34 ms·

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

• option 5y ago
  we are one of those parents (in Bay Area) who send our kid to RSM (Russian School of Math). We are very happy with it so far (6yo completed her first year) and, most importantly, our daughter is very happy with it too. It is not simple rule memorization and counting, even for 6yo the problems they come up with are interesting enough so that the kid wants to solve them.
  • dbish 5y ago
    What does the curriculum look like that differs significantly from standard school? Also, is your child bored in school at all? I got ahead in math early on and remember being very bored in math classes until AP classes came around.
• mjevans 5y ago
  By about 1/4th of the way through I wanted to just know what 'russian math' looked like. By Halfway it was pretty clear they weren't going to tell me. I skimmed the last half, nothing stood out. What does "Russian Math" look like?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • frant-hartm 5y ago
    > school's curriculum is based on Russian teaching traditions that emphasize reasoning and deeper understanding early on, not just memorization and practice drills. "The child should be brought to abstract level as soon as possible," she says, "meaning early introduction of algebra and geometry, not only arithmetic," and helping children figure out principles for themselves rather than spoon-feeding them.
    • dehrmann 5y ago
      I buy into having a deeper understanding, and in both work and school, it's pretty clear who has a deeper understanding and who's going through the motions. That said, how is it that there's such range in pedagogy? So many people have studied teaching that you'd think we'd have a better idea of what works. Or maybe it's that goals are different.
      • fallingknife 5y ago
        The goals are different. The goal of the Russian school is to teach math. The goal of public schools is to dumb down the curriculum until everyone is equal.
        • tsukikage 5y ago
          That's an interesting take, since the Russian school's teaching methods originate in Soviet public schools. If that's the difference, why were the goals so different there, and how do we make US public school goals more like the Soviet ones?
          • iammisc 5y ago
            The soviets were nationalists who believed the utility of the citizenry was in their contribution to their country. You reinstill love of country, which really means love of society and others, which is another word for philanthropy, and you will quickly get this. In America, instead of education and work being for the greater purpose of your nation and people, education is for the individual. As usual, most people find more motivation when helping others than themselves, but the focus on ourselves in American education means it's easy to slack.
      • ajuc 5y ago
        I think a big part of this is society's expectations. For example while there was bullying in my primary school - there was no bullying because you were good at math. The opposite was true - if you were bad at math it meant you're "dumb" and kids will laugh at you. It wasn't all perfect - it was uncool to try hard (means you're dumb and have to work for it and that's boring) but it was very fashionable to instantly know every answer. So teachers had it much easier because kids had intrinsic motivation to learn math. Another part of it was probably that the unemployment was at 20% at that point and everybody realized you have to be well educated to have a chance of good job.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • credit_guy 5y ago
    Sample problem for K-1 [1]: "Jane fills a bag with three types of chips. There are 3-point, 4-point and 7- point chips. Jane picks 3 chips worth 15 points. Which chips did she pick?" Sample problem for grades 5-6 [2]: "Pinocchio drank half a cup of black coffee. He then filled the cup back up with milk and drank one third of the mixture. Again he filled the cup to the top with milk, drank one sixth of the mixture and filled it back to the top with milk one final time before he drank the whole cup. Did he drink more coffee or milk?" [1]https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/981338/Blog/Elementary_School_Problems.pdf https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/981338/Blog/Element... [2]https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/981338/Blog/Middle_School_Problems.pdf https://f.hubspotusercontent30.net/hubfs/981338/Blog/Middle_...
    • xmprt 5y ago
      Those are pretty challenging problems and they also require a bit of working out. How many of these problems are students expected to solve in, say, and hour long test?
      • eps 5y ago
        These represent classes of problems and the test checks which classes students have covered in their studies and which they slacked on. These two are straight-forward problems, both will be allocated some basic nominal time. You either know how to solve them or you don't. Sometimes there'd be problems that are more puzzling, because they'd combine several problem classes and will take time to unfold (this is typical in math olympics). These will be allocated more time as they require thinking and searching for a solution.
        • dkn775 5y ago
          From the examples I guess it is the ability to intuitively manipulate fractions? Like “oh that’s kind of like .8 of this other thing so it’s close to X” ?
        • xmprt 5y ago
          I see what you mean by classes of problems. Some of the problems from the above links I know how to do (although working out might take some time and a pen and paper) and then there are some problems where I don't know where to start. I was just never taught how to think about numbers that way even though the link says those problems are for middle school children.
  • dragosmocrii 5y ago
    I studied in a top school in Moldova which follows a curriculum whose foundation was defined during the Soviet union times, so could be pretty close to the Russian curriculum. Just as an idea, in grade 10-11 I was studying limits, complex numbers, derivatives, grade 12 was dedicated to integrals and solving problems with them. Math got progressively harder starting with grade 5. I remember I was filling about 2-3 notebooks of 48 pages (little squares pattern) per semester with homework and in-class class problem solving. We always had homework to do, and often it would take me hours to come up with a solution to the more difficult problems that would give me a 10 (grade A+). My nephew who finished grade 4 has no homework (Canada), but I remember my grade 4 I had so much homework for each subject (math, French, Romanian, geography, arts, etc). Heck, in grades 1-4 we even had summer homework, which were books containing exercises for various subjects, and I remember that vividly because I hated to do homework in the summer. I'm quite sure that good Russian school are also quite intense..
    • lentil_soup 5y ago
      How old is grade 10-11? I always get confused with these as each country numbers grades differently
      • dilyevsky 5y ago
        Can’t speak for Moldova but had what seems to be same level (specialized math school) in Russia and 10-11 was 15-17 yo (you could start at different age back then)
      • dragosmocrii 5y ago
        grade 12 is usually 18yo, grade 11 is 17yo, etc
  • ajuc 5y ago
    I don't know if it's that, but for me math "clicked" when in 2nd class of primary school in Poland we had a whole year of solving intuitive math problems. Basically linear equations of 1 or 2 variables, but that was without knowing what any algebra or even what a variable is - we started with only basic addition and multiplication. Teacher asked us (one by one) to describe how we would arrive at the answer to problems and why that way. Sometimes it would be a contest - who guesses the answer first and that person gets to explain the process and bask in the glory of being the smartest kid ;). And then we were shown how to write that solving process as equations and practiced changing from problems to equations and vice versa. At the end of the year most kids understood algebra.
  • vkazanov 5y ago
    Not sure about these after-class schools, but I can compare my ex-ussr school and uni education with math or CS undergrad textbooks I read a lot in English these day. Not sure about early education though. 1. Russian math books are straight to the point, superconcrete. Hard to read in a linear fashion but very useful when student is serious about going through it ("Problems in mathematical analysis" by Demidovich is a perfect example, Mark Vygodskiy's "Elementary Mathematics Reference"). 2. In most textbooks I remember nobody tries to build a dumbed down explanation of things. This might lead to the book being harder to understand without teacher's help. I remember how some American undergrad-level introductory math analysis books were trying to skip proofs, avoid certain details, giving too many intuitive explanations (). 3. Mid and late school math is pretty advanced, especially when compared to US typical level. These days I live in UK. Kids go to school early here: 4-5 years. My daugther is 6 and is comfortable with trivial math. I've read a few secondary school textbooks and they feel quite ok. So maybe this is a US problem. EDIT: a few example books added
  • seer 5y ago
    I have a feeling it was more about the quality of the teachers than anything else. I moved from “Deep” Russia itself to the periphery of the USSR (Bulgaria) when I was in first grade, and my parents had the foresight to make me repeat that grade so as to help me with learning a new language. The quality difference was astounding. In 1992 Russia by first grade I was learning english with flash cards technique, drawing human shapes, animation, perspective, and some pretty good maths. The knowledge I gained there allowed me to learn almost nothing but the language up until about 3rd grade. And it was a school in the middle of nowhere. I think the USSR trained some very good teachers and just sent them around everywhere, places they would not have gone themselves on their own volition kinda thing. Oh and I remember teachers where highly respected, a thing I saw slowly degrade while the country was going through the 90s reforms.
    • spoonjim 5y ago
      Respect for teachers is a huge part of it. People want status as much as they want money. If culturally America venerated teachers the way it venerates soldiers we’d have fewer wars and smarter people.
      • FredPret 5y ago
        Or smarter wars?
        • kwere 5y ago
          make the military teach!
  • thundergolfer 5y ago
    Check out 'Word Problems in Russia and America' by Andrei Toom. Toom contrasts the poor state of the American math curriculum with his experiences with the Russian style, particularly its centering of 'word problems'.
  • ymolodtsov 5y ago
    I think the key difference is that it quickly moves from what's considered problems for kids (Ally had 3 apples, Booby had 2, etc) to abstract tasks and fundamental theorems in algebra, geometry and other areas. The way math was taught in USSR and is still largely taught in Russia is by going as quickly as possible to calculus. I definitely studied limits and derivatives in school (around grade 8 or 9 out of 11 as I recall) and we briefly touched integrals in the last grade. There are some areas they don't really include, although in my opinion they should have, like mathematical statistics, which could be even more useful, but still. That is a common approach recreated in some other subjects. For instances, teaching Russian includes not just basic syntax and phonetics but also just basic linguistic exercises like dissecting complex words and learning classifications, which you don't really need to talk it but they provide a deeper understanding.
• gfaure 5y ago
  If the article is accurate, one Japanese equivalent of this, known as Kumon, is almost its polar opposite -- remembering my own experiences with it as a kid, it was very much about rote memorisation and doing the same sheet of arithmetic as quickly as possible. One of the exercises Kumon made kids do at the age of 5 is to simply place shuffled magnets with the numbers 1 to 100 in order on a 10x10 board. I can't say that this approach really turned me onto maths: quite the opposite. Past a certain level, the Kumon teachers were essentially just marking from an answer book, without any understanding of the content themselves. They had zero interest (or perhaps ability) in conveying the beauty or applications of maths to the students. The approach that made me love maths was one where I understood the intuition and purpose behind the methods, ideally enough to develop them from the bare minimum myself.
  • platz 5y ago
    So you're saying you're in the cohort that was kumon-schooled and ended up loving math.
    • gfaure 5y ago
      Correct, but it was despite Kumon, not because of it.
      • sideflare 5y ago
        You're pretty lucky. Years of forced kumon led me away from math.
      • platz 5y ago
        so you say. if you were in a study done by researchers, they wouldnt care what you thought the cause was and would only report the correlation.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• ardit33 5y ago
  My sister sent my niece to one, as even her 'private' middle school in Newton, MA, was just not strong enough. She did sign up my niece in every summer class she could, without overloading her. It was always my nieces' choice, and half the time she choose arts and half science. Now, my niece is able to do college entry level data science classes (she is about to become a Junior in HighSchool), and she actually likes it a lot. American schools are too soft on science in general. I did grades 1-11 in Albania and my senior year of HighSchool in the US. Some of my schooling in Albania was done under communism, and some after communism fell in the 90s. The Albanian school was brutal in teaching science. Biology started at 5th grade, pre-Algebra at 5, and full blown Algebra at 6, physics at 6, and Chemistry at 7. Then in highschool you did the same, but more advanced. There was no choice at all, you had to do them all. The only choice in HS was a second foreign language. The whole idea was that you have to know all the basics of ALL sciences, so in college you know what to choose and pursue. If you never tried, you will have no clue if you liked something or not. (also basic music knowledge, sheet reading, and arts was a requirement as well). When I came to the US, I was flabergasted how behind most of the kids were in science. I took AP physics, and it became boring as it was things I had done in 8th grade. I got 800./800 on the SAT 2, physics. The math part, I took AP calc, and it was advanced enough, especially the part B to challenge me. But this was clearly an elective that only about 30 students took it, while back home it was a requirement for all. Unfortunately, the current movement on dumbing down math and science in the name of 'equity' is a step behind and very dispiriting. It is bound to hurt poorer but smart kids, that can't afford private tutoring and have to rely only on public schools. Extreme progressive Liberals are killing science and progress in this country, and are becoming actually regressive and backwards. P.s. The only advantage of American teaching on science was that it relies more on experiments to teach concepts, while the Albanian one had no equipment, or lacked the basics of it. Heck, in the 90s we didn't even have glass on the windows and had to freeze all winter. Also basic electricity was lacking half of the winter. Ps2. Most Americans have it good (condition wise), they just don't know it Ps3. This is a good video how schooling was back then (in 88). Notice how the kids are wearing jackets inside, as there was no heating https://youtu.be/yZD1jaKbz2g?t=251 https://youtu.be/yZD1jaKbz2g?t=251
  • rrss 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, do you recall which ap physics course you took?
• aaronleather 5y ago
  May be due to Russian Technoloy advancement American people are very much interested in it. I have to search about this as well.
• w4rh4wk5 5y ago
  Does anyone know where to find translated Russian math textbooks?
  • kristjank 5y ago
    Probably best to start with the Bronshtein - Semendyayev: Handbook of Mathematics. It's still widely used in a lot of slavic speaking countries. Google it, there's a pdf available.
  • pb060 5y ago
    Kolmogorov - Fomin: Introductory Real Analysis. Not for school kids though.
  • wyclif 5y ago
    You can find some on Amazon. Gelfand's Algebra: https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773/ https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/081763677... Gelfand's Geometry: https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/1071602977/ https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/10716029... Gelfand's Trigonometry: https://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-Gelfand-Mathematical-Seminar-Israel/dp/3764339144/ https://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-Gelfand-Mathematical-Sem...
• nostrademons 5y ago
  My college had a decent-sized contingent of Bulgarian & Romanian international students. The difference in their math abilities upon entry was striking. While most of my American-born classmates struggled in discrete math, linear algebra, and vector calc, my Bulgarian friend was like "I learned this when I was 9." They were frequently tapped as TAs by the professors, because they understood the material on a level that Americans didn't.
  • paganel 5y ago
    Romanian here, the "I learned this when I was 9" might have been a slight exaggeration so that your friend could make a point, but as an another anecdata I can say that I distinctly remember one of my first calculus classes while I was in 9th grade (I think I was 15 years old at the time) and our maths teacher trying to explain to us how real numbers are defined and, more importantly, what that definition really means. That class/hour stood with me ever since, even though 25 years have passed. But truth be told it very highly depended on the quality of the math teachers. I was lucky enough to get into one of the best high-schools in my town so that we got a really good maths teacher, but the teacher "quality" was not that uniformly distributed across different schools.
    • gnat 5y ago
      Do the students bring any motivation to the classroom? Like, is there a culture of "study hard and pay attention in maths and sciences, because that's how we escape poverty" or something like that? Here in New Zealand, middle class parents put a high premium on being happy and fulfilled, and most (that I've seen across several schools) don't really prime their kids for academic success by saying "this is important, we value it, and you should too". It may be different for lower-class or upper-class kids here (I haven't spent a lot of time in those schools). Keen to know what it was like in Romania.
      • rob74 5y ago
        I grew up in Romania too (finished school in 1992), and at least during the communist regime I can't really remember a culture of studying hard to escape poverty, because that simply wasn't how you escaped poverty - it was more a mix of "choosing the right parents", the people you knew, a bit of luck, a bit of corruption and maybe some shrewdness, but Romania definitely wasn't a meritocracy at that time (that may however have changed since, at least to some degree). However, kids that studied hard and were very good in school weren't looked down upon and disrespected as they sometimes are in the West. At University (after the regime changed), studying hard did become more common, but it was directed at scoring a job in Canada/USA/wherever, not at escaping poverty in Romania itself...
• op00to 5y ago
  Why do people beat themselves up for not being “as good as they should be” at math? Who cares? Find out what you naturally excel at and concentrate on that.
• arthur_sav 5y ago
  Somehow the American education system keeps getting worse while they poor more money into it.
  • rejectedandsad 5y ago
    There’s a limited amount you can do when everyone around you is destitute. I seriously doubt future coal miners were taught sophisticated math in high school in the USSR - they took tracking and specialization to an extreme, whereas this is culturally verboten in America (for good reason).
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • orthoxerox 5y ago
      It's the Germans who are extreme specializers, with separate middle and high schools for vocational, professional and academic tracks. The Union had two optional years of high school, but everyone took the first eight with no tracks or optional classes. After that you could finish school or get three years of vocational education and join the workforce.
    • ymolodtsov 5y ago
      Soviet schools weren't really specialized. They could have some classes with a heavier focus on specific subjects but all changes were minor. So yes, coal miners learned the same stuff. Only after grade 9 kids could apply to a professional school that would teach blue-collar professions and that's the first divergence point. P.S. In Soviet/Russian schools "class" is literally a group of kids who study all subjects together from grade 1 to 11, they are very rigid.
• 24fps 5y ago
  This is a sore point for me. I graduated from a tony American private high school, and went on to graduate from an ivy league college. The last math I learned was basic trig in eleventh grade. Somehow I was allowed, encouraged even, to avoid math. I never had to say the word math in college or graduate school. As a result I do not actually know what calculus is, and while I’m sure you don’t invoke it while calculating a tip, I often struggle with that exercise. Regrettably. I’m sure my predicament is not unique.
  • mirker 5y ago
    My favorite example is compound interest. Imagine having to solve a compound interest test to get a credit card. It seems like a basic precaution to me (like a driving license), but yet I’m not convinced all in the US can do it.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    When I applied to colleges in early 2000s, you basically had to have taken Calculus AP or IB courses by 11th grade to get into the elite schools.
• AareyBaba 5y ago
  And then there is Singapore math https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html
  • ravenstine 5y ago
    Strangely enough, I'm an American who was taught Singapore math in elementary school. Then my family moved to a nearby city where they taught standard American math and I wasn't allowed to solve math problems the Singapore way. Even though I got the correct answers, the teachers insisted I do math the "right" way, which I consistently messed up for the rest of my life. Singapore math not only has a more reasonable pace to learning, but as someone with inattentive ADHD I found its approach to arithmetic easier for me to keep track of in my head. Even if people have heard of Singapore math, they might not know that things like addition are done left-to-right rather than right-to-left. https://youtu.be/HS7BDq73pRE?t=44 https://youtu.be/HS7BDq73pRE?t=44 I don't know about anyone else, but that is more like how I do math in my head on a day to day basis since the first step gets you closer to the answer. Just doing more addition underneath is also more visually clean than carrying numbers by writing them above the original equation. Paper is plentiful, and now I'm sure it could all be done digitally, so there's no reason to use standard American math to save space.
• meshr 5y ago
  It is not Russian but 'Soviets math'. Ironically, Russia introduced analogy of USA's standardized right after Itina emigrated from Russia and now Russian's math is also optimized for memorizing but not for 'emphasizing reasoning and deeper understanding'
  • orthoxerox 5y ago
    I graduated before USE, and my math classes were... mediocre. To graduate, you had to do 10 problems of average difficulty, so our textbooks didn't even have problems harder than that. I took a look at the entrance exam at the uni I wanted to apply to and was shocked. Thankfully, I had my dad and he went through Skanavi's exercise book with me. I look at the USE math exam every year and it's much better than my final exam (although I like gaokao more, it has more varied problems that make you combine different areas of math), but I don't know where the cutoff point for "I won't get into trouble for my students' low results" is.
    • whimsicalism 5y ago
      I am so jealous of people who have parents who know/understand math.
      • orthoxerox 5y ago
        Thank you. I guess I was lucky my dad is a MIPT alumnus.
  • ymolodtsov 5y ago
    That's a common criticism that mostly relies on emotions and not facts. These standardized tests are changed little by little every year and are simply meant to a) ensure similar educational standards for smaller and remote cities b) enable kids to apply to any university in Russia. Although some specific parents and teachers in particular school might want to focus on repetition of the same problems and tasks it doesn't mean everyone will and it certainly didn't affect me that much. In fact, having some definitive rules on how they assess an essay in Russian helped me get 100% for it the first time, since it was objective.
• dan-robertson 5y ago
  See here for an account of Russian-style ‘math circles’ for young children: https://www.msri.org/people/staff/levy/files/MCL/Zvonkin.pdf https://www.msri.org/people/staff/levy/files/MCL/Zvonkin.pdf
• farmerstan 5y ago
  This is the video by the daughter of the founder of the Russian School of Math. We sent our son there over the summer, he enjoyed it and all the kids were pretty advanced in the class. California seems to want to hold everyone back in the name of equity. But that will force more people into the private school system, which is exactly what we did. I don’t trust the California government to have my children’s best interest at heart, I think they want to hamstring them in the name of equity. https://www.ted.com/talks/masha_gershman_how_math_can_prepare_new_generations_for_the_future/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/masha_gershman_how_math_can_prepar...
  • MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
    Oregon governor Kate Brown has signed a law that allows students to graduate without proving they can read, write or do math. The law had overwhelming Democrat support & is justified on the basis that it will benefit non-white students. https://thepostmillennial.com/oregon-governor-signs-new-law-allowing-students-to-graduate-without-proving-they-can-read-write-or-do-math https://thepostmillennial.com/oregon-governor-signs-new-law-...
    • jjgreen 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Millennial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Millennial
      • kwere 5y ago
        this is an ad hominem argument
        • jjgreen 5y ago
          It is not an argument, it is a link to a Wikipedia page.
          • fsn4dN69ey 5y ago
• wyclif 5y ago
  I'm not quite sure I understand the aversion to Russian teaching materials, other than a lingering negative reaction to communism. Gelfand's Algebra has become a real game-changing text for a lot of English-speaking students who struggle with the subject. His Trigonometry book is just as good, and helped me a lot when I needed a refresher when I became a land surveyor after being out of school for years.
• a-saleh 5y ago
  Damn, need to reread Malushki i matematika.
• b0rsuk 5y ago
  Some education systems put an emphasis on critical thinking, some on absorbing tons of information. Polish education is notable for memorization. One area where it doesn't seem to hurt is medicine. It appears Polish doctors and nurses are very much appreciated when they migrate. Perhaps critical thinking is not a useful skill in medical practice? Once upon a time I was reading an article about Polish migrants in Norway. The Norwegians observe that Poles are reluctant to send kids to Norwegian schools for a few reasons: a) the language is very different, b) Poles fear children will become rebellious, because the schools emphasize critical thinking* c) Poles fear children will become... idiots. Because they won't know too many facts. It appears despite constant complaining about pointless facts and useless information, Poles take some sick pride in the suffering. Some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. * this reminds me of a rumor circulating about personnel of mental hospitals. Patients are often sedated not because it's good for the patients, but because it's convenient for the personnel.
  • nme01 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure you’re a Pole who emigrated as self-hatred is probably the most common thing for Poles.
    • b0rsuk 5y ago
      No, I'm considering it. I need to travel more and compare before I make up my mind. It's unsurprising many people migrate because they're fed up with their country. Financial incentives is just another side of it, because it's demoralizing to work long and hard hours and be paid little. However, plenty of Poles migrate that can reconcile their desire for high wages with uncritical admiration for their country. The country has taken an authoritarian turn. The aspects that annoy me personally is lack of critical thinking, lack of insight when it comes to history (it's a second state religion in practice which is two too many), low trust, bigotry, corruption, double standards, shallow XIX century understanding of patriotism. There's focus on "moral victories", heroic sacrifices and losing battles. Contempt is something very common in society - it's like everyone needs someone they can despise. Constructive criticism is very unwelcome and met with denial. Compromise is often called "rotten compromise".
• maga 5y ago
  I went through the Soviet/Russian school system with all the advanced topics being covered in high school as others described here. My moment of zen was on my third year in one of the top tech universities in Moscow. There were quite a few students coming from Novosibirsk University who were comfortably ahead of the curve when it came to math. When they showed their transcript ("zachetka"), they had ~3000 hours of Calculus in the first few years against our ~120... As they described it, each day after the usual roster of lectures and seminars, they would spend 4 hours in class in the evening solving math problems with a teacher. While we might have spent a few hours doing homework every now and then, it was nowhere near this. Not to mention doing it in class with a teacher who would likely also give them more challenging problems and valuable feedback. The sheer amount of time and mental effort was staggering.
  • ptero 5y ago
    My personal experience is that it wasn't just hours. Those who liked math spent a lot of time on it after classes. Those who didn't, avoided extras and still did OK (they would not go to top universities, but the base would be OK, with some practice, if they decide to go to a mid-level school). The biggest difference for me in school was a consistent, well thought out program (one for the whole country) and books. A topic would be studied once, well, and there would be enough time to master the material. Consistency across subjects, too -- if physics covered a topic in, say, the second half of the grade 7, the math needed would be covered in the math classes before then. What I now see in the US is horrible: teachers at grade N do not know for sure what the students already know, so they repeat a lot of the background, then jump around to cover a lot of material, much of which is never mastered. Which is considered OK -- it will likely be repeated in the same haphazard fashion next year. Or not, depending on what the next teacher decides.
    • maga 5y ago
      That is indeed terrifying. Not to take away from the importance of a well-thought-out program, learning materials, or competent teachers, I was drawing attention to the immense time and effort that some students would invest often with an institutionalized help. In our case, the programs were standardized, the textbooks were virtually the same throughout the union. Barred special schools and eccentric teachers, all kids were studying the same things at the same time. What differentiated the bespoken Siberians from us was that order of magnitude difference in the time put in. It challenged my sense of normalcy in many ways: people being this good at math without being apparent geniuses, universities teaching math extra 4 hours a day, realization that there is enough undergrad calculus to last 3K hours.
• marco_craveiro 5y ago
  As a Portuguese citizen, I was not exposed to Russian mathematics during my entire academic career until I entered university. Whilst slightly better than the UK, our educational system was also not brilliant when it came to maths, and we only started to do calculus close to Year 12 (the last year before university). Anyways, my one and only brush with Russian mathematics was as follows - I flunked Integral and Differential calculus on Year 1 at uni, and was getting really worried it would take me a while to do this subject. In Portugal you need to repeat a subject until you get a pass grade. Then a cousin told me I had to "do Piskunov". In those days you didn't buy books, you'd photocopy them, so he gave me a very large photocopied manuscript of Piskunov [1] in Spanish. I had never seen anything like it. It was a bit like a game; it had very little instructions, and it started with absolutely trivial exercises, but continued on and on, relentlessly. And somehow, it got you hooked. I read the entire set of books compulsively, just to see what the next exercise would throw at me. I finished my exam really quickly and got 95% (in my rush, I made one mistake in the exam). My teacher even asked me about some of the ways in which I solved some of the exercises. [1] https://mirtitles.org/2012/03/06/integeral-and-differential-calculus-n-piskunov/ https://mirtitles.org/2012/03/06/integeral-and-differential-...
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    Portugal has still made a lot of progress. My father, who grew up in the Açores in the 50/60s, says that back then school stopped at 4th grade.
    • marco_craveiro 5y ago
      Oh yes, without a doubt. Even if you compare the level of teaching in my life time, from the 80s when I was in primary school to now it has improved dramatically. Portugal was really a developing country all the way up to the 70s and mid 80s, we have roads and infrastructure now :-) completely different place.
      • whimsicalism 5y ago
        And still so many people love Salazar..
• geomark 5y ago
  People may find this interesting http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf (PDF) It is written by a mathematician who has taught in Russia, the US and Brazil. They have a lot to say about how math is taught in the US. The paper also has a lot of sample problems.
• skzv 5y ago
  When I started high school in Canada, my math grades were pretty bad. Probably in the 60%s (a C letter grade). I remember staring at a quadratic equation, struggling to understand why those 3 terms drew a curve. I had no intuition for it. The summer before 11th grade, my father decided he had enough. It was time to learn math, Soviet style. He sat me down for a few hours each morning with problems from 6th and 7th grade Russian math textbooks - which was strange to me of course because I was about to start 11th grade. One important rule was that a calculator was not allowed. Everyday he had a list of questions ready for me that he had judiciously picked. Back in Ukraine he was a regional physics Olympiad winner, and a gold medal winner (in the Soviet Union, the top graduates from each high school were awarded a gold medal - goes to show how they valued academics I suppose). I can pull up some photos if anyone is interested. The questions were very clever and pedagogical. You developed intuition by solving them. And you couldn't solve them if you didn't understand the underlying principles. And of course, there's the word problems. I could barely read Russian at the time, so I had to take my time, but they bridge the gap between theory and application. And without a calculator, you are forced to develop techniques for manipulating equations and numbers. You get really good at it. I aced math and physics for the rest of high school (and later graduated with a degree in Engineering Physics). The western education system really fails us. My dad sitting me down with those elementary Russian math textbooks and enforcing a no calculator rule was one of the best things he could have ever done for me. The Soviet mathematic curriculum was designed by some brilliant mathematicians who understood the importance of developing intuition. That importance seems to be lost here. People think that quantitative intuition doesn't matter as long as you can plug your equation into Wolfram Alpha. But when you approach math that way, you don't develop an analytical and quantitative lens. Photos: [My father and my grandmother on the way to university in the 80s - https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tgv2gpy428rKs2GS8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tgv2gpy428rKs2GS8 Gold medal - https://photos.app.goo.gl/KsisSEvb4fbNEE419 https://photos.app.goo.gl/KsisSEvb4fbNEE419 Physics Olympiad diploma with translation - ]https://photos.app.goo.gl/b3hw6HXmQN25iXay9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/b3hw6HXmQN25iXay9]
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • hyperman1 5y ago
• carlmr 5y ago
  I had the same experience going from a French elementary school to a German school. What we were taught in second grade only popped up again in 6th grade in Germany. Then I went on exchange to the US in 10th grade and I noticed they were lagging behind the German system by about 2 years. So US vs France must be a 6 year lag.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    The US does not have a universal education track, so hard to compare. From my interactions with French students and Romanian students in college, the Romanians seemed further ahead and the french were just on par.
  • LeanderK 5y ago
    how would you compare the workload in the other subjects in Germany vs France? And how would you rate the german math education?
    • carlmr 5y ago
      I think German math education was ok, probably not stellar, but good enough to prepare you well for engineering classes. I went on another (short) exchange to France later in 9th grade and they were still far ahead of the German system in math at that point. However, and this may sound stereotypical, their language education was pretty bad. While they were studying similar English literature as us, they were almost completely unable to speak English. When visiting language classes it was evident why, in Germany languages are studied interactively, in France it was only the teacher talking. I don't know if this changed since then or it was only at this school, but it seemed like such an easy fix. In terms of workload, I think the total was pretty similar.
• indianpianist 5y ago
  What is "Russian math" like? And how does it differ from math curriculums taught in other areas of the world?
  • Koshkin 5y ago
    One notable example would be the undergraduate Beginner’s Course in Topology - Geometric Chapters by Rokhlin et al. (Some “beginner” one must be, to be able to read it.)
• TheGigaChad 5y ago
  Good, let them study hard. The real deal gets VC capital and gives these chumps breadcrumps.
• wanderingmind 5y ago
  Can someone take the time to list the English translated Russian books that kids especially in elementary and middle school can use.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• DrBazza 5y ago
  Went to university in the UK, met a bunch of Russian post-docs whilst I was a researcher, and they were some of the best mathematicians I'd met. Not unrelated, but today in the UK is A-Level results (for 18 yr olds), and the UK press and exam boards, as usual are reporting it as the 'best results ever'. This happens year on year. There's a lot of argument about education standards getting lower in the UK. My "anecdata" is that I was the first year to sit GCSE maths exams at 16 yrs old, and we went through old O-level papers from the mid 1950s onwards (aimed at 16 year olds) to practice. Those O-level papers had advanced calculus that we didn't learn until our final year of A-levels. Those old papers were much harder. tl;dr in the 50s/60s 16 year old Brits were taught advanced calculus. They're not now.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    This does not jive with my encounters with people who went to school in the 50s/60s. Just from interacting with people of different ages, it seems to me there was a marked improvement in quality of schooling, maybe in the 90s?
    • DrBazza 5y ago
      It depends what metric you're using for education improvement. For science based subjects, the fundamentals don't change. My narrow world view is maths and physics, and my data point of one, is that my peer group in the 1980s were taught to a lower level in maths (and physics) than in the 1950s/60s/70s, based on the content of O-level exam papers that we sat as mock exams. The fact was that we couldn't answer a percentage of the exams because we just weren't taught it. The reverse wasn't true - we were not taught extra things that weren't in the exam, we were simply taught less. I can't find a link, but there was talk of "remedial maths" lessons being taught at many universities in the UK to bring students up to the standards required for degrees because they're simply not taught at the same level any more. Universities on the other hand, don't have their curriculums or qualifications manipulated by the sitting government so their standards/requirements change much more slowly.
• sunshineforever 5y ago
  The core theory, that abstract reasoning and deeper understanding should be introduced as early as possible is marvelous. But I'm over the idea of hammering kids with homework... This is in addition to their school workload.
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  Chinese here. We followed the Russian/Soviet system of math education for quite a while. The Soviet textbooks were and are still considered superior comparing to our own (from middle school straight to university). They have a certain quality that Chinese textbooks fail to grasp. Nowadays many schools turn to the American system (I don't know why) and the requirements for math has been dropping for a decade. The inequality of teaching resources is obvious when you compare a student from a privileged school with one from say a country-side school. The government tries to equalize things but it's very difficult to go against the top teachers and rich dads/moms.
• Mikhail_Edoshin 5y ago
  I'm Russian and one thing I liked when I was a kid was the monthly physics & math magazine "Quantum" (Russian: "Квант", "Kvant") that was aimed at schoolchildren. Are there any such magazines in United States?
• atemerev 5y ago
  Here are the "Arnold's problems" — which every Russian kid even slightly mathematically inclined have seen and worked on many times: https://www.imaginary.org/sites/default/files/taskbook_arnold_en_0.pdf https://www.imaginary.org/sites/default/files/taskbook_arnol.... It is really good, in my opinion.
• hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
  In Australia we have a focus on STEM, but school teachers who don't understand the material. After 2 years of philosophical maths in primary school from a special teacher, high school really killed my interest. Big shame.
• locallost 5y ago
  I am also from Eastern Europe, but did my Bachelor in the west. For a lot of people there things like limits, series etc. were almost like greek. Speaking of greek, we did some group study and there was a person there who kept saying E this E that. I was perplexed until I saw he meant Sigma as in sum. But those who didn't know learned it and that was that. I'm not sure it's really that beneficial to force a lot on kids before they are ready to use it or know what it's for. I remember 10th/11th grade sitting and eventually realizing all this stuff we do... I will eventually need to do it to make sure e.g. a building does not crash. And that scared me to death, I did not feel prepared at all. When things are thrown at you before you're ready and can really understand it, it's sort of like you lack a connection to what is essential and what you might be able to do with it on your own. You do your little examples and tasks and solve them, but outside of that context you don't really understand it. I don't think any educational system has figured that out for the majority of kids.
• sega_sai 5y ago
  It's a weird article. I think this idea of 'Russian math' is very nebulous, and is probably used as marketing tool nowadays by some schools abroad. I have graduated from one of the top physics/maths high schools in Russia, and yes we had great math education there, but that was an outlier. Outside a handful of schools the math education is pretty dismal. And even in the good math schools there are different ways of teaching maths. I.e. there is a famous system of 'sheets' where the actual teaching of formal theory is very limited, while most of learning is done by solving problems (given to you on a sheet) and then presenting solutions to the teacher. But it wasn't used in our school for example. What definitely exists in Russia (or at least some big cities) is a system of free after-school classes, where you can go and learn how to solve olympiad-type math problems and become more interested in maths. That is definitely extremely useful to identify a few people who are talented in maths.
  • dougSF70 5y ago
    Somehow American Math doesn't have the same connotations. I am witnessing public schools take math out of the curriculum at elementary, middle and high schools. It is a wasted opportunity for young people to learn the beauty of math.
    • handrous 5y ago
      Bizarre. Where I am math and English remain king and queen of getting-on-the-schedule. Being "tested subjects" from very early grades, is the main reason. They've all but eliminated recess in elementary, and have reduced hours for things like art & music, to make sure they have plenty of time for them, since school prestige and funding rely heavily on testing well just in those two subjects.
      • civilized 5y ago
        Maybe there's good reason for that? Reading and math are fundamental for a much broader range of occupations than art and music.
        • 5y ago
• lvl100 5y ago
  This notion that “American” math and sciences lag behind the world is one of the greatest lies ever told in my lifetime. And for the record, there is no “Russian” math or “Chinese” math. Mathematics is mathematics. Where the US approach differs is that they are not requiring high level of math on general public. However, if you are gifted and/or motivated, you have access to unparalleled resources.
  • doovd 5y ago
    Everyone understands that Russian math means Russian approach to math. And American approach does not result in general population knowing enough math. And this is why American math is lagging behind.
  • caddemon 5y ago
    The US has resources available if you know where to look, but children obviously don't, so it comes down to luck with parents (or in rarer cases a very good teacher). Perhaps the top Olympiad level types get "recruited". But speaking from experience, kids that are in the high 90 percentiles who enjoy math at a young age frequently end up bored in a typical classroom and eventually disillusioned with the subject - not provided additional resources. By high school one can start seeking out their own resources, but motivation to do math specifically is harder to find when you've considered it a boring subject for 5+ years. And there is definitely an advantage to being introduced certain concepts at an elementary school age. So the US approach absolutely differs in how it handles early math education for the vast majority of students, not just for the average student. I wish I learned math in the Russian style as a child, and moreover I think US math has this problem moreso than even other subjects here. Humanities classes generally have less mindless repetition and early childhood teachers could easily recommend advanced books in a way they really couldn't for math. In many schools the same teacher will teach every subject until you hit middle school! So it is no surprise they don't have resources to give to advanced students, as a lot of them dread math themselves.
  • Dracophoenix 5y ago
    If you count Khan Academy and MIT's OCW, sure the Anglo-sphere has unparalleled resources. But a minor point of the article is how the way Americans are taught in conventional public school is just to do the basic work. Math is treated as a hurdle to clear rather than the lifelong mental sport. But here's a point I would have liked examined further in the article: where does one find material or instruction that would give you a competitive structural thinking needed to grapple Olympiad or Putnam-level content beyond enrichment courses? In China, the best students are scouted early by teachers and prepared by the Chinese government through special camps and their own difficult examinations. I'd assume the same thing happened/happens in Russia. In the United States, by default (and probably by design), its difficult to know on what level a student can stand in regards to everyone else until the very end. At least in a public school. Parents and students can use proxies like how early AP subjects are offered, USA today rankings, or the success of past alumni. But, unless you're in a well-endowed private schools, magnet/exam schools, or private enrichment program like AoPS (Art of Problem solving) or Talent Identification Programs (many of which are now shutting down) there are few ways to know how well the instruction one receives as a precocious and motivated high school compare to those of the best among the nation or the world. One could argue if you have to wait until high school to understand where you stand, it's too late. But that's my point, many students may have resources and talent but the lack the expertise to deciding where to and how begin in those crucial first years. Few states have strong "gifted" programs and the one's that do aren't really any better than "normal" instruction in China or Japan.
• madengr 5y ago
  Now in the USA, the accelerated math classes in high school are banned, because they are racist.
• bitwize 5y ago
  Before that it was Singapore math. Basically any country that doesn't view your kid's math class as a lab to experiment with new unproven teaching techniques is fair game. Which unfortunately excludes American math.
• LeanderK 5y ago
  I wonder what he older math-education in german schools is like, probably also more hard-core. After elementary school, germany has a three tracks Gymnasium, Realschule und Hauptschule. A Gymnasium prepares one for university and is still well regarded and its final tests, the Abitur, still carries a prestige. Looking back (I attended a Gymnasium), I think the quality of the education was quite high, especially in my english lessons and the social subjects. If the goal of the school was to produce good citizens capable of actively participating in a democracy and forming their own opinion, then it did it very well. Especially later, we had quite a few interesting, adult discussions with engaged teachers about various topics in history, society, art etc. So I think that the quality of my gymnasium was quite high and it really showed in subjects where capable teachers alone can make quite the difference. But the gymnasiums should also prepare those capable for university, be more rigorous, and I think there's the problem. The division doesn't work anymore. Everybody wants their children to go to the gymnasium, because everybody has to study at the university. Even when they have no interest whatsoever in science and just want to work as a coder. Also, attending a Gymnasium can't be prestigious if everybody is doing it. I remember quite a few children struggling but getting pushed through by their parents because a Realschule is simply not an option. I was also struggling, but more because I just didn't care and there weren't really any consequences. I still passed each class. But a more rigorous math education would, I think, result in a lot of the children failing the gymnasium and a lot of angry parents who see the future of their children and their parental success in turmoil. So the Gymnasium really turned into a one-size-fits-all kind of education and I strongly suspect that especially in math (or physics) that leads to the lowest common denominator. So now I wonder what the math education was like when only few could attend the gymnasium, i suspect way more rigorous. Is it similar in other countries? By the way, it's totally different at the university level. The german university doesn't feel responsible for your personal success, you have to earn it. If you fail, you fail and the standard can be quite high. I also don't really see a lowering of standards in the "core" degrees, for the first big math exams I prepared myself by practicing with old ones going back into the 80s/90s. They were as difficult as the new ones. A lot of students failing out of the subjects they have chosen (can be as much as 2/3rds) just choose easier majors, for example a business-computer science combination because they have less math classes. A lot of the students that started studying with me ended up switching majors because of the more rigorous computer-science and math-classes (I think roughly 50%).
• darepublic 5y ago
  In grade 8 my teacher basically said they don't do math, gave the students a speech about how you can succeed in life without math, and then declined to teach any math except for handing out a set of math puzzle magazines one time in the middle of the year.
• iammisc 5y ago
  Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped its requirement that high school graduates be able to do arithmetic, read, or write. It's a race to mediocrity in the United States
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• failuser 5y ago
  Also the number of people who need advanced math is so small in USA, so it’s more of a hobby than education. And people who need advanced math need more probability theory and statistics than calculus. In China, on the other hand… I might be extrapolating.
  • flavius29663 5y ago
    In my view math is not so much about you needing it. It's about developing abstract thinking, reasoning, logic. It's in the same boat as sports. You will never need to run 100 yards with a ball in your hand, except for the sport itself. Yet we still do sports to train and stay in shape.
    • failuser 5y ago
      It does, but again, those skills are not valued that much in USA. I don’t like it, this is reality. Sports classes provide nowhere enough physical activity to stay in shape though. Ideally a country ruled by citizens require a high level of knowledge and reasoning ability. In reality people vote for aristocratic cliques in a way often determined by their birth.
      • flavius29663 5y ago
        So what are you suggesting? Because math is not the perfect answer, do less critical thinking? I think it's very good for the brain, necessary even. Math is not sufficient, but it's necessary. It's a pity the US schools put less and less into math, nowadays they dumb down math for equity reasons even.
        • failuser 5y ago
          I’d suggest more math as a personal advise, but I have no power outside of relatives and friends. So I can only observe what’s happening on the national level. And that observation is that math is taught in a way that does little to promote reasoning skills and most people won’t use it. And smart people will find a way to learn, it’s easier than ever.
• andagainagain 5y ago
  "Russian Math" seems to just be "More Math". The basic education concepts at ploy here are well known, just not widely deployed. Why? IMO it's because of what I think is the sole problem with american education - parents themselves not caring if their kids actually know anything. It's actually common, extremely common, for american parents to think that the point of education is to get a piece of paper (degree) or to get a job. And a large number of the parents that think the point is actually knowing things also put no pressure on the school systems to actually provide that.
  • only_as_i_fall 5y ago
    Is there evidence that knowing how to do math is actually beneficial to most people? I think it's easy to criticize when ignoring the possibility that much of what is taught in American schools is actually just useless and very little of it is retained after schooling ends.
    • andagainagain 5y ago
      What I said applies to all topics. Including ones that you personally value. As for whether math is useful or not... I'll just say I REALLY wish more of my coworkers knew their math. I work in a factory, and it's useful WAY more often than you may think.
• echopurity 5y ago
  We're not taught mathematics because we're not meant to think, criticize, understand epistemology, etc. We're taught to compute to make us useful and compliant, even if the computations themselves are useless.
• pattisapu 5y ago
  Reminds me of stories I used to see about Japanese families sending their kids to "Indian" schools: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/worldbusiness/02japan.html?ex=1356930\ https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/worldbusiness/02...
• xyzelement 5y ago
  I was born in the USSR but was in New York for Jr Highschool and Highschool. Whenever my dad saw the math curriculum he assumed I was in some sort of "slow program" - he could not believe that the mainstream program is that un-challenging. I bet there's a lot of factors to why curriculum gets watered down but I do think recent focus on how kids feel about school, self-esteem, safe spaces, etc goes against hard-core curricula. When you learn for real (and this extends to adults as well) you are confronted with things you don't know how to do, and you have to bang against them for a while to solve them and learn. That feeling of "wait, maybe I can't do this / I don't get it" is a negative one. And it does create a situation where some percentage of kids can't hack it, so they are excluded/left behind. I think as a culture we've been making the choice to teach/do easy things that everyone can participate in, rather than do challenging things that will force some people to grow more while leaving some behind. It's not a choice I agree with but I guess I can follow the zeitgeist and logic of it for a certain extent. It's the same as NYC, SF and other cities getting rid of the specialized schools with entrance exams. Since some people can't hack it, it's an exclusionary approach and therefore getting rid of the exams on one hand equalizes access on the other hand waters down the standards. I do think there will be unintended but obvious consequences as we're seeing in this story: parents who know better, who want the best for their kids will invest in tutors, private schools, etc that challenge their kids when the mainstream schools do not. The effect will be that within the school system, everyone is doing easy things that everyone can do, but in outcome space there will be a larger gap between kids of parents who care/can afford something beyond public school and those who cannot. In the long run, this will cause greater inequality because there will be come percentage of kids whose parents can't give them a leg up that would have risen to the challenge in a tougher curriculum but now will not have a chance to do so. In my eye this is unfortunate both because we're creating a less educated populace and a less confident one. The idea of being brave and confident means you take on a challenge knowing you have a good shot of eventually overcoming it. This holds at school and it holds in the work place. I am not sure how many people who never had their ass kicked (for a while) by school work and then had the experience of "getting it" will then come into a work situation and be able to "stretch" by taking on work they don't quite know how to do yet. Not the path I am chasing for my kid.
• 1-6 5y ago
  After school programs have been a profitable enterprise in South Korea and China. I think they're still in the growth-phase in the United States with companies like Kumon, Eye Level, and Russian School of Mathematics. Competition to get kids to accel in school is high but it's also increasing the stress of these kids. Parents in South Korea, for example, have stated in numerous survey responses that they would delay having kids (among many things) because of the cost of after-school tuition. It's a shame because education is viewed as that one normalizer which allows a child from a poor family to make it up to the top through hard work. Wealthy parents are simply gaming the system by putting kids through cram-schools and SAT programs which train you how to read between the lines and fill out Scantrons effectively. Private tutoring is nothing new but now you're seeing tutoring becoming like a Subway's or a McDonalds franchise.
  • ijustwanttovote 5y ago
    I believe China are starting to ban for-profit tutoring firms. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-parents-fret-after-government-bans-for-profit-tutoring-firms-2021-07-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-parents-fret-aft...
• jdlyga 5y ago
  This reminds me of Kumon Math when I was a kid. It used a very Japanese method to teach math, and definitely helped me out early on.
• yboris 5y ago
  I'm from Russia, and in the US I attended GCPM - a "correspondence program" with math assignments sent to me by mail and later graded by a university professor. Was a great learning experience (the program had dedicated books and interesting math problems to explore). https://www.egcpm.com/ https://www.egcpm.com/ - Gelfand Correspondence Program In Mathematics
• univalent 5y ago
  My kids 8 and 7 go to the Russian math after school program in Cupertino. So far, there's nothing 'Russian' about it. Its just regular math.
• udev 5y ago
  Lots of comments asking what is "Soviet/Russian Math" actually like, and how is it different. I was lucky to get an education in three systems (Soviet Math, Romanian Math School (influenced by both French and Soviet Math school), and finally in a world top 40 university in North America. I would summarize the Soviet/Russian Math/Physics approach like this: - understanding of the mechanism/intuition behind the equations/methods is paramount - teachers are astute at spotting students who memorize blindly, and will intervene to correct that - while rigorous about notation, the mathematical representation always comes after understanding, not before - the progression of teaching (order how material is introduced) is very well thought out - the old soviet textbooks are generally less verbose than North American ones (less fancy), but high quality in their expression, typesetting, and ESPECIALLY (!!!) the quality of the exercises - the Soviet Math textbook exercises are something to behold: they have funny/memorable setting (like jokes), they are short and easy to express, the numbers are chosen in such a way that the result will be a nice whole number, or pi, etc. Basically as a kid you can read one of those problems, lay down, close your eyes, and work on it in your head. That being said, I did like some of the aspects from the so called "Western Math" (in my case Canadian university): - teachers are more approachable, more friendly - textbooks can be gorgeous (nice colorful plots, etc)
  • bordercases 5y ago
    What characterizes the French?
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    As an american who went through US-based curriculum in the 90s, this sounds FUCKING WONDERFUL. Basically - it seems like the approach above treats math as a conceptual playground, where you should develop intuition and understanding. Instead we seem to be going down the rote memorization route for most of our classes, where the goal was to apply an equation to some numbers and get the right answer, with little to no thought, and an emphasis on easy grading. ---- Our physics education seems quite similar, though - and I loved that.
    • BoxOfRain 5y ago
• m23khan 5y ago
  In my experience and opinion about studying till High school and then University here in Ontario, Canada: - Canada seems to be obsessed to maintain high-stats. when it comes to 'literacy rate' - that is why till Grade 12, education is intentionally dumbed-down to the point any kid could just do bare minimum and still pass. Even if the kid is dumb-as-bricks, they can choose to do watered down versions of maths, physics, chemistry and still complete their High School Diploma requirements. - However, as soon as you enroll into STEM program at University, it is on-par in terms of difficulty with their counterparts elsewhere. What was a easy-peasy style of mathematics taught in Canadian High School makes way to the old 'no-calculator and Professors don't help' style engineering calculus and maths. This is where I found students who had studied even in 3rd World countries like Pakistan and Eritrea (I kid you not) had advantage in math and science courses throughout their degree program. Heck, it took me few tries to get into the groove but in process wasted 1000s of dollars and couple years trying to retake the courses. The severe downside is that if your kid has above-average intelligence (as it was in my case) and if they join the Canadian education system at young age (in my case at age 13), by the time majority of these kids become adults, majority of them (as in my case) permanently loose their spark and thus get destined to think only inside the box. I don't want to rant but another thing I notice is the leniency showed by Canadian Education system when it comes to the whole 'culture' in K-12 years. It is hands down meant to destroy bright minds / make them outcasts. The whole toxic culture of labelling those who are intelligent and/or less fashionable as nerds/geeks/dorks and nonsensical encouragement for sports and arts activities ends up alienating majority of smart kids and many just intentionally dumb themselves down to blend in with their peers. Had the Canadian education system taken leaf from countries like Singapore/India/Pakistan/Iran/Russia/China and actually made efforts to academically grind their students and to promote discipline (with uniforms and academic competitions leading to glory) - Canada would be producing far more intelligent adults. The current status is: Canada manages to 'import' bright and gifted scientists / university students from all corners of the World and is happy to grant them passports and claim 'Canadians are damn smart' -- what really is smart if you can take army of Canadian children and ensure they are smart-as-heck when they become adults.
• MysteriousJane 5y ago
  I was glad to experience both methods and i can definitely conclude, that Russian/Soviet Math approach is much better! It gave me the boost to be ahead my Us and EU classmates, helped to adapt to my statistical class during my Bachelor's degree. Highly recommended for every parent to include several methodologies to their child's extra program.
• TheMightyLlama 5y ago
  I ask myself, is there a School of Russian Math but for adults? I don't mind starting with the basics at all.
• xivzgrev 5y ago
  This must be a hoax. In US, you solve math problems. In Russia, math problems solve themselves! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Soviet_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Soviet_Russia
• crispyambulance 5y ago
  Growing up in the US we were fed a "mythology" about Russian and Chinese schooling that claimed it was all rote memorization without actual understanding. It's been clear for a long time that this was nothing more a form of American exceptionalist propaganda. I wonder if it was ever true? I suspect not. The tragic thing is it now appears that US STEM education (at least for non-elite schools) is closer to the rote-memorization/calculator-bot curriculums than every other school system.
• graycat 5y ago
  Yes, in math, in the US, maybe anywhere in the world, there is the good and the bad in programs, teachers, books, exercises, etc. So, let's see how to get around the bad: I liked math, a lot. The SAT Math test said I had a lot of talent in math. I concentrated on math in US grades 9-12, college, and graduate school, did some math research, that later I published, got a Ph.D. in pure/applied math, and am now using some advanced and some original math as advantages in my startup. So, I struggled through the good and bad but eventually decided that there were a lot of good math books; it was not very difficult to identify the relatively good authors and books; and the keys to learning math well were a stack of blank paper on a clipboard, a sharp pencil, a big, soft eraser, one or a few good math books in the subject being studied, a lot of good exercises, a comfortable chair, a good light, and a quiet room. That's how I learned nearly all the math I did learn; still if I want to learn some math, that is what I use. This technique of a quiet room worked for me many times, but once was a nice surprise: The college I went to for my freshman year was selected because I could walk to it and it was cheap. The most advanced math course they would let me in was beneath what I'd already done in high school -- the high school was relatively good (MIT came recruiting; 97% of the students went on to college; one year three students went to Princeton). In my class, in 1-2-3 on the SAT Math, I was #2 and #3 went to MIT. So, I didn't want to fall behind in math so got their calculus book and started studying in a quiet room. This effort worried Mom who would find excuses for me to get up and do something else, but I still did well. For my second year of college, I went to a college with an unusually good math department and started on their second year of calculus using the same text Harvard was using. To let me start on that second year, a prof gave me a little impromptu freshman calculus oral exam. So, with the quiet room technique, I never took freshman calculus -- later taught it, applied it, etc. but never took a course in it! In math written as theorems and proofs, for a big source of good exercises, guess the next theorem. Check your guess. Given the theorem, close the book and prove the theorem. Doing this let me get the solution to a somewhat challenging Ph.D. qualifying exam question -- I did the best in the class on the qualifying exam. This approach to exercises is good, but it is too difficult, that is, too slow, to use for all the math need to learn. Beyond that quiet room approach to learning, I found that to do well in graduate school, e.g., get respect from the professors, the key was, as soon as possible, do some publishable research. E.g., maybe have been pushed into an advanced course. Okay: Find some places the course and/or texts are not very clear, good, precise, complete, whatever, pick one of those, do some research to improve the situation, and publish the research. Remember: For good results, good initial problem selection can help a lot. For calculus, yes, work through a good text and then, for a nice advantage, learn measure theory then, in particular, learn probability based on measure theory. Then in, e.g., statistics, you will have a gun while nearly everyone else has at most a knife. But just calculus from a respected text can be powerful stuff. E.g., at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ8G4VKoSpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ8G4VKoSpQ can see Einstein's special relativity done, apparently fully correctly, and where the only math used is ordinary calculus. Some 12 year old students can learn calculus plenty well enough for a lot in applications, including more advanced math. Here is a special strategy that can work in the US: In US research universities, the math departments typically are in the school of Arts and Sciences. But such universities commonly also have engineering schools! Some of the people who give the big money like engineering more than arts and sciences! And there is the outside world! So, from contact with the outside world, maybe a job, full or part time, pick a problem where a good solution looks promising for some old/new math. Solve the problem, and publish it in a journal with a title like Journal of Theory and Applications in .... Some journals also like to promise candidate readers that they publish not just theory but actual applications! So, the usual criteria for publication are that the material be new, correct, and significant. Well, easily enough the solution to the new real problem can be new. Since the solution is mostly math, can pass correct. Get significant from the real problem being significant. If the math saves $10 million a month in jet fuel cost for an airline, call that significant! For the remark, essentially, need to think before writing, I go along with that for research and challenging exercises. Note: For challenging exercises, I found that some good research is no more difficult than some such exercises -- the exercises are good preparation for research, etc. Generally in applying some math, will likely find some places where the old math needs some improvement, at least for the application; so, make some such improvements, and get the significance from that of the problem. That is, for picking a research problem, the Riemann hypothesis is not the only option! For an example, I picked a problem with the Kuhn-Tucker conditions and found a solution and published it. Later I found that the famous paper in mathematical economics by Arrow, Hurwicz, and Uzawa encountered a similar problem and had no solution. My work also solves their problem. I found this research problem just from some careful, quite careful, study of the Kuhn-Tucker conditions. So that is a way around the bad in programs, teachers, books, exercises, etc.
• tradertef 5y ago
  Anectodal: I signed my daughter to Russian math and due to pandemic she had one semester online. The teacher was horrible and made lots of mistakes. On the other hand, some of our friends were impressed about their teachers. So, I guess it depends on the teacher a lot.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ttonkytonk 5y ago
  After "Do you like this story?..." popped up for the fifth time I stopped reading.
• jedmeyers 5y ago
  A very interesting bit of trivia: Soviet school math curriculum reform was conducted in the 60s under the leadership of Andrey Kolmogorov. Some of you may be familiar with his works, especially the Kolmogorov complexity.
• g9yuayon 5y ago
  This got me thinking about the recent school policies for equity. Schools reduce difficulty of courses, lower standards for graduation, and cancel gift programs, all in the name of equity. I think in the long term such policy changes will hurt disadvantaged families. Family with means will simply send their kids to good tutoring schools, and the education gap among different groups of people will enlarge. It is the kids in the middle, the future backbone of our society, who will suffer most because they need strong guidance and skillful push to truly learn, yet they won't get such education because of the watered-down standards.
• omginternets 5y ago
  Is there something like this for adults? I've been learning mathematics on my own for a few years, but my progress has been painstakingly slow and erratic. I would really welcome some kind of schooling aimed at people who, like me, are genuinely interested in the subject.
• g9yuayon 5y ago
  I used to think that the K12 math education was really bad, but now I have a different perspective. Many public schools in China and Russia are essentially like magnet schools in the US because students need to compete for entrance. So, those schools can afford more challenging syllabus. In contrast, the US has few such magnet schools, and people of different academic capacity go into the same school. As a result, teachers can't really teach too advanced concepts or assign too hard homework. This may sound far-fetched, but you may be surprised that more than 50% of students may never be able to understand Euclidean geometry, let alone analytical geometry or set theory or probability or proof by induction, and etc. And more than 50% of STEM students in college may not truly understand calculus, let alone analysis. Case in point, roughly 50% of middle school students can't get into high school in China, even though the entrance exams are really not that hard as most of the questions are designed to examine a student's understanding of basic concepts. Therefore, we may look at the quality of the math class in the US and feel miserable, but that's only because the class is tailored to the lower 50%-ile. On the other hand, the clubs and gift programs in public schools are still of high quality -- all the more reason for not canceling such programs in the name of equity.
  • Notanothertoo 5y ago
    Maybe we should address the downgrade in education quality in the name equitable.
• vardhanw 5y ago
  I am from India. The school I went to (70-80s) wasn't the best, but I had an innate aptitude for math (perhaps genetic). I was lucky to get introduced to some Russian math texts [1][2] from my 3rd/4th standards which helped me (alongwith some local texts) to get good scholarships and rankings in Maths and science competitions (including a national level Math olympiad) and a later admission to a top level engg college in IIT (again thanks to accessing good libraries for foreign authored books). I see the Russian books as having provided me with a good foundation by being fun and interesting, informative, affordable, immersive and engaging and it really fuelled my interest in math and science. Given the resurgence of the Russian school of math in the US I wish I could be there to educate my children in that tradition. But not being there (out of choice and circumstance, I studied in Boston for a while) I really wish something like this was available in India. So my question is - is there some sort of a curriculum and associated training material (books, texts) available based on the Russian way of teaching, on which to develop a training plan locally in a country like India? Given the plethora of online school education options available today I do not know what exact training methods are used there, but platforms exist to have a broader reach for teachers to find interested students. I presume it would not be too difficult to setup a curriculum and training outside the normal school one with the explicit intention of developing strong math skills based on a Russian math education base if one wants to teach. [1] Mainly by Mir publishers, some of which are thankfully still available online @mirtitles.org [2] the ones I got were at throwaway prices, titles such as Yakov Perelman's Fun with Math, some Little Mathematics Library books physics, chemistry, cybernetics etc.
• tu7001 5y ago
  Isn't something like that been already tried and failed? Try of teaching maths in deep from the elementary school?
• btbuildem 5y ago
  I'll echo many of the other comments here -- seems like the Eastern Bloc's math education really out-shone the West's. I came to Canada mid-way through high school, and breezed through with little to no effort until my 2nd year of university. I remember math class in elementary school, how everything was explained, and if you were clever enough you could see where the teacher was going with the rest of the story, because everything inherently made sense. This type of learning instilled in me a deep comfort with math - knowing that you can always break down a problem into a set of familiar problems, that proofs are kind of like nested Russian dolls, and that you can synthesize a solution out of first principles if you're persistent enough.
• lobocinza 5y ago
  My experience with math on the Brazilian educational system was that of a shallow obsession with form. I also had great teachers and experiences but overall it was boring and left no space for creativity which at least for me are requirements for personal investment. I expected the soviet system to be heavily bureaucratic but through your PoV it looks COOL!
• 8589934591 5y ago
  I wonder if there's an equivalent "hardcore" curriculum for computer science and/or software development and programming vs a softcore "US" curriculum. Would SICP be the hardcore version vs HtDP/PAPL be the softer "US" version?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• tajustice2 5y ago
  The fact that this comment is going to be flagged just speaks to how bad leftist activists have gotten. Sad to see how much STEM has been eroded in the US by the very academics that we entrust to teach it. It's as if an entire generation of academics despises STEM and those who study it. Gender studies majors look at the "straight white males" in math and engineering with contempt and jealousy, so they're concentration on "dismantling" things they don't understand, but are still jealous of. Now math in the US is all about "decolonization" because math is inherently racist and a property of "whiteness".[0] No wonder parents who actually want their kids to be educated are looking for math lessons outside of the "decolonized" math that is being taught. God forbid students actually learn something! [0] https://theconversation.com/yes-mathematics-can-be-decolonised-heres-how-to-begin-65963 https://theconversation.com/yes-mathematics-can-be-decolonis...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ivanjef 5y ago
  Dr Williams Curry, Medical Field, my experience, with a trusted Hacker, helped me change my Medical School Grade, He does credit score too, “Joe Engressia”. Reach him on Whatsapp: +1(732) 639–1527. Email: digitaldawgpoundhackergroup@gmail.com digitaldawgpoundhackergroup.blogspot.com. Regards