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> 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.

> 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 6y 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.
- nindalf 6y ago
  Simplifying what the other person said, what is social status a function of? You say having friends and being popular is all about being able to make friends, which is only partially true. Social status is also a function of being good at what your peers consider important. Anecdotally, and based on depictions in movies and TV, status for American kids is directly related to how well they do at sports. Doing well in your subjects and "trying" in class can either lead to ostracisation at worst or at best doesn't make a difference to your social status. Whereas in other places, such as where I grew up, kids who tried hard and did well in their subjects had the highest social status. They were the "coolest", in the eyes of their peers. Rewards in status meant that such effort was positively reinforced. You know how Hermione Granger is thought to be a know-it-all and insufferable? I could never understand that. Where I grew up she'd have been the most popular kid. Most other kids would have wished they could be more like her.
- missosoup 6y ago
  > It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia) If you pick 10 random people in Russia and ask them about this show, all 10 will either not have heard of it or react with disdain. I have no idea where you get the notion that it's popular in Russia. > It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else I was popular in Russia. Then I had difficulty fitting in at the Australian school until I learned to act like an idiot and not reveal my 'nerdy' (a word that doesn't even have an equivalent in Russian) hobbies and interests outside of select circles. The same hobbies and interests that were perfectly average in Russia - electronics, astronomy, chess, that kind of thing. After that I fit in again. It's pretty hard to interpret this as some sort of social issues like you claim. I think you lack perspective on this. This is also the same culture that teaches teenage girls to act dumb in order to appear more attractive, which is pretty well studied at this point and will hopefully die now that it's in the public eye. > It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile As one of the kids who would match your label, I think it's sad that children here are artificially held back from their natural maturation in order for the parents to selfishly extend the baby phase for their own enjoyment. Nor does this coddling have anything to do with stability. Plenty of stable countries across Europe where kids are allowed to grow at their natural pace, including several first-hand accounts in the comments section here. This is also why you'll find significantly lower age limits for things like consumption of alcohol, drugs, sexual activity in those same countries. Coming back to the OP topic, soviet textbooks are 'hardcore' because the pupils are 2-4 years more mentally mature than their western counterparts due to cultural and education system differences. It's as simple as that.
seneca 6y ago
You are confusing American media with American culture. In American movies of the past the smart "nerds" were bullied. In reality, at least in my experience as someone who was bullied a decent bit, this is actually conflating two separate, but overlapping, groups. This isn't surprising since most foreigners understanding of our culture comes from our media. In my experience (left high school in the early 2000s), the kids who were bullied were the kids regarded as "weird", smart kids were mostly left alone or blended into popular groups. The "weird" kids were mostly kids with obvious issue. Social maladjustment, visible poverty, autism spectrum disorders, or just being unkempt. There is some overlap here with smart kids, largely due to autism. The reason this narrative exists is that a lot of the children with issues told themselves they were bullied because they were smarter than everyone else, even though that wasn't the reality. I don't know if this was them internalizing the hollywood stereotype, or hollywood playing to an existing narrative. It's perhaps more tragic that kids who were already at a disadvantage were the ones who were bullied, but it makes more sense and is the actual reality as I experienced it.
tlear 6y ago
Where in Russia? Level of school while it is supposed to be same is night and day. The special Math/Physics school is one thing, but under that there are “good” schools in the city, ok, shitty then you have countryside etc Same thing applies to other countries. Depending on where you went to school in same city you experience can be vastly different. Some school in let’s say Toronto have A- Math in high school average, other 20mins by bicycle can be C-. In Moscow you can have an awesome school, take metro for 30 mins and only thing you are learning is how to not get shit beaten out of you during a class break. I went to a very good city school in Kyiv till grade 8, then specialized Math/Physics school from then on(I was bottom of the barrel at the new school in Math ouch). I used to come to my old school sometimes to hangout, level was absolutely different as in nobody there could solve a single problem in my home work. University exam at KGU in physics I took 1 hours instead of 3. But this is a trick. Once you get in second round of weeding out starts, I remember the breakdown people had after first couple tests. People who had 5 on all subjects their whole life, but they went to normal school. I think more then half of them did not make it through first semester. I then left to Canada and went to middle of the road University there for Comp Sci. Honestly I liked it far more. It was more fun and flexible in terms of what you could take and learn, I could do a minor in Economics half way through because I liked it. I could work as research assistant in later and actually get my name on a paper and then go to a conference in Vegas :)
Tycho 6y ago
Anti-intellectualism isn’t the same thing as anti-nerdism. People respect originality and innovation, but who really is going to respect those who shut themselves away to cram their heads with facts, to please their teachers and get good grades, when they could be out having fun and mixing with their peers. And for what? A higher salary band? Four star hotels during summer vacation rather than three star?
- Koshkin 6y ago
  The image of a Mad Scientist and the notion of the egghead are still all too dear to American soul.
sparrc 6y ago
> 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. Seems a bit exaggerated to me. At my high school (in the US) the cool kids were just the more socially outgoing kids. Some of them had great grades and others not so much. It was the same in the 'nerds' group. From my experience academic achievement didn't really have any bearing at all on the social group you fell into. But I guess experiences will vary....there are pretty huge differences in public school quality across the US and even within one local school district.
bumblebritches5 6y ago
Australia is notorious for being not very smart, don't lump in America with australia.
Youden 6y ago
> Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. As an Australian nerd who got higher than average grades, it's not accurate in the slightest to generalize your experiences to my entire country and I haven't seen the anti-intellectualism you claim is there. When I was in high school I was very much a nerd. Good grades, tried to win the approval of teachers, head in a book, never played sports, interested in chess and video games. I definitely did not fit in. Making friends was difficult, I was teased and all the things I gather you had issues with. However I also had a close friend who despite sharing my interests and grades, was also much more outgoing, participated in sports and was generally well-liked. He had no troubles at all fitting in. To strengthen the counter-example even more, in grade 9, all of the highest academic achievers got put in the same class. These people did not have issues. So intelligence clearly wasn't the problem. What I think the problem was is that I was quiet, shunned sports, kept to myself and occasionally saw my brains as making me better than other people. That's what led to the ostracizm that might be misinterpreted as anti-intellectualism. Also, all traces of this were well and truly gone by years 11 and 12. At this point everyone is doing what they can to get into their chosen university so they can't criticize you for doing the same. > 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'm married to a Russian and my mother in law is a high school English teacher in Russia. I think you're very much overgeneralizing in these cases too. Perhaps in some cities and families 12 year-olds are expected to behave the way you claim but it's definitely not universal. There are plenty of 12 year-olds who are allowed to be children in Russia. > > Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. Which curriculum? They vary by state. I believe the curriculum for maths and sciences in Victoria (my state) was very similar to the International Baccalaureate (I compared topics with students in that program). If you want to point at an area in which Russia is significantly different, I'd point at the arts. In Russia children are expected to study and learn poetry and read literature from a very early age all the way through high school. It's not at all frowned upon. Boys choosing to learn "feminine" things like ballroom dancing also seems to be well accepted from what I've seen.
lsh123 6y ago
There is a big difference between high schools in different ares in both Russia and US. I don't think you will argue that a person from a country school in the middle of nowhere in Russia with one teacher for all subjects will be able to do better in a top-level school in NYC.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
The Russians have it wrong. Their model of government and socializing obviously failed the process of economic selection. Kids are not coddled here and they grow up just fine. I would pit American Scientists against Russian Scientists any day of the week. The same with your Average American Adult vs Average Russian Adult.
topaztee 6y ago
tall poppy syndrome - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
cskinner 6y ago
In Australia, a few of the top private schools as well as government schools in demographic areas with a high Chinese student population do have an intellectual culture. A few of my family members are teachers (in both private and government schools) and from what I hear there is not yet much of a shift away from the anti-intellectual culture.
vladislav 6y ago
Pretty much my experience as well moving from Russia to the US. Team sports and social deviance seem to dominate the popularity hierarchies of American schools (as of 2003). In Russia being the top student is respected instead.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  Don't underestimate the importance of team sport. The good thing in the US is that team sport is huge for women too.
mikorym 6y ago
There were other kinds of "anti" things in the USSR, like antisemitism. I think the whole of the Eastern block had a tendency to be better at mathematics since you only need your own mind and maybe a textbook and a mentor. South Africa was heading towards a very strong mathematics school and then this same kind of phenomenon whereby you discount mathematics starting happening. Edit: I mean that in the Eastern block you were better off in mathematics than in things like physics and chemistry. This holds for countries with historically diverging cultures from the Russians too (like Poland and Hungary). Edit 2: I think perhaps it is also worth mentioning that you have "hardcore" on the one side and then pure artistic poetry on the other side. I've heard that French mathematics is a pleasure to read as it is both hardcore mathematics and well written prose. Some of the limitations on the Russian texts was also imposed by other restrictions: For example, the articles often had to be shorter than the authors would have wanted.
- hidden_agent 6y ago
  The antisemitism comment was a reply to this: > this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia Anti-intellectualism does exist in Russia. Read for example Edward Frenkel's autobiographical works.
baybal2 6y ago
FYI: Big Bang Theory is banned in China
- ahoyleo 6y ago
  Nope. First search result on Baidu leads to this: http://tv.sohu.com/s2018/dsjshdbzdsyji/ http://tv.sohu.com/s2018/dsjshdbzdsyji/ tv.sohu is one of the largest streaming sites in China.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    That's a surprise. Apparently, it got unbanned
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      China is progressing.
paganel 6y ago
> One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. It was the same thing in Romania, at least in the '90s, when I went to school/high-school. It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids generally around the country. I know because I was a "nerd" guy but I also played sports and actively enjoyed doing that, was never made fun of by my high-school colleagues because of me studying/getting high grades, that would have been pretty awkward to hear.
- new2628 6y ago
  It even went further: in Romania, there was a popular movie in the 80s where the main plot is a high school student going to the math olympiad and his classmates cheering for him (with additional romantic threads of course).
  - papeda 6y ago
    What movie is this?
    - new2628 6y ago
      https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liceenii https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liceenii
  - V-2 6y ago
    Obviously all culture, and certainly mass culture in the Soviet bloc was controlled for "proper social message". I don't suppose Romania was more lax in respect to that? A movie cheering for, or even trivializing anti-social behaviors would find it difficult to go past censorship (not to mention - to be conceived in the first place...) It's for the same reason that you'd be hard-pressed to find a pre-1989 Central/Eastern European movie depicting any subcultures (like punks or hippies) sympathetically.
    - 6y ago
woodpanel 6y ago
In my family some – during their high school years – managed to move from Eastern Germany (GDR) to Western Germany (FRG): They unanimously state the same thing as you did. My speculation: This hasn't anything to do with the "eastern-ness" of a countries culture – but rather the ROI for education / medicine, which looks quite different under a communist economy, under which so many other endeavours scale so much worse.
- rramadass 6y ago
  >but rather the ROI for education / medicine, which looks quite different under a communist economy, under which so many other endeavours scale so much worse. Great point! I might add that this is also true of many "third world" countries even without Communism.
gambiting 6y ago
Not the same, but I went from the Polish education system to a British university, and it also felt like it was a massive downgrade. What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in school around age 15-16. A Polish university absolutely won't be teaching you basic algebra,statistics or core concepts of programing on a CS course - you are simply required to know these things, otherwise wtf are you doing on a CS course. Also in general, I find the elective system of subjects in British schools to be.....poor. As in, I was(and am) surrounded by perfectly normal adults who are good in certain subjects(the ones they picked) and who have zero knowledge in others(the ones they didn't pick). I feel like my own Polish education has given me a very broad understanding of a lot of different subjects even if I wasn't personally interested in them. Like, even though I went to a school with a "maths and CS focus"(which just meant these two subjects had 2x the number of lessons each week), we still had lessons in history, physics, chemistry, biology, Polish literature.....all of it was mandatory, you couldn't just decide to skip it. At the time, I thought it was useless, but in hindsight I am very grateful for it because it has given me at least basic level of knowledge in many different subjects, whereas my British peers just can't even have a conversation about basic chemistry for instance, since they never took it as a subject.
- wink 6y ago
  One part of this doesn't make sense to me. Can only talk about German universities, and I started in 2003, but... They will start with math you already know, but only in the first semester, so from October until Christmas, from then on everything is mostly new. But... to be eligible to study you kind of have to have had math on that level at school. with no exceptions. But for anything programming related? In the late 90s/early 00s there was ZERO mandatory programming in school, and if you were really, really lucky if there was any graded course. We had some elective courses but they were not really awesome and only there because one teacher wanted to do them. So, I'm also against rehashing stuff you should know, but if you can't know it from school, why wouldn't they start at the beginning?
mseidl 6y ago
Anecdotally, a I know some people that grew up in Europe and then went to America/American schools and they did way better there because it was way easier. I also remember something on 60 minutes a long time ago where they had some some Dutch students take some advanced American test and the lowest score in a test not their native language the lowest score was like 92 I think...
collyw 6y ago
Does Russia have celebrity culture a la Kardashians or stuff like that? (I assume they have some, how does it compare?)
- concerned_user 6y ago
  Yes, they hate them with a passion
- roveo 6y ago
  Yes we have, but it's smaller and not as popular. Also more frowned upon from what I gather.
spullara 6y ago
Big Bang Theory is one of my most hated shows of all time.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
saiya-jin 6y ago
Can agree with similar comparison - when studying at the end of 90s on high school, one student from our central/eastern european class spent 1 year in US. After he came back, he'd tell us how in math they were several years behind for same age group (ie we were running derivations and integrals and they were more on end-of-secondary school level). He was average back home, stellar math student there. Of course, case point 1, comparing 'gymnasium' (more theoretical study-focused high school instead of say practical crafts, good preparation for university) with some US public high school. Schools back home have gone 'softer' on students since we studied (don't all complain at some point about that?), so maybe now its more comparable. The thing is, hardcore math skills apparently don't have that high impact on overall functioning economy. More open society, freedom to pursue ones dreams, freedom to try your own business idea (and fail hard if stars don't align) make overall a better functioning economy.
- jhrmnn 6y ago
  Your last paragraph makes a valid point. The question then is whether when the schools became “softer”, they replaced the math and sciences curiculums with something else (politics, economy, governance) or whether the kids themselves started doing something more meaningful. If not, it sounds like a wasted opportunity
- pietroglyph 6y ago
  My (slightly more recent) US high school experience had nearly all students cover the calculus you described by the end of high school, and about 1/5 of the students got fast-tracked to the point that they studied linear algebra and multivariable calc by the end of high school. I talked to a couple of friends about this, and about 1/2 had similar course offerings.
thundergolfer 6y ago
The mathematical competence of Australian students relative to international peers has been declining for 16 years. Australia is terrible at maths given its levels of wealth. By one measure students in Kazakhstan perform better. This would be a national scandal if not for the anti-intellectualism that pervades the nation. This is one of the reasons I think Australia (my home country) is in big trouble economically in the long-term.
- sanatgersappa 6y ago
  That's because the laws of Math don't apply there - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathematics-dont-apply-here-says-australian-pm/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...
iateanapple 6y ago
> Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. As a Chinese student who studied in Australia for a few years I think you just misunderstand the culture. Most of the popular kids got good grades and were not labelled as nerds. And the nerd kids didn’t really get good grades either. I think Australians are very practical focused (maybe this is what you mean by anti-intellectual?). For example the friends I know who wanted to do medicine and law - and are now successful doctors and lawyers - stopped focusing on maths at the end of grade 10. This would put them way behind in math than an equivalent Chinese student who also wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but as far as I can tell it hasn’t had any negative impact on their careers.
- chopin 6y ago
  Not being profound at statistics should be a strict no-go for anyone practicing medicine. Many great discoveries come from linking different disciplines. I hope there is more to live than just a career. I am very grateful for the broad spectrum I've been given.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > Not being profound at statistics should be a strict no-go for anyone practicing medicine. I think you will find that your bar would exclude the overwhelming majority of doctors.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    I need my doctor to have a basic understanding of statistics. I don't need them to have a profound knowledge of anything except their professional specialty. Chances are they took a basic Epidemiology class -- or a class that had it as a component -- and covered "Stat for medical workers." And that should be enough.
    - tgflynn 6y ago
      I disagree. Accurate reasoning under uncertainty is highly non-trivial (as current events with covid-19 are making clear) and is I suspect one of the most important skills a clinician could have for making rational diagnoses and treatment decisions. Whether currently available statistics training is even adequate to the task of teaching this skill is a separate question, the answer to which is unclear to me.
michaelt 6y ago
> AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school students. Can anyone comment on how this translates into results in adulthood, in the current age? Do we see more discoveries in fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses? As I don't speak Russian or Chinese, I don't really have a fair view and it would be easy for me to mistakenly under-estimate what the graduates of these schools get up to.
- babuskov 6y ago
  > fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses? University education fixes these problems. People who only finish high-school rarely do science later in life.
  - Wintereise 6y ago
    There's also something else. The best and brightest from these countries are rarely (if ever) retained in their homelands and end up migrating to one of the western nations. Ultimately, regardless of how the high school education level might be, these countries win out.
ljm 6y ago
I have not-so-fond memories of being bullied for being clever while growing up in the UK. I was placed in all the accelerated programmes and bumped up a year in some cases, which resulted in the odd situation where you were bullied for being a nerd, but also relied upon by the same bullies when they needed help with their tests. I landed on my feet as a programmer, thankfully, but not until the depression set in and my performance in sixth form and university utterly plummetted. Impossible expectations, zero family support (never good enough and never doing the right thing _for them_). Hearing stories about the different priorities in Russia and Latvia, from my various friends who came frmo there, made me feel quite envious, although I only heard the good parts of it (like learning multiple languages from a young age). It's definitely not just the education system that's to blame (although the repeated hammering it takes from successive governments is an issue), there's definitely a wider cultural issue where it's almost cooler to be ignorant.
varjag 6y ago
Oh not this again. The USSR coasted its first half of existence milking Tsarist legacy of science and engineering, then the other half copying the intellectual fruits of supposedly dumb Western jocks. Modern Russia isn't even half of that. Precious little to show for all the cheek puffing and talent grooming.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  > milking Tsarist legacy I call it "preserving tradition."
  - varjag 6y ago
    Pre-1943 USSR was very much into violently rejecting anything Tsarist. Ioffe, Kapitsa and others survived only as pragmatic accessories to weapons and industrialization programmes. Post-Stalin they had an opportunity to develop their schools of science but it's only so much a few, even dedicated, individuals can do. By 1990 these efforts largely fizzed out.
b0rsuk 6y ago
Haha, check out the post-apoc movie "The Road". Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! ... Papa! Papa!
b0rsuk 6y ago
US has American Football, jocks, and cheerleaders. This is something notably absent elsewhere. When you watch a hollywood high school move, this strange obsession jumps at you. In Poland the word "nerd" is difficult to translate. It has no direct equivalent.
- krcz 6y ago
  While there is no direct equivalent, kujon seem to be pretty similar. (For non-Polish people, kujon is a derogative term for someone having good grades, coming with a stereotype that such person spends all their time learning, not doing any fun stuff)
  - b0rsuk 6y ago
    kujon is probably the closest, but it means a person who gets good grades because he works on them very hard, especially by rote memorization and repeating. His method to learn anything is brute force. You never call someone who asks great questions a 'kujon'. Nerd is different in that it's more about interests. If you're interested in any kind of science, biology, history, literature you're a nerd. Anime nerd is also a valid combination but it wouldn't work for 'kujon' because there's no repetition. In Russia it used to be pretty common to see chess players in a park or train. Books readers were also more common in public spaces than in Poland. Russia has many problems for sure, but it has certain respect for intellectuals, composers etc.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Don't mix up movies and reality. They are often based in reality, but movies exist for entertainment and that often means exaggeration of the truth for effect.
  - rramadass 6y ago
    But there is an insidious mental effect on students growing up in such an environment unable to discriminate between the two. They learn not to value "knowledge" and "learning".
  - 6y ago
cyphar 6y ago
My family is from Serbia (my parents were both mathematics teachers in Serbia) and I was raised here in Australia. It's definitely true that the curriculum is many years behind even relatively poor and corrupt countries (like Serbia). As a toy example, my parents taught me how to solve simultaneous equations in year 4 (when they'd have taught it in Serbia) while everyone else had to wait until year 9 to learn it in school. I had friends who came to Australia after starting their education in Singapore, and they were continually shocked how far behind we were. It's honestly gob-smacking how little is being done about this, we're doing a massive disservice to our young people which they will have to overcome for the rest of their lives.
- aga98mtl 6y ago
  > we're doing a massive disservice to our young people which they will have to overcome for the rest of their lives. Is this actually the case? Much of the most useful science & software comes from people educated in the Americas and Western Europe. I think that non-western schooling methodologies under-value problem solving and overvalue "raw" knowledge.
  - ajuc 6y ago
    Most of the useful science comes from people imigrating to rich countries from poor countries :) They have the basics, motivation, and opportunities. Those that stay in poor countries don't have opportunities nor motivation. Those that come from rich countries don't have the basics nor motivation. It's a generalization, of course.
    - rramadass 6y ago
      Preach, Brother :-) >It's a generalization, of course But there is a lot of truth to this. One other thing that i have noticed, is that in "rich" countries, knowledge of trivial and basic stuff are celebrated in the name of "positive reinforcement". This gives students the false idea that they have "mastered" something while they have just started learning. IMO, this is extremely harmful to the student's psychology.
mwcampbell 6y ago
On the anti-intellectualism and bullying of nerds, how do we fix this? (I'm American.) I'm not a parent myself, but my brothers and sister are. Should I suggest to them that they home-school their kids to shield them from this toxic culture?
- rramadass 6y ago
  By going back to the roots of your "Sputnik Moment"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJnt3xW2Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJnt3xW2Fc), rediscovering those lessons and actively pushing it everywhere again.
- imtringued 6y ago
  That doesn't solve the problem at all.
- dawg- 6y ago
  I think it's changing quickly. Not sure if you remember the movie 22 Jump Street? The old guys show up at a high school to be "undercover" high school students and it turns out that the "cool" kids are who used to be the nerds. They are vegan, don't make fun of gay kids, stand up to bullies...and wear backpacks with two straps (lol). I think that image of high school has some truth to it, as I graduated high school a couple years before the movie came out and it was already beginning to change. Kids playing pokemon at lunch were the same kids on the varsity sports teams. It was okay to like video games, and to be upset about getting a C on a test. The image of bullies as "cool kids" was changing to "kids whose parents probably never told them they love them" - and everybody knew it. The cool kids are nice now. Not totally sure if the shift has continued in the last 7 years, but it is definitely happening.
oiunqorucwonieu 6y ago
> 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. I know nothing about your history, but usually moving to a new country means you are now an immigrant and by definition have less privilege than before, even if you can't immediately notice it. Another hypothesis is that you left an elitist good school in russia and joined a not-so elite school in Australia. You could have done the same in Russia just by moving to a slightly cheaper neighborhood. Confirming the parent poster you were replying to.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- varjag 6y ago
  Absolutely. There are plenty places in Russia where you totally going to be bullied for academic performance. Also the plagiarism/cheat culture is rampant throughout the country, from elementary and up to postgrad.
EGreg 6y ago
I always had the impression that Russians are more serious. Also Americans have developed tons of expressions for every nuance of greasing the wheels for business and relationships. Russians are more straightforward. So it is with the kids. I don’t think there was a lot of “participation trophies” and idea that “you’re a winner just for trying”. It was realistic. Women in Russia are told to look beautiful by their mothers, for example, and they are expected wear makeup and heels just going out to the store or to work. Imagine a US mother saying that. STEM in Russia and China’s schools is wayyy more advanced than USA. Not just in Moscow but every city center in every former Soviet republic. It’s one of the things the Communists really instilled early on after taking over backwaters (at the time) like Uzbekistan (along with equal rights for women, 95% literacy and electricity). Compare that to pre-revolutionary Cuba or Hawaii, for instance, that USA took over. I think right around Sputnik time and the cold war, the US had a major STEM crisis and started trying to teach math more. But really, most of our brightest students are just imported - and they’re happy to come. Gonna drop this one in there, from Dr Kaku, on a panel discussing this exact question: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM
tgflynn 6y ago
One thing I noticed in the US is that there seems to be many wasted years in mathematics education. Between learning long division (maybe 4th grade ?) and algebra which I didn't get until the first year in high school (9th grade) I don't think I really learned or was taught anything of significance. EDIT: My recollection is poor, long division and the associated concepts like fractions and decimals may have been later and spread out over more years, but I'm sure there were at least 2 to 3 wasted years in my mathematics education.

sacks2k 6y 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.

nindalf 6y ago
Simplifying what the other person said, what is social status a function of? You say having friends and being popular is all about being able to make friends, which is only partially true. Social status is also a function of being good at what your peers consider important. Anecdotally, and based on depictions in movies and TV, status for American kids is directly related to how well they do at sports. Doing well in your subjects and "trying" in class can either lead to ostracisation at worst or at best doesn't make a difference to your social status. Whereas in other places, such as where I grew up, kids who tried hard and did well in their subjects had the highest social status. They were the "coolest", in the eyes of their peers. Rewards in status meant that such effort was positively reinforced. You know how Hermione Granger is thought to be a know-it-all and insufferable? I could never understand that. Where I grew up she'd have been the most popular kid. Most other kids would have wished they could be more like her.
missosoup 6y ago
> It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia) If you pick 10 random people in Russia and ask them about this show, all 10 will either not have heard of it or react with disdain. I have no idea where you get the notion that it's popular in Russia. > It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else I was popular in Russia. Then I had difficulty fitting in at the Australian school until I learned to act like an idiot and not reveal my 'nerdy' (a word that doesn't even have an equivalent in Russian) hobbies and interests outside of select circles. The same hobbies and interests that were perfectly average in Russia - electronics, astronomy, chess, that kind of thing. After that I fit in again. It's pretty hard to interpret this as some sort of social issues like you claim. I think you lack perspective on this. This is also the same culture that teaches teenage girls to act dumb in order to appear more attractive, which is pretty well studied at this point and will hopefully die now that it's in the public eye. > It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile As one of the kids who would match your label, I think it's sad that children here are artificially held back from their natural maturation in order for the parents to selfishly extend the baby phase for their own enjoyment. Nor does this coddling have anything to do with stability. Plenty of stable countries across Europe where kids are allowed to grow at their natural pace, including several first-hand accounts in the comments section here. This is also why you'll find significantly lower age limits for things like consumption of alcohol, drugs, sexual activity in those same countries. Coming back to the OP topic, soviet textbooks are 'hardcore' because the pupils are 2-4 years more mentally mature than their western counterparts due to cultural and education system differences. It's as simple as that.

seneca 6y ago

You are confusing American media with American culture. In American movies of the past the smart "nerds" were bullied. In reality, at least in my experience as someone who was bullied a decent bit, this is actually conflating two separate, but overlapping, groups. This isn't surprising since most foreigners understanding of our culture comes from our media. In my experience (left high school in the early 2000s), the kids who were bullied were the kids regarded as "weird", smart kids were mostly left alone or blended into popular groups. The "weird" kids were mostly kids with obvious issue. Social maladjustment, visible poverty, autism spectrum disorders, or just being unkempt. There is some overlap here with smart kids, largely due to autism. The reason this narrative exists is that a lot of the children with issues told themselves they were bullied because they were smarter than everyone else, even though that wasn't the reality. I don't know if this was them internalizing the hollywood stereotype, or hollywood playing to an existing narrative. It's perhaps more tragic that kids who were already at a disadvantage were the ones who were bullied, but it makes more sense and is the actual reality as I experienced it.

tlear 6y ago

Where in Russia? Level of school while it is supposed to be same is night and day. The special Math/Physics school is one thing, but under that there are “good” schools in the city, ok, shitty then you have countryside etc Same thing applies to other countries. Depending on where you went to school in same city you experience can be vastly different. Some school in let’s say Toronto have A- Math in high school average, other 20mins by bicycle can be C-. In Moscow you can have an awesome school, take metro for 30 mins and only thing you are learning is how to not get shit beaten out of you during a class break. I went to a very good city school in Kyiv till grade 8, then specialized Math/Physics school from then on(I was bottom of the barrel at the new school in Math ouch). I used to come to my old school sometimes to hangout, level was absolutely different as in nobody there could solve a single problem in my home work. University exam at KGU in physics I took 1 hours instead of 3. But this is a trick. Once you get in second round of weeding out starts, I remember the breakdown people had after first couple tests. People who had 5 on all subjects their whole life, but they went to normal school. I think more then half of them did not make it through first semester. I then left to Canada and went to middle of the road University there for Comp Sci. Honestly I liked it far more. It was more fun and flexible in terms of what you could take and learn, I could do a minor in Economics half way through because I liked it. I could work as research assistant in later and actually get my name on a paper and then go to a conference in Vegas :)

Tycho 6y ago

Anti-intellectualism isn’t the same thing as anti-nerdism. People respect originality and innovation, but who really is going to respect those who shut themselves away to cram their heads with facts, to please their teachers and get good grades, when they could be out having fun and mixing with their peers. And for what? A higher salary band? Four star hotels during summer vacation rather than three star?

Koshkin 6y ago
The image of a Mad Scientist and the notion of the egghead are still all too dear to American soul.

sparrc 6y ago

> 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. Seems a bit exaggerated to me. At my high school (in the US) the cool kids were just the more socially outgoing kids. Some of them had great grades and others not so much. It was the same in the 'nerds' group. From my experience academic achievement didn't really have any bearing at all on the social group you fell into. But I guess experiences will vary....there are pretty huge differences in public school quality across the US and even within one local school district.

bumblebritches5 6y ago

Australia is notorious for being not very smart, don't lump in America with australia.

Youden 6y ago

> Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. As an Australian nerd who got higher than average grades, it's not accurate in the slightest to generalize your experiences to my entire country and I haven't seen the anti-intellectualism you claim is there. When I was in high school I was very much a nerd. Good grades, tried to win the approval of teachers, head in a book, never played sports, interested in chess and video games. I definitely did not fit in. Making friends was difficult, I was teased and all the things I gather you had issues with. However I also had a close friend who despite sharing my interests and grades, was also much more outgoing, participated in sports and was generally well-liked. He had no troubles at all fitting in. To strengthen the counter-example even more, in grade 9, all of the highest academic achievers got put in the same class. These people did not have issues. So intelligence clearly wasn't the problem. What I think the problem was is that I was quiet, shunned sports, kept to myself and occasionally saw my brains as making me better than other people. That's what led to the ostracizm that might be misinterpreted as anti-intellectualism. Also, all traces of this were well and truly gone by years 11 and 12. At this point everyone is doing what they can to get into their chosen university so they can't criticize you for doing the same. > 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'm married to a Russian and my mother in law is a high school English teacher in Russia. I think you're very much overgeneralizing in these cases too. Perhaps in some cities and families 12 year-olds are expected to behave the way you claim but it's definitely not universal. There are plenty of 12 year-olds who are allowed to be children in Russia. > > Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. Which curriculum? They vary by state. I believe the curriculum for maths and sciences in Victoria (my state) was very similar to the International Baccalaureate (I compared topics with students in that program). If you want to point at an area in which Russia is significantly different, I'd point at the arts. In Russia children are expected to study and learn poetry and read literature from a very early age all the way through high school. It's not at all frowned upon. Boys choosing to learn "feminine" things like ballroom dancing also seems to be well accepted from what I've seen.

lsh123 6y ago

There is a big difference between high schools in different ares in both Russia and US. I don't think you will argue that a person from a country school in the middle of nowhere in Russia with one teacher for all subjects will be able to do better in a top-level school in NYC.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

The Russians have it wrong. Their model of government and socializing obviously failed the process of economic selection. Kids are not coddled here and they grow up just fine. I would pit American Scientists against Russian Scientists any day of the week. The same with your Average American Adult vs Average Russian Adult.

topaztee 6y ago

tall poppy syndrome - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

cskinner 6y ago

In Australia, a few of the top private schools as well as government schools in demographic areas with a high Chinese student population do have an intellectual culture. A few of my family members are teachers (in both private and government schools) and from what I hear there is not yet much of a shift away from the anti-intellectual culture.

vladislav 6y ago

Pretty much my experience as well moving from Russia to the US. Team sports and social deviance seem to dominate the popularity hierarchies of American schools (as of 2003). In Russia being the top student is respected instead.

tinyhouse 6y ago
Don't underestimate the importance of team sport. The good thing in the US is that team sport is huge for women too.

mikorym 6y ago

There were other kinds of "anti" things in the USSR, like antisemitism. I think the whole of the Eastern block had a tendency to be better at mathematics since you only need your own mind and maybe a textbook and a mentor. South Africa was heading towards a very strong mathematics school and then this same kind of phenomenon whereby you discount mathematics starting happening. Edit: I mean that in the Eastern block you were better off in mathematics than in things like physics and chemistry. This holds for countries with historically diverging cultures from the Russians too (like Poland and Hungary). Edit 2: I think perhaps it is also worth mentioning that you have "hardcore" on the one side and then pure artistic poetry on the other side. I've heard that French mathematics is a pleasure to read as it is both hardcore mathematics and well written prose. Some of the limitations on the Russian texts was also imposed by other restrictions: For example, the articles often had to be shorter than the authors would have wanted.

hidden_agent 6y ago
The antisemitism comment was a reply to this: > this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia Anti-intellectualism does exist in Russia. Read for example Edward Frenkel's autobiographical works.

baybal2 6y ago

FYI: Big Bang Theory is banned in China

ahoyleo 6y ago
Nope. First search result on Baidu leads to this: http://tv.sohu.com/s2018/dsjshdbzdsyji/ http://tv.sohu.com/s2018/dsjshdbzdsyji/ tv.sohu is one of the largest streaming sites in China.
- baybal2 6y ago
  That's a surprise. Apparently, it got unbanned
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    China is progressing.

paganel 6y ago

> One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. It was the same thing in Romania, at least in the '90s, when I went to school/high-school. It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids generally around the country. I know because I was a "nerd" guy but I also played sports and actively enjoyed doing that, was never made fun of by my high-school colleagues because of me studying/getting high grades, that would have been pretty awkward to hear.

new2628 6y ago
It even went further: in Romania, there was a popular movie in the 80s where the main plot is a high school student going to the math olympiad and his classmates cheering for him (with additional romantic threads of course).
- papeda 6y ago
  What movie is this?
  - new2628 6y ago
    https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liceenii https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liceenii
- V-2 6y ago
  Obviously all culture, and certainly mass culture in the Soviet bloc was controlled for "proper social message". I don't suppose Romania was more lax in respect to that? A movie cheering for, or even trivializing anti-social behaviors would find it difficult to go past censorship (not to mention - to be conceived in the first place...) It's for the same reason that you'd be hard-pressed to find a pre-1989 Central/Eastern European movie depicting any subcultures (like punks or hippies) sympathetically.
  - 6y ago

woodpanel 6y ago

In my family some – during their high school years – managed to move from Eastern Germany (GDR) to Western Germany (FRG): They unanimously state the same thing as you did. My speculation: This hasn't anything to do with the "eastern-ness" of a countries culture – but rather the ROI for education / medicine, which looks quite different under a communist economy, under which so many other endeavours scale so much worse.

rramadass 6y ago
>but rather the ROI for education / medicine, which looks quite different under a communist economy, under which so many other endeavours scale so much worse. Great point! I might add that this is also true of many "third world" countries even without Communism.

gambiting 6y ago

Not the same, but I went from the Polish education system to a British university, and it also felt like it was a massive downgrade. What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in school around age 15-16. A Polish university absolutely won't be teaching you basic algebra,statistics or core concepts of programing on a CS course - you are simply required to know these things, otherwise wtf are you doing on a CS course. Also in general, I find the elective system of subjects in British schools to be.....poor. As in, I was(and am) surrounded by perfectly normal adults who are good in certain subjects(the ones they picked) and who have zero knowledge in others(the ones they didn't pick). I feel like my own Polish education has given me a very broad understanding of a lot of different subjects even if I wasn't personally interested in them. Like, even though I went to a school with a "maths and CS focus"(which just meant these two subjects had 2x the number of lessons each week), we still had lessons in history, physics, chemistry, biology, Polish literature.....all of it was mandatory, you couldn't just decide to skip it. At the time, I thought it was useless, but in hindsight I am very grateful for it because it has given me at least basic level of knowledge in many different subjects, whereas my British peers just can't even have a conversation about basic chemistry for instance, since they never took it as a subject.

wink 6y ago
One part of this doesn't make sense to me. Can only talk about German universities, and I started in 2003, but... They will start with math you already know, but only in the first semester, so from October until Christmas, from then on everything is mostly new. But... to be eligible to study you kind of have to have had math on that level at school. with no exceptions. But for anything programming related? In the late 90s/early 00s there was ZERO mandatory programming in school, and if you were really, really lucky if there was any graded course. We had some elective courses but they were not really awesome and only there because one teacher wanted to do them. So, I'm also against rehashing stuff you should know, but if you can't know it from school, why wouldn't they start at the beginning?

mseidl 6y ago

Anecdotally, a I know some people that grew up in Europe and then went to America/American schools and they did way better there because it was way easier. I also remember something on 60 minutes a long time ago where they had some some Dutch students take some advanced American test and the lowest score in a test not their native language the lowest score was like 92 I think...

collyw 6y ago

Does Russia have celebrity culture a la Kardashians or stuff like that? (I assume they have some, how does it compare?)

concerned_user 6y ago
Yes, they hate them with a passion
roveo 6y ago
Yes we have, but it's smaller and not as popular. Also more frowned upon from what I gather.

spullara 6y ago

Big Bang Theory is one of my most hated shows of all time.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

saiya-jin 6y ago

Can agree with similar comparison - when studying at the end of 90s on high school, one student from our central/eastern european class spent 1 year in US. After he came back, he'd tell us how in math they were several years behind for same age group (ie we were running derivations and integrals and they were more on end-of-secondary school level). He was average back home, stellar math student there. Of course, case point 1, comparing 'gymnasium' (more theoretical study-focused high school instead of say practical crafts, good preparation for university) with some US public high school. Schools back home have gone 'softer' on students since we studied (don't all complain at some point about that?), so maybe now its more comparable. The thing is, hardcore math skills apparently don't have that high impact on overall functioning economy. More open society, freedom to pursue ones dreams, freedom to try your own business idea (and fail hard if stars don't align) make overall a better functioning economy.

jhrmnn 6y ago
Your last paragraph makes a valid point. The question then is whether when the schools became “softer”, they replaced the math and sciences curiculums with something else (politics, economy, governance) or whether the kids themselves started doing something more meaningful. If not, it sounds like a wasted opportunity
pietroglyph 6y ago
My (slightly more recent) US high school experience had nearly all students cover the calculus you described by the end of high school, and about 1/5 of the students got fast-tracked to the point that they studied linear algebra and multivariable calc by the end of high school. I talked to a couple of friends about this, and about 1/2 had similar course offerings.

thundergolfer 6y ago

The mathematical competence of Australian students relative to international peers has been declining for 16 years. Australia is terrible at maths given its levels of wealth. By one measure students in Kazakhstan perform better. This would be a national scandal if not for the anti-intellectualism that pervades the nation. This is one of the reasons I think Australia (my home country) is in big trouble economically in the long-term.

sanatgersappa 6y ago
That's because the laws of Math don't apply there - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathematics-dont-apply-here-says-australian-pm/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...

iateanapple 6y ago

> Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. As a Chinese student who studied in Australia for a few years I think you just misunderstand the culture. Most of the popular kids got good grades and were not labelled as nerds. And the nerd kids didn’t really get good grades either. I think Australians are very practical focused (maybe this is what you mean by anti-intellectual?). For example the friends I know who wanted to do medicine and law - and are now successful doctors and lawyers - stopped focusing on maths at the end of grade 10. This would put them way behind in math than an equivalent Chinese student who also wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but as far as I can tell it hasn’t had any negative impact on their careers.

chopin 6y ago
Not being profound at statistics should be a strict no-go for anyone practicing medicine. Many great discoveries come from linking different disciplines. I hope there is more to live than just a career. I am very grateful for the broad spectrum I've been given.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > Not being profound at statistics should be a strict no-go for anyone practicing medicine. I think you will find that your bar would exclude the overwhelming majority of doctors.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  I need my doctor to have a basic understanding of statistics. I don't need them to have a profound knowledge of anything except their professional specialty. Chances are they took a basic Epidemiology class -- or a class that had it as a component -- and covered "Stat for medical workers." And that should be enough.
  - tgflynn 6y ago
    I disagree. Accurate reasoning under uncertainty is highly non-trivial (as current events with covid-19 are making clear) and is I suspect one of the most important skills a clinician could have for making rational diagnoses and treatment decisions. Whether currently available statistics training is even adequate to the task of teaching this skill is a separate question, the answer to which is unclear to me.

michaelt 6y ago

> AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school students. Can anyone comment on how this translates into results in adulthood, in the current age? Do we see more discoveries in fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses? As I don't speak Russian or Chinese, I don't really have a fair view and it would be easy for me to mistakenly under-estimate what the graduates of these schools get up to.

babuskov 6y ago
> fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses? University education fixes these problems. People who only finish high-school rarely do science later in life.
- Wintereise 6y ago
  There's also something else. The best and brightest from these countries are rarely (if ever) retained in their homelands and end up migrating to one of the western nations. Ultimately, regardless of how the high school education level might be, these countries win out.

ljm 6y ago

I have not-so-fond memories of being bullied for being clever while growing up in the UK. I was placed in all the accelerated programmes and bumped up a year in some cases, which resulted in the odd situation where you were bullied for being a nerd, but also relied upon by the same bullies when they needed help with their tests. I landed on my feet as a programmer, thankfully, but not until the depression set in and my performance in sixth form and university utterly plummetted. Impossible expectations, zero family support (never good enough and never doing the right thing _for them_). Hearing stories about the different priorities in Russia and Latvia, from my various friends who came frmo there, made me feel quite envious, although I only heard the good parts of it (like learning multiple languages from a young age). It's definitely not just the education system that's to blame (although the repeated hammering it takes from successive governments is an issue), there's definitely a wider cultural issue where it's almost cooler to be ignorant.

varjag 6y ago

Oh not this again. The USSR coasted its first half of existence milking Tsarist legacy of science and engineering, then the other half copying the intellectual fruits of supposedly dumb Western jocks. Modern Russia isn't even half of that. Precious little to show for all the cheek puffing and talent grooming.

Koshkin 6y ago
> milking Tsarist legacy I call it "preserving tradition."
- varjag 6y ago
  Pre-1943 USSR was very much into violently rejecting anything Tsarist. Ioffe, Kapitsa and others survived only as pragmatic accessories to weapons and industrialization programmes. Post-Stalin they had an opportunity to develop their schools of science but it's only so much a few, even dedicated, individuals can do. By 1990 these efforts largely fizzed out.

b0rsuk 6y ago

Haha, check out the post-apoc movie "The Road". Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! ... Papa! Papa!

b0rsuk 6y ago

US has American Football, jocks, and cheerleaders. This is something notably absent elsewhere. When you watch a hollywood high school move, this strange obsession jumps at you. In Poland the word "nerd" is difficult to translate. It has no direct equivalent.

krcz 6y ago
While there is no direct equivalent, kujon seem to be pretty similar. (For non-Polish people, kujon is a derogative term for someone having good grades, coming with a stereotype that such person spends all their time learning, not doing any fun stuff)
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  kujon is probably the closest, but it means a person who gets good grades because he works on them very hard, especially by rote memorization and repeating. His method to learn anything is brute force. You never call someone who asks great questions a 'kujon'. Nerd is different in that it's more about interests. If you're interested in any kind of science, biology, history, literature you're a nerd. Anime nerd is also a valid combination but it wouldn't work for 'kujon' because there's no repetition. In Russia it used to be pretty common to see chess players in a park or train. Books readers were also more common in public spaces than in Poland. Russia has many problems for sure, but it has certain respect for intellectuals, composers etc.
bluGill 6y ago
Don't mix up movies and reality. They are often based in reality, but movies exist for entertainment and that often means exaggeration of the truth for effect.
- rramadass 6y ago
  But there is an insidious mental effect on students growing up in such an environment unable to discriminate between the two. They learn not to value "knowledge" and "learning".
- 6y ago

cyphar 6y ago

My family is from Serbia (my parents were both mathematics teachers in Serbia) and I was raised here in Australia. It's definitely true that the curriculum is many years behind even relatively poor and corrupt countries (like Serbia). As a toy example, my parents taught me how to solve simultaneous equations in year 4 (when they'd have taught it in Serbia) while everyone else had to wait until year 9 to learn it in school. I had friends who came to Australia after starting their education in Singapore, and they were continually shocked how far behind we were. It's honestly gob-smacking how little is being done about this, we're doing a massive disservice to our young people which they will have to overcome for the rest of their lives.

aga98mtl 6y ago
> we're doing a massive disservice to our young people which they will have to overcome for the rest of their lives. Is this actually the case? Much of the most useful science & software comes from people educated in the Americas and Western Europe. I think that non-western schooling methodologies under-value problem solving and overvalue "raw" knowledge.
- ajuc 6y ago
  Most of the useful science comes from people imigrating to rich countries from poor countries :) They have the basics, motivation, and opportunities. Those that stay in poor countries don't have opportunities nor motivation. Those that come from rich countries don't have the basics nor motivation. It's a generalization, of course.
  - rramadass 6y ago
    Preach, Brother :-) >It's a generalization, of course But there is a lot of truth to this. One other thing that i have noticed, is that in "rich" countries, knowledge of trivial and basic stuff are celebrated in the name of "positive reinforcement". This gives students the false idea that they have "mastered" something while they have just started learning. IMO, this is extremely harmful to the student's psychology.

mwcampbell 6y ago

On the anti-intellectualism and bullying of nerds, how do we fix this? (I'm American.) I'm not a parent myself, but my brothers and sister are. Should I suggest to them that they home-school their kids to shield them from this toxic culture?

rramadass 6y ago
By going back to the roots of your "Sputnik Moment"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJnt3xW2Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJnt3xW2Fc), rediscovering those lessons and actively pushing it everywhere again.
imtringued 6y ago
That doesn't solve the problem at all.
dawg- 6y ago
I think it's changing quickly. Not sure if you remember the movie 22 Jump Street? The old guys show up at a high school to be "undercover" high school students and it turns out that the "cool" kids are who used to be the nerds. They are vegan, don't make fun of gay kids, stand up to bullies...and wear backpacks with two straps (lol). I think that image of high school has some truth to it, as I graduated high school a couple years before the movie came out and it was already beginning to change. Kids playing pokemon at lunch were the same kids on the varsity sports teams. It was okay to like video games, and to be upset about getting a C on a test. The image of bullies as "cool kids" was changing to "kids whose parents probably never told them they love them" - and everybody knew it. The cool kids are nice now. Not totally sure if the shift has continued in the last 7 years, but it is definitely happening.

oiunqorucwonieu 6y ago

> 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. I know nothing about your history, but usually moving to a new country means you are now an immigrant and by definition have less privilege than before, even if you can't immediately notice it. Another hypothesis is that you left an elitist good school in russia and joined a not-so elite school in Australia. You could have done the same in Russia just by moving to a slightly cheaper neighborhood. Confirming the parent poster you were replying to.

deleted 6y ago
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varjag 6y ago
Absolutely. There are plenty places in Russia where you totally going to be bullied for academic performance. Also the plagiarism/cheat culture is rampant throughout the country, from elementary and up to postgrad.

EGreg 6y ago

I always had the impression that Russians are more serious. Also Americans have developed tons of expressions for every nuance of greasing the wheels for business and relationships. Russians are more straightforward. So it is with the kids. I don’t think there was a lot of “participation trophies” and idea that “you’re a winner just for trying”. It was realistic. Women in Russia are told to look beautiful by their mothers, for example, and they are expected wear makeup and heels just going out to the store or to work. Imagine a US mother saying that. STEM in Russia and China’s schools is wayyy more advanced than USA. Not just in Moscow but every city center in every former Soviet republic. It’s one of the things the Communists really instilled early on after taking over backwaters (at the time) like Uzbekistan (along with equal rights for women, 95% literacy and electricity). Compare that to pre-revolutionary Cuba or Hawaii, for instance, that USA took over. I think right around Sputnik time and the cold war, the US had a major STEM crisis and started trying to teach math more. But really, most of our brightest students are just imported - and they’re happy to come. Gonna drop this one in there, from Dr Kaku, on a panel discussing this exact question: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM

tgflynn 6y ago

One thing I noticed in the US is that there seems to be many wasted years in mathematics education. Between learning long division (maybe 4th grade ?) and algebra which I didn't get until the first year in high school (9th grade) I don't think I really learned or was taught anything of significance. EDIT: My recollection is poor, long division and the associated concepts like fractions and decimals may have been later and spread out over more years, but I'm sure there were at least 2 to 3 wasted years in my mathematics education.