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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, strug
by 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 agoAre any of these textbooks available? Preferably not in Russian, I can read English, French, German and Dutch.
- mettamage 5y agoEven if they're in Russian I'd be interested, I'll use Google Translate. I bet that most of the time I could understand the problem well enough.
- bovine3dom 5y agohttps://archive.org/details/mir-titles https://archive.org/details/mir-titles has a vast selection. The books by Irodov are generally well regarded in particular.
- hamilyon2 5y agoBooks by Irodov are a legend
- rtpg 5y agoI doubt the calculators were the problem. People going through the "AP class" route with calculators finish up all of the math (and more!) that gets covered in a french high school math class (from experience of moving to France in High School and learning zilch for 3 years). Totally on point about the "analyticial and quantitative lenses". Multiple-choice questions and lack of "real" questions really hobble a lot of math classes. I was lucky in middle school in particular to have classes that used textbooks with a much more indepth look at why we would do X/Y/Z than the average book (along with a system where you would work through exercises in groups of 3 or 4, so better people could help out people who were struggling more). But I had to do a hell of a lot more "work showing" in France.
- dubcanada 5y ago> Why do you doubt calculators were the problem? The way I see it, learning to do basic math in your head is just as important if not more important then learning a procedure via a calculator. A calculator doesn't teach you anything, it just teaches you how to use a calculator.
- colinmhayes 5y agoDoing math in your head doesn't really teach you anything either though. Everyone has a calculator within hands reach these days. I don't think practicing mental math ever helped me understand principles, it just helped me memorize and learn tricks that are only helpful with doing mental arithmetic.
- alistairSH 5y agoCalculators in calculus probably aren't a problem. But in the US, calculators are used at almost all grade levels. My son's school allowed them while he was in elementary school, while still learning basic algebra. As for math education in general (in the US), it's pretty terrible. The lack of practical applications of "advanced" maths is a big problem. Basic calculus didn't "click" for me until I started taking economics courses in college.
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- codetrotter 5y ago> I can pull up some photos if anyone is interested. Yes please!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bbarnett 5y agoWhat's happened in Canada, is that curriculum is designed to teach to the weakest student in a subject. This is thought of as being fair, of helping, for of course everyone is intellectually equal. Thus, those who can accel, are denied their future, for those which will leave high school, and never touch (for example) advanced math again. Equality comes from recognising our differences, and enabling best outcomes for all. Not pretending we are all identical. Sadly, this seems lost on many.
- spoonjim 5y agoBam. That’s why my kids (of very different academic prowess) are in (two very different) private schools.
- Dah00n 5y agoYes, exactly this. The amount of children who lost interest in a topic because of systems like this must be high. I clearly remember how I thought maths was way too easy and eventually I lost interest. Sadly I was lazy so I didn't do anything to use my skills (though one could argue it isn't the job of the child) and ended up not doing all my homework and just making up the answer on the spot when called to the blackboard, so today I'm very average which I guess is a success in the eyes of the system.
- inglor_cz 5y agoIt is kinda ironic that the former Soviet Bloc, whose central ideology was built around equality, had a very streamed education system concentrated on recognizing talented individuals early, while the Anglosphere, usually renowned for its ceaseless competition, emphasizes equality at the cost of excellence now.
- sudosysgen 5y agoWell, it's only ironic because this is a bit of a simplification. Their ideology always recognized inequality of ability and comparative advantages of various individuals. The issue, at least on a theoretic level, receiving more value and power because you happened to own something (capital) instead of because you produced more or produced things that few people could produce. Which is why compensation was always unequal and often based on production.
- zoomablemind 5y ago> ...Everyday he had a list of questions ready for me that he had judiciously picked. Your story is very touching, thank you for sharing it. It also emphasizes the importance of a motivated teacher. Also I believe that such parent's involvement makes the process and the subject of learning so much worthwhile. It's not a secret that as parents we want/need to outsource the kids into schools just to free ourselves up for what we want/need to do. Yet paradoxically we want the kids to know no less than we know ourselves. It's just a luck if kids come across a good teacher which would help the kids demonstrate to us parents that they are worth of our attention. Kind of backwards...
- amrcnimgrnt 5y agoMcMaster grad?
- deanCommie 5y agoFascinating to see the numbers you chose. I finished Grade 6 in Russia (in 1995) before emigrating to Canada. I didn't learn anything new in Math class until mid-Grade 11 [1]. [1] Except Trigonometry. But I could tell the way it was taught was completely different from the concepts I learned in the Soviet/Russian system. It was just rote memorization of sin/cos/tan - just clever formulas for deriving the angles and edge lengths of triangles that you solved by pressing the SIN/COS/TAN buttons on your calculator, rather than the "from first principle" explanation of what these concepts meant fundamentally.
- wheelinsupial 5y ago> 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'm not sure where in Canada you moved to, but there are Governor General awards [1] to the top graduating students. It's bronze for top high school graduate, silver for bachelor's, and gold for higher degrees. [1] https://www.gg.ca/en/honours/governor-generals-awards/governor-generals-academic-medal https://www.gg.ca/en/honours/governor-generals-awards/govern...