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I think we do see results in domains where math & science is particularly important. Eastern Europeans are consistently among the best algorithmic programmers

I think we do see results in domains where math & science is particularly important. Eastern Europeans are consistently among the best algorithmic programmers I've worked with. My employer was co-founded by a Russian immigrant, son of a math professor. Russia beat us to space, and given the backwardness of the general eastern bloc economy they're remarkably strong in science and technology. On the flip side, the American capitalist economy does a remarkably good job of making productive use of people who are not academically strong (this is a notable strength vs. the Chinese, as well). And American culture & education stresses team-playing, communication skills, and trust, all of which are weaknesses of many of the Eastern-bloc programmers I've worked with. The thing is, I don't believe that the strengths of American culture are mutually exclusive with Russian and other Eastern European strengths in mathematics and science education. In other words, we could have both. What's stopping us from ripping out just the dumbed-down math curriculum from schools and replacing it with Russian-style instruction? I guess that's what the article is about, and some families are doing just that with private enrichment classes.

Jach 5y ago
It's a nice dream, to have a populace educated to a much more advanced level in math, but I don't think it's doable with America as it is, i.e. we can't have both. We could at least stop sliding further down, perhaps, and I'd be glad to hear about many sorts of changes in state- and nation-wide curriculum, while we're to have such things, for what I believe to be marginal improvements. At the smaller margins we have individual parents doing what they can with things like these Russian Math programs, as they have done for a long time, and I think is probably sufficient to ensure the prodigies aren't snuffed out. What's stopping us? For starters, over a hundred years of battling desires: https://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html https://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html Not any of the sides entirely without some merit. And that is closer to America's strength, in that try as we might to enforce Universalism in some domain, we're pretty bad at it against ourselves. This is a good thing, since while the surface of possibilities does suck and we can dream it was much better, it is not entirely uniform and solid, there are yet still many cracks for the precious few (many of whom being immigrants who found their own crack just to get here) to slip through, drag some along with them, and come out to do great things.

Jach 5y ago

It's a nice dream, to have a populace educated to a much more advanced level in math, but I don't think it's doable with America as it is, i.e. we can't have both. We could at least stop sliding further down, perhaps, and I'd be glad to hear about many sorts of changes in state- and nation-wide curriculum, while we're to have such things, for what I believe to be marginal improvements. At the smaller margins we have individual parents doing what they can with things like these Russian Math programs, as they have done for a long time, and I think is probably sufficient to ensure the prodigies aren't snuffed out. What's stopping us? For starters, over a hundred years of battling desires: https://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html https://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html Not any of the sides entirely without some merit. And that is closer to America's strength, in that try as we might to enforce Universalism in some domain, we're pretty bad at it against ourselves. This is a good thing, since while the surface of possibilities does suck and we can dream it was much better, it is not entirely uniform and solid, there are yet still many cracks for the precious few (many of whom being immigrants who found their own crack just to get here) to slip through, drag some along with them, and come out to do great things.