learn new things, I no longer had the discipline to really commit. oh god.. I failed because of this too. By the time I got to college I was so weak I sunk to the bottom in less than 3 weeks. An .. interesting experience.
aleksandrm 7y ago
I traveled a lot and studied in international schools, embassy sf schools and schools in USSR as well as US. I was born in USSR so I mainly studied there between my travels, and everything that I saw and experienced came no where close to the curriculum that I had in motherland. So I have to disagree with you.
netcan 7y ago
In the early 90s, I lived in a US apartment complex and went to schools with a lot of recent Russian migrants. Three times a week all the Russian kids were rounded up for "Russian Math," taught by, Arkady... my friend Mike's Dad. They followed the Russian/Soviet curriculum, which was 2-3 years ahead of the school's. I think we focus a lot of educational systems, because these are matters of policy which can be critiqued and maybe changed. But, I think culture plays a big role. My mother has PHD in physics, so its not like I'm from an anti-math culture. But, the Russian take was a different level. Being mathematical was very important to them, and they made it happen. A good example for this is language learning. In some schools/places/countries/communities, language learning is culturally important and culturally supported. In those places schooling works, and kids graduate with strong language abilities. In other places, it isn't, and kids generally don't progress regardless of what classes they are in. Europe is like a lab for this. Most Dutch kids graduate with native-level english, and often a 3rd and 4th language. In Italy, kids have almost no english. Modern young-people Dutch borrows a lot of English. They watch English TV. English is part of the culture, so the schooling works.
coldtea 7y ago
>I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I don't think so, compared to the difference between the US and my country (which is western but closer to USSR/Russia regarding math curriculum). I think you overestimate what the average US high school student learns...

by lsh123 7y ago

asdfman123 7y ago

I remember reading about the Soviet physicist Landau and I believe they made the argument that the difference between the US and the USSR is the US tried to bring every student to as high a level in math as they could, whereas the USSR was more interested in just selecting the best math students and didn't worry so much about the rest.

jjtheblunt 7y ago

I suspect there's a huge variation within the US; Chicago area public schools do what you described in Russia, or did anyway. When relocating years later to California for work, locals seemed to have had access to far fewer opportunities in school. Besides math, as in the OP's observations, foreign language options seemed to only include Spanish, whereas Chicagoland had French, German, Spanish, Latin, and that included some ancient Greek. Just different opportunities, by school district.

m463 6y ago

It could also bet you can't stunt your growth with a calculator. I've seen current students grasping at a calculator the first opportunity they were given.

credit_guy 6y ago

My feeling is that the students in Eastern Europe (where I'm from) and very likely the Soviet Union, are very bimodal. Some are brilliant, some barely make it. If, for whatever reasons, early in your education you find yourself in the upper hump of the distribution, then it's a virtuous cycle. If not, not. In America, it feels to me ,there are plenty of programs to help the students who don't perform that well. Brilliant kids, outside of various gifted/talented programs, are left unchallenged. My son just qualified to an online math olympiad, and he told his teacher and peers about that (over a zoom meeting, obviously). The teacher was impressed, and commended him, but that's it. He will not give my son any more challenging problems, or give him any extra attention. If he does well in that olympiad, he'll congratulate my son once more, if not, he couldn't care less. When I was a kid growing up, math/physics olympiads was what I was living for. Here most teachers are not even aware they exist. Overall though, I'll go against the popular opinion, and state that I consider the school system in America (or at least in NYC) better than the one in Eastern Europe. Sure, some could point out at the ridiculous budget that schools have here ($25k per pupil in NYC [1]). But all in all, I feel my son's school experience is better than mine 35 years ago. [1] https://nypost.com/2019/05/21/nyc-spends-double-the-national-average-on-education-has-little-to-show-for-it/ https://nypost.com/2019/05/21/nyc-spends-double-the-national...

abr1000 6y ago

i agree overall, there are also high schools for 'talented' kids who can take exams/ or private schools in the US/ of course not all is available everywhere

ummwhat 7y ago

There are plenty of programs exactly like that in the US.

lsh123 7y ago
Not at that level, I have 3 kids of various ages from elementary school to college ;) There is a HUGE difference in the programs from who is selected into the program to program goals.
- ummwhat 7y ago
  For the sake of example, how was Soviet Science high school different from Stuyvesant/Brooklyn Tech/Bronx school of Science? (Just to name the ones I know of).
  - lsh123 7y ago
    I am not very familiar with these schools, I am in CA. I think the biggest factor for me during my high school years was several hours per week of 1-1 discussions with currently active mathematicians and grad students. While formal math is really hard to read, a lot of ideas are very elegant and actually simple. It’s hard to find these ideas in a formal math text, but you can explain a lot of things in 1-1 setting while still allow student to “discover” core concepts on their own. Mathematics is not about solving 100 problems of one type ;)
    - novok 7y ago
      This is what infuriates me about college level mathematics from about 12 years ago at least. Why can't they also explain it like they do in those 1-1 sessions instead of making calculus textbooks that assume you know set theory before set theory is taught in some of the worst most obtuse writing there is. I'm glad there is khan academy now, but come on.
      - screye 7y ago
        You would love 3B1B. He teaches undergrad level math with his youtube videos in the most intuitive way I've ever seen on video.

Endlessly 7y ago

Curious, what do you and your peers that were feed into a well defined path so early make of it now understanding that is not how all children reach advanced skills in mathematics?

sershe 7y ago
In iirc 8th grade, I've placed high in the final round of a Moscow-wide physics competition, incidentally hosted by MSU. My classmate, who placed even higher, and myself have received an invitation to enroll in the MSU-affiliated maths/physics focused school (#2, the schools in Moscow are all numbered semi arbitrarily). As far as I recall, every time I'd go to one of those competitions bulk of the people in later rounds were from #2 and #57, another math-focused school. The kids from other schools who did well were, I assume, largely scooped up by those targeted schools. EDIT: Oh, and the maths/physics/etc. competitions started at neighborhood level, so every school would typically send at least a few kids, and encourage the kids who were better at the subjects to do well. I went to neighborhood biology/history/etc. competitions too, but never did very well. I assume whoever did well in those and went into next rounds could go on to enroll into a different set of specialized schools :) Also, some parents did enroll their kids straight into those schools, but I dunno how prevalent that is. They are very ability focused, unlike US private schools that I've heard of where money and helicopter parenting seem to be a major factor. As a side note, my friend did enroll into #2, and I didn't go because was too lazy to commute 40mins one way when my own school was a 3-minute walk (it was a subway trip for him as is, so I'd like to think that was the difference ;)). We've both done well for ourselves but he's definitely much better at math now.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Well, 2 is prime, and so is 57, so it makes sense those would be math focused schools. ;) [0] —- [0]: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6358/story-of-grothendiecks-prime-number https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6358/story-of-grothe...
  - arduanika 7y ago

malandrew 7y ago

Such a program will never happen in America again because some people will complain about privilege-this and equity-that. America is basically living Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron already and dooming itself to mediocrity if is doesn’t realize the damage being done and correct things. What happened with NYC’s gifted and talented programs was a perfect example of this idiocy.

prpl 7y ago
It did during World War II and all the physics professors I've met who went through that program were maladjusted, even for physics professors.
sdan 7y ago
When I was in elementary school probably a decade ago we all had to take a math placement test (not the standardized test, a different one) to determine what math class we'd be in middle school. Tons of privilege-this and that (this is normal in the bay area, pretty sure a lot more schools have similar systems) but at the end of the day kids (like me) studied extremely hard for these placement tests.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I'm honestly surprised that people have begun studying for that test; when I took it was fairly low-stress…
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    At my school in England, once or twice a year the best/worst students in each class were swapped with the class above/below, based on the teachers' decisions. I had this for maths and French. I completely messed up a French test on purpose, so the teacher had an excuse to put me in the class below. We really didn't like each other, and I did much better being in the top 25% of the middle class, rather than the bottom 25% of the top class. British teachers call splitting up a year by ability for all subjects "streaming", and just for some classes "setting", and searching with both terms shows there's plenty of debate on the merits of each (or neither) method at all ages. Since I left the UK, it looks like politicians have been trying to get involved.

bsanr2 7y ago

This happens in America; the difference is that there is an expectation that parental means play a role in success (both in the way the system is oriented and on the part of parents themselves). Most, though not all, of the time, those with clear and high aptitude are "tracked" into gifted programs and magnet schools (though the efficacy varies based on local conditions, re: school funding models in the US). For those with moderate or middling aptitude, it's up to the parents to support and advocate for their child; there is an ostensible cut-off, but it's blurred by the degree of access to tutors or coaches and by the parents' savvy with navigating qualification procedures (often including places where subjectivity can sneak in, like interviews). This, of course, favors the children of wealthy and well-educated parents. This runs through to post-secondary education. America's college admissions system is legendarily rife with corruption, even into its basic structure; you think it starts there?

hangonhn 7y ago

Yes! I was about to say something similar about China as well. In China, and maybe other former Communist countries as well, kids with talents or what seems like talents are identified very early on and only those with such aptitudes are given the resources and put on a track to nurture those talents. Same thing with sports too! My guess is that China probably borrowed a lot from the USSR in their programs and philosophy. I went to a top university in the US and there were definitely kids who arrived being much more advanced in certain areas such as mathematics than the rest of us. Maybe it is not as regimented in the US but there are definitely highly talented kids who take much more advanced STEM classes than the average student.

nostrademons 7y ago
I wonder how much the respective cultures and politico-economic systems of those states play into that. My dad was similarly hyper-tracked: he entered grade school at 7 and graduated at 16 (he grew up in the Philippines, but as part of the expat Filipino-Chinese community, and went to Chinese schools). When my dad tried similarly hyper-tracking me academically (suburban Boston), I got beat up, physically, by my peers. Having been traumatized into becoming a terrible student, I later found out I did much better economically than many of my more academically-diligent college classmates that ended up getting physics Ph.Ds. The U.S. is fundamentally an exchange economy: you succeed based on how well you can make other people happy. That privileges EQ and social intelligence over IQ and academic intelligence. The USSR was a command economy, and China was an export economy until very recently. Both of those privilege having specific technical skills in areas that are particularly useful to the state, many of which have mathematics and science as a precursor. It wouldn't surprise me if China starts devaluing academic achievement as it transitions from an export economy to an exchange economy. We're already starting to see it with the fuerdai, the children of the new Chinese rich.
- kccqzy 7y ago
  > I got beat up, physically, by my peers This is a problem. Regardless of whether hyper-tracking is beneficial, no kid should have to suffer from this kind of bullying. I don't know why bullying in the U.S. is (or seems to be) so much worse than other countries.

missosoup 7y ago

> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school students. The gap only begins closing around year 11/12, sometimes not until tertiary education. One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. Doing well at your subjects in Russia put you in the cool group. Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. This permeates western culture across the board, hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect. I hear the culture of marginalising smart kids is somewhat changing lately though. The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby.

sacks2k 7y ago
"hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect" It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia): https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/International_broadcasts https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/International_broadcas... While I don't necessarily love the show, I've known many PHD students from China, Taiwan, and Korea that absolutely love the show. Hardly from countries that "don't value intellect". "This permeates western culture across the board," I can't speak for Australia, but I went to high school in the US during the 90s. The 'cool' kids weren't necessarily anti-intellectual, they were just more social and were well versed in the ability to make friends. Most were in the top 10 in terms of grades at our school and I didn't go to a specialized or private school. The 'nerds' and unpopular kids weren't necessarily smart either. Many had Aspergers or were on the autism spectrum, which means they most likely won't do well in social situations and most likely won't ever be popular. Others were just anti-social or were just never taught how to make friends or be a friend. Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is supposed to depict someone like this. It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else, but the actual reasons are much more nuanced. "The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby." I suppose this is just the result of living in a stable and safe country. 12 year olds aren't adults and shouldn't take on adult responsibilities. It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile, which is something you can never get back as an adult.

vladislav 7y ago

"I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible." That's difficult to believe. I went to comparable level early education schools in Russia and the US and observed stark differences in the quality of math education. Math culture is a thing, and it varies between countries, affecting the education system on the whole as well.

squaresmile 7y ago
I think OP's comment focuses on the average outcome and your comment is about the education process. I think both are right. While there are stark differences in the process, the average outcome is probably not much different. Students not in the US can do harder problems in their final exams but how much of that comes from actual understanding of math. How much is retained a day or a month after the exams? This is about the average student, mind you. From my short talks with math educators in the US and in a Soviet-like system, I got the impression that the average math student is a mess in math in both cases. There are probably more people on the long tail of math talent here so it's understandable their impressions on the two systems are much different. OP's comment also talked about the pipeline for gifted kids and he concurred that the Soviet style is effective for training those students.

ajsnigrutin 7y ago

I'm from slovenia, a small, former yugoslav country. We don't have special schools for math here, and elementary schools (7-15yo in my time) were the same for all, and you went to the closest school to your home... but our highschool ("gymnasiums" - 15-19) used the grades from elementary school + standardized testing scores to rank students, and somehow best students went to certain schools, 'the middle' got accepted o others, and shitty students went to shitty schools and other, non-general schools. The biggest difference wasn't separating kids into math classes and language classes, but genrally separating them by "good" and "bad". Having a random mix of students, where some can barely read, and others read two books per week (or some can barely multiply, while others code math problems for fun), is a very hard job for the professor, because in the end, they have to lower their standards, expectations, and the quantity of material until most students scrape by. Having a group of students that are good at "school stuff", means the teachers are having very little problems with the basics and can continue faster and prepare students better for university and life. If we had separation for stem-talented students, and language-talented and *-talented, it would be even better. So basically... group better students together, and you can do a lot more with them, if you don't have to pull the 'bad' students behind. I am aware that this is bad for 'bad' students, and that it should be fixable somehow (they should have options to move to better schools), but good students thrive without idiots in class.

azinman2 7y ago
We had that at my American high school. It’s called honors and AP classes. There are event “magnet“ high schools, or high schools dedicated to top artistic talent. They just aren’t uniformly available.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  True - artistic (but not mathematical or scientific). But AP classes are really good at what they are meant to achieve indeed.
  - nervousvarun 6y ago
    Not sure what you mean by artistic here? Available AP classes/tests include STEM...so Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Biology, etc.

drakonka 7y ago

I moved from post-Soviet Ukraine to Alabama in 1999 and started school in grade 6 in the US. For the first 3 years or so my entire math class seemed like just a rehash of things we had already learned in Ukraine. I failed in taking math study seriously at that point as everything was so easy. When things did get hard at some point in high school and I had to learn new things, I no longer had the discipline to really commit. Also there was no strict grandmother to make me study math for hours after school or on Saturdays anymore. I really regret not having the foresight to stay committed to it now. I did end up taking "advanced" math classes through high school, but my level of commitment and understanding was never what it could have been.

agumonkey 6y ago
> I failed in taking math study seriously at that point as everything was so easy. When things did get hard at some point in high school and I had to learn new things, I no longer had the discipline to really commit. oh god.. I failed because of this too. By the time I got to college I was so weak I sunk to the bottom in less than 3 weeks. An .. interesting experience.

aleksandrm 7y ago

I traveled a lot and studied in international schools, embassy sf schools and schools in USSR as well as US. I was born in USSR so I mainly studied there between my travels, and everything that I saw and experienced came no where close to the curriculum that I had in motherland. So I have to disagree with you.

netcan 7y ago

In the early 90s, I lived in a US apartment complex and went to schools with a lot of recent Russian migrants. Three times a week all the Russian kids were rounded up for "Russian Math," taught by, Arkady... my friend Mike's Dad. They followed the Russian/Soviet curriculum, which was 2-3 years ahead of the school's. I think we focus a lot of educational systems, because these are matters of policy which can be critiqued and maybe changed. But, I think culture plays a big role. My mother has PHD in physics, so its not like I'm from an anti-math culture. But, the Russian take was a different level. Being mathematical was very important to them, and they made it happen. A good example for this is language learning. In some schools/places/countries/communities, language learning is culturally important and culturally supported. In those places schooling works, and kids graduate with strong language abilities. In other places, it isn't, and kids generally don't progress regardless of what classes they are in. Europe is like a lab for this. Most Dutch kids graduate with native-level english, and often a 3rd and 4th language. In Italy, kids have almost no english. Modern young-people Dutch borrows a lot of English. They watch English TV. English is part of the culture, so the schooling works.

coldtea 7y ago

>I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible I don't think so, compared to the difference between the US and my country (which is western but closer to USSR/Russia regarding math curriculum). I think you overestimate what the average US high school student learns...