4 ms·

This just made me remember the whole class struglling with Riemann sums in Calc II, and Russian professor yelling "This is grade school calculus!" at us. Appare

This just made me remember the whole class struglling with Riemann sums in Calc II, and Russian professor yelling "This is grade school calculus!" at us. Apparently Russians do Calculus in grade school.

cperciva 13y ago
My mother went through high school in England in the mid-60s. I recently saw her A-level exam papers; they had a lot of questions which I would be surprised to see anywhere prior to third year college.
- eru 13y ago
  Was that a grammar school?
  - cperciva 13y ago
    Yes.
- billyjobob 13y ago
  In the 60s only a tiny percentage of the top students went to university and so the standard at university was much higher. A-levels are university entrance exams and so similarly were only taken by the best. Even the old O-levels, taken at age 16, were equivalent to university level courses today. This fact is often used as proof that kids today aren't as smart at kids in the 60s, but in fact most kids in the 60s didn't take any exams whatsoever and just left school at age 15 with no qualifications.
alex-g 13y ago
Your comment reminded me of this story: "A certain well known mathematican, we'll call him Professor P.T. (these are not his initials...), upon his arrival at Harvard University, was scheduled to teach Math 1a (the first semester of freshman calculus.) He asked his fellow faculty members what he was supposed to teach in this course, and they told him: limits, continuity, differentiability, and a little bit of indefinite integration. The next day he came back and asked: What am I supposed to cover in the second lecture?" (from Spiro Karigiannis at http://mathoverflow.net/a/53238 http://mathoverflow.net/a/53238 - comments below refer to a version of the story where the professor is from the USSR specifically)
Scene_Cast2 13y ago
Maybe not grade school, but calculus comes in tenth grade or so, if my memory is right. Quadratic equations are 8th grade, compared to 11th in North America. It's actually telling of the quality of education, given that I did better in Math in college than in high school (in North America), and I still found it not anywhere rigorous enough.
- RogerL 13y ago
  I did quadratic equations in 7th grade in the US, in a back woods small hillbilly school in the US. With that said, I've generally heard foreign students equate the junior year of a math degree at college to their senior year at high school. I don't dispute your general point.
- michael_h 13y ago
  There is no 'North America' when talking about education. There isn't even a 'United States'. The high school experience differs widely. I went to public school in southeast Ohio. Quadratic equations (for me) were 8th grade. Calculus started midway through 10th, but didn't really get moving until 11th grade.
  - amichal 13y ago
    My US public high school did not offer calculus at all during my tenure. Resulted in very interesting conversations with university admissions departments.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  As others have pointed out, it varies widely by school and district. I went to public high school in the US, and we did Calculus and Multivariate Calculus in 11th and 12th grade. (And this is not uncommon, given that it maps to the two Advanced Placement math tests widely taken by US high school students.)
  - dubya 13y ago
    It's being standardized now across most states. It looks like quadratic equations are in high school. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/HSA/APR http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/HSA/APR

cperciva 13y ago

My mother went through high school in England in the mid-60s. I recently saw her A-level exam papers; they had a lot of questions which I would be surprised to see anywhere prior to third year college.

eru 13y ago
Was that a grammar school?
- cperciva 13y ago
  Yes.
billyjobob 13y ago
In the 60s only a tiny percentage of the top students went to university and so the standard at university was much higher. A-levels are university entrance exams and so similarly were only taken by the best. Even the old O-levels, taken at age 16, were equivalent to university level courses today. This fact is often used as proof that kids today aren't as smart at kids in the 60s, but in fact most kids in the 60s didn't take any exams whatsoever and just left school at age 15 with no qualifications.

alex-g 13y ago

Your comment reminded me of this story: "A certain well known mathematican, we'll call him Professor P.T. (these are not his initials...), upon his arrival at Harvard University, was scheduled to teach Math 1a (the first semester of freshman calculus.) He asked his fellow faculty members what he was supposed to teach in this course, and they told him: limits, continuity, differentiability, and a little bit of indefinite integration. The next day he came back and asked: What am I supposed to cover in the second lecture?" (from Spiro Karigiannis at http://mathoverflow.net/a/53238 http://mathoverflow.net/a/53238 - comments below refer to a version of the story where the professor is from the USSR specifically)

Scene_Cast2 13y ago

Maybe not grade school, but calculus comes in tenth grade or so, if my memory is right. Quadratic equations are 8th grade, compared to 11th in North America. It's actually telling of the quality of education, given that I did better in Math in college than in high school (in North America), and I still found it not anywhere rigorous enough.

RogerL 13y ago
I did quadratic equations in 7th grade in the US, in a back woods small hillbilly school in the US. With that said, I've generally heard foreign students equate the junior year of a math degree at college to their senior year at high school. I don't dispute your general point.
michael_h 13y ago
There is no 'North America' when talking about education. There isn't even a 'United States'. The high school experience differs widely. I went to public school in southeast Ohio. Quadratic equations (for me) were 8th grade. Calculus started midway through 10th, but didn't really get moving until 11th grade.
- amichal 13y ago
  My US public high school did not offer calculus at all during my tenure. Resulted in very interesting conversations with university admissions departments.
tomkarlo 13y ago
As others have pointed out, it varies widely by school and district. I went to public high school in the US, and we did Calculus and Multivariate Calculus in 11th and 12th grade. (And this is not uncommon, given that it maps to the two Advanced Placement math tests widely taken by US high school students.)
- dubya 13y ago
  It's being standardized now across most states. It looks like quadratic equations are in high school. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/HSA/APR http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/HSA/APR