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Apart from the former communist math teaching being much better, I think it is cultural as well.

Being an engineer in a former communist country was (is) a ticket to good life, similar lifestyle to a doctor or a lawyer.

In the US being an engineer is seen as boring, and something only nerdy un-socialable people do. Also there are more attractive alternatives to pursue for smart people in the US.

Basically, it boils down that a society will produce the type of talent that it values (by both training, and steering talented folks to certain disciplines).

I'd say it is the same reason the US sucks at producing soccer talents, event compared to much smaller countries like Croatia or Belgium.

On the other hand, a lack of math teachers could be explained because people who have decent math skills can now live off that skill by being an engineer much more easily than before when they would have been math teachers.

So a society with a paucity of math skilled people means less teachers with math skills which perpetuates the cycle?

That was my thought. I wonder what the backgrounds are of Russian teachers/professors of mathematics? I do not know oodles of math teachers, but all of my teachers as a kid, and friends who teach math now, received a four year degree on mathematics and went right in to teaching. They were very uninspiring (career-wise) people, with little knowledge of how math is applied outside of a high-school/university context.

Anecdotes from growing up in the rural US. In high school:

- We went through three math teachers one year because they could find less stressful, better-paying work as accountants.

- My AP Stats teacher had to work weekends at Best Buy.

Anecdote from my rural area. The last few math teachers eventually switched over to being the librarian or home economics teacher. Because it paid exactly the same but the curriculum was much easier to teach and isn't subject to the stresses and rigors of standardized testing.

It seems math textbooks in the US are 2-3 grade levels easier than those in East Asia. SAT Math is considered a piece of cake even by non-top but good students there. I heard Russian math is similarly rigorous.

This reduces the level of logical thinking skills most American children get to practice from school. Programming well requires good abstract and logical thinking which is easier to develop from a young age. Thus the US math education may in effect reduce the chances of many people achieving their potentials.

Tangentially, can someone knowledgeable shed light on why American math curriculum is significantly easier than those in East Asia and Russia?

Logical thinking skills are the gateway to independent thought. Too much of that and the proles could stage a revolt.

Wouldn't that be true in Russia and East Asia as well?

Except their citizens are aware that their freedom is constrained. Americans are deluded by the "land of the free" mantra. The powers that be don't want to face a collective red pill movement.

The 2-3 grade delta sounds about right. I was a good but not too math student in (Eastern European) country before moving here. I Didn't have to open a math book again for about 3 years. Most of my friends from the same generation of immigrants would give the same number.

More was simply expected of us. Not "hoped for" or "aspired to", but expected. And parents weren't at loggerheads with teachers; what teachers said was law. So if a teacher said you were learning the multiplication table this week, parents didn't argue it was too much, or encourage you to "do your best." You'd be drilled on those times tables until you wanted to kill someone, but you'd damn well be expected to have them memorized by the end of the week.

The idea that people were driven by good money is a western misinterpretation, or whatever the cultural equivalent of anachronism is. My grandmother used to scold my aunt for marrying an engineer instead of a tin knocker, like my mother did, because tin knockers brought home the real money.

I think those two elements - expectations and parental cooperation - don't get enough credit, by far.

As someone who grew up in India, I can attest this about the education system there too. This whole culture of parents always ready to come and fight with teachers over the smallest things just didn't exist. Other than in extraordinary circumstances, you gave the teacher and the system the benefit of doubt.

If you were scolded by the teacher, there was a good chance you would get another scolding back at home once your parents found out about the incident.

Unfortunately (or not?), through what seems to be a western influence, this is slowly degrading.

This is true. Discipline is very important in learning process. Another important thing is - completing at least primary education in mother tongue which improves thinking process. Sadly these days parents prefer international public schools.

>>Other than in extraordinary circumstances, you gave the teacher and the system the benefit of doubt.

This is changing or has changed in India. These days you can't do anything much to the child, even if the child is clearly getting spoilt. Parents seem to have very bloated egos these days.

The bad side effect of this is many teachers don't really have the same degree of connect with their pupils these days. So its largely like - "What have I too lose, should you get spoilt' mentality is getting common.

In a generation back during my parents's time, teachers were literally looked up as very honorable and respectable. I even know of an incident which my uncle told. He used to play a lot and was not good at studies, when he passed examinations, my grandparents would go to the school and ask the teachers if they gave their pupil a honest evaluation. They literally would be surprised if he got a pass, and asked the teachers to be honest if had failed. Compare this with parents today.

This reminds of a song in Hindi from the movie '3 idiots':

kandho ko kitabo ke boj pe jhukaya, rishwat dena to khud papa ne sikhaya

For sure parents play a big role. The "forced practice" and colaboration with the teachers certainly are factors. I think a socio economic context also plays an important role.

In an affluent family (as define by people who didn't have to worry about money for three generations) access to education is a given, and therefore less valued.

If your family is poor and your access to education is more uncertain, you'd value what you get to learn a lot more. In this context learning and persevering takes on a dimension of "duty" to help out the family. This feeling of duty towards your family caused by family poverty can transfer for several generations. If you grow up aware of the the struggle that your parents and grandparents had to go through to get to where you are now, you end up feeling obliged to learn this math thing.

> why American math curriculum is significantly easier than those in East Asia and Russia?

I see three reasons.

1. In the US, no child can be left behind. The only way to do it is to lower the plank for everyone.

2. Over-reliance on standardized testing, judging students and teachers by scores alone. Knowing how and when to intelligently guess on multiple choice questions is rewarded, while ability to communicate well during oral exam is not.

3. Textbooks are ridiculous. Lots of paper, with very little density, and crazy expensive. Textbooks in Russia are more like AoPS books.

I totally hear you about 3. I was super shocked when I (North America educated) went to visit a university bookstore in Bulgaria. For around $5 I was able to buy a "Mathematical methods of physics" book that covered in 300 pages the material that I had learned from three or four books. Sure the book did almost no "hand holding" and just blaster through the material, but still—it was all there.

I've been recently looking at middle school and high school math textbooks and they're even worse than the books for first-year undergraduates. Yes, treat the reader as if they're an idiot and spell everything out and make them practice the steps. It's like the books are written by helicopter authors who insist on showing you their way. No wonder kids are not into math.

Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it.

Eventually, things like Khan Academy might prove a lot more useful in making math and science a culturally desirable field.

>Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it.

I think the problem is expecting some "nice" (friendly, etc) way of teaching math, which dilutes their content (like Disney-fying a novel).

The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there.

I advise taking a look at the mir titles or the Israel Gelfand books. Looking from it, Russian are really good at producing top notch popular science.

Tough there is no fry, their math book are almost game like, with few carefully built example and very clear explanation using only some diagram when needed (consequently their book are quite small) and the exercise are absolutely not rote based, except the first few exercice, and even then they all serve to illustrate a specific part of a concept, all the others are puzzle like problem.

Putting lots of full color image is not making math "fun", well built and interesting problem is.

OMG I LOVED THE MIR BOOKS! Yes, they were incredibly simple, weren't littered with images, only essential diagrams. And the English translations were very good... I can only imagine what the Russian language versions were.

> The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there.

Not entirely. A lot of it is problem solving exercises as opposed to rote solve 20 exactly same problems in row seen in us books. Memorization won't help you solve those exercises. There is also les focus on arithmetic and more on equations much sooner.

If you actually like math, you will prefer Russian exercises, cause they challenge you.

Agree! And it's not just limited to math.

I used to study for my engineering entrance exams with the Problems in General Physics book by IE Irodov. They were some of the most challenging and creative problems that I have ever solved. They are quite interesting and require critical thinking to solve. Even the problems I later studied in actual engineering courses didn't come any close.

The books by Russians in any of the STEM courses are really well written and approach problem solving in a way that most American and/or Indian books don't.

the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture

So true. It's cool to say you are bad at math.

This sounds a lot like stereotype threat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat). I'd say though, rather than "it's acceptable to be bad at these things," people instead avoid it _because_ they feel they will do poorly and fail at it if they try.

Yeah it was frustrating to see a good friend of mine that has taught himself to make basic computer games in gamemaker, that can play competitive MTG (notable due to the large state machine you have to simulate in your head) and can pick up new systems quickly shyed away from CS because he'd need to take a math class.