4 ms·

> If mathematical enthousiasm is mostly developed at home, do American parents have or take less time to give kids that enthousiasm? I am going to say somethin

> If mathematical enthousiasm is mostly developed at home, do American parents have or take less time to give kids that enthousiasm? I am going to say something controversial when we see the the success of former soviet countries in Maths and the lack of success in central Europe and North America, despite the resources, to me, there appears to be a difference in how schooling handles suffering/frustration in those cultures. What I mean is that often the process of learning maths needs frustration and sometimes feeling overwhelmed and you have to stay with it, until your brain re-organizes and things click. In most western cultures there is a general sense that all learning should be fun and interesting and that children should be sheltered from frustration. I agree with it for the most part as a general principle, but I don't believe that works with the re-wiring needed to _understand_ topics in mathematics.

pandaman 5y ago
This is especially puzzling in presence of advanced athletics in the West and especially US. People have no problem saying "no pain, no gain" or admitting some have great genetics for sports. But as soon as it comes to mental prowess there's no aptitude, no training and nobody can fail. If a student doesn't understand something it's the teacher's fault. Oh, and rich and white kids succeed in school because their parents apparently do their homework. Parents in the USSR, with few exceptions, would laugh at their children if they asked them to do homework. Ones that did had been neurotic types who believed their child is a misunderstood genius who is being picked on by teachers.
Viliam1234 5y ago
> success of former soviet countries in Maths [...] there appears to be a difference in how schooling handles suffering/frustration in those cultures I agree with what you wrote, but there is yet another part of the puzzle, various extracurricular educational activities. Things like the International Mathematical Olympiad, which during its first two decades was mostly an Eastern Bloc thing; or the Russian popular-science magazine for kids, Kvant. I suspect that these extracurricular activities were more responsible for the peak math performance in former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that whatever was happening at schools. Mere school knowledge was never enough to win the math olympiad. Going further, the reason why so much energy was spent in this direction, was that mathematics and physics were the only sciences that you could do in former soviet countries without risk of accidentally saying something politically incorrect and bringing doom on yourself and your family. (As far as I know, there was nothing in math comparable to e.g. Lysenkoism in biology. And humanities were pure ideology.) The smart people couldn't become entrepreneurs anyway, so many of them enjoyed teaching math and physics; it provided them a parallel universe they could escape to.

pandaman 5y ago

This is especially puzzling in presence of advanced athletics in the West and especially US. People have no problem saying "no pain, no gain" or admitting some have great genetics for sports. But as soon as it comes to mental prowess there's no aptitude, no training and nobody can fail. If a student doesn't understand something it's the teacher's fault. Oh, and rich and white kids succeed in school because their parents apparently do their homework. Parents in the USSR, with few exceptions, would laugh at their children if they asked them to do homework. Ones that did had been neurotic types who believed their child is a misunderstood genius who is being picked on by teachers.

Viliam1234 5y ago

> success of former soviet countries in Maths [...] there appears to be a difference in how schooling handles suffering/frustration in those cultures I agree with what you wrote, but there is yet another part of the puzzle, various extracurricular educational activities. Things like the International Mathematical Olympiad, which during its first two decades was mostly an Eastern Bloc thing; or the Russian popular-science magazine for kids, Kvant. I suspect that these extracurricular activities were more responsible for the peak math performance in former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that whatever was happening at schools. Mere school knowledge was never enough to win the math olympiad. Going further, the reason why so much energy was spent in this direction, was that mathematics and physics were the only sciences that you could do in former soviet countries without risk of accidentally saying something politically incorrect and bringing doom on yourself and your family. (As far as I know, there was nothing in math comparable to e.g. Lysenkoism in biology. And humanities were pure ideology.) The smart people couldn't become entrepreneurs anyway, so many of them enjoyed teaching math and physics; it provided them a parallel universe they could escape to.