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Comment by maga | Hacker News Reader

I went through the Soviet/Russian school system with all the advanced topics being covered in high school as others described here. My moment of zen was on my third year in one of the top tech universities in Moscow. There were quite a few students coming from Novosibirsk University who were comfortably ahead of the curve when it came to math. When they showed their transcript ("zachetka"), they had ~3000 hours of Calculus in the first few years against our ~120... As they described it, each day after the usual roster of lectures and seminars, they would spend 4 hours in class in the evening solving math problems with a teacher. While we might have spent a few hours doing homework every now and then, it was nowhere near this. Not to mention doing it in class with a teacher who would likely also give them more challenging problems and valuable feedback. The sheer amount of time and mental effort was staggering.

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My personal experience is that it wasn't just hours. Those who liked math spent a lot of time on it after classes. Those who didn't, avoided extras and still did OK (they would not go to top universities, but the base would be OK, with some practice, if they decide to go to a mid-level school).

The biggest difference for me in school was a consistent, well thought out program (one for the whole country) and books. A topic would be studied once, well, and there would be enough time to master the material. Consistency across subjects, too -- if physics covered a topic in, say, the second half of the grade 7, the math needed would be covered in the math classes before then.

What I now see in the US is horrible: teachers at grade N do not know for sure what the students already know, so they repeat a lot of the background, then jump around to cover a lot of material, much of which is never mastered. Which is considered OK -- it will likely be repeated in the same haphazard fashion next year. Or not, depending on what the next teacher decides.

That is indeed terrifying.

Not to take away from the importance of a well-thought-out program, learning materials, or competent teachers, I was drawing attention to the immense time and effort that some students would invest often with an institutionalized help.

In our case, the programs were standardized, the textbooks were virtually the same throughout the union. Barred special schools and eccentric teachers, all kids were studying the same things at the same time. What differentiated the bespoken Siberians from us was that order of magnitude difference in the time put in. It challenged my sense of normalcy in many ways: people being this good at math without being apparent geniuses, universities teaching math extra 4 hours a day, realization that there is enough undergrad calculus to last 3K hours.

You’re describing an idea adjacent to “mastery” schooling; it’s the natural method people tend to use when self-taught; it’s also how some online schools, like Khan Academy, use to teach. Both of my kids earn “allowance” (extra screen time; robux; etc.) by doing Khan Academy courses. Watching how unevenly they pick up topics — there’s no rhyme-or-reason to the speed they pick up even “close” skills — makes me think there’s malice aforethought in the steady pace learning I had as a child.

The only thing mastery schooling taught me was empathy for people whose learning style doesn't fit the style used in a classroom.

It's hard to understand the the connections between and motivations for concepts when you are learning everything about a topic before moving on. I prefer the style described above, of learning the basics then moving on and circling back when more advanced aspects are needed.

Clearly different styles work better for different people.

> Both of my kids earn “allowance” (extra screen time; robux; etc.) by doing Khan Academy courses

Highlighting this because I love the idea and can't wait to try it out :-)

>teachers at grade N do not know for sure what the students already know, so they repeat a lot of the background, then jump around to cover a lot of material, much of which is never mastered.

I spent my freshman year of high school in France, and went to a French school (this is 3ème, for my fellow Frenchmen).

I recall being stunned -- in the best way possible -- when our biology teacher started his class on the first day with: "So. You've seen X last year. Now we're going to talk about related-thing-Y".

That had never happened in my US curriculum. Never.

My wife went through the French "classe préparatoire" system and describes a similar degree of raw effort that was put into her studies (and in particular, mathematics). She talks about spending 10-12 hours a day either in class or studying at home, and I have to admit the amount of knowledge in that woman's head is absolutely astounding. Her education is elite in the same way that a sports team or military unit can be elite.

There are obviously issues with pushing young adults this hard, but my overall feeling is that American schools need more of this.

As an immigrant in the US from Central Europe, I am blown away by how much time American children spend on extracurriculars vs academics (at least based on what I see around me). My extracurriculars in high school were maaaybe 5 hours a week. Some kids in the US spend 5 hours a day, every day. And don't get me started on varsity sports - that starts to resemble a job!

In hindsight, after spending nearly a decade in France (initially for graduate school), it seems very strange to me as well.

I've come away from this with the impression that American schools are the best-funded in the world, and survive by importing the best-educated from elsewhere. This is obviously a bit of a caricature, but I think it's mostly correct.

Extracurricular activities are a way for US students to stand out in terms of college admissions. When I was in high school our college advisors told us that Universities look to fill niches in each class year. Good students are relatively interchangeable, but if the University wants a Lacrosse team, an Equestrian team, some Oboe players, and stagehands for its drama department it will look for applicants that have those backgrounds already. So, if you happen to have decent grades but a background in some niche thing, you are much more likely to be selected. So in that sense, going from a B+ to an A- in terms of overall GPA isn't going to help as much as having some in-demand skill.

>Extracurricular activities are a way for US students to stand out in terms of college admissions.

You are of course correct, but I think the parent comment is implying that this is a rather unfortunate situation. I agree with him to a large extent.

My experience with the French system has left me with the sense that American schooling has to some extent cheated me out of an education. On the other hand, I look at my wife (and other "prépa" students as well) and conclude that they suffer from a certain lack of imagination and intrinsic motivation, both of which have personally benefitted me greatly, and which I attribute to something in American culture.

As my wife puts it (I'm paraphrasing, obviously): "We were never asked what we enjoyed doing; if you were a good student, you were put on the good-student-track, which was a math/science-heavy curriculum. To this day, I don't really know what I want to do; I just know what I can do, and I feel an obligation to excel at it." She's an absolute brute at math, but she doesn't like it, and I think she would have been much happier studying something like literature.

So my feeling on the matter the French educational system is one of ambivalence, overall. Nevertheless, I am convinced the US has strayed much too far in the other direction.

My 10-year old nephew plays on 6 different baseball teams. He literally plays more baseball games than my uncle did when he was a AA player :)

A bit tangential here, but our calculus/math analysis professor actually told us that the Russian and later Soviet math school drew a lot from the French, although, he might have been biased due to his apparent partiality towards Bourbaki. According to him, the university level math was taught exclusively in French during the Tsarist times, and they had some troubles coming up with Russian terminology when Soviets ordered all teaching to be done in Russian.

The language of the tsarist elite was french. They even didn't need to know russian, except for speaking to their servants

I can’t help but wonder what value students see for studying calculus 8 hours a day every day for more than a year.

Maybe I’m actually just subconsciously jealous, but unless you major in math, what do you even do with that? Not to mention there’s little time left to study anything else.

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