Hacker News Reader

Comment by strikelaserclaw | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder why these asian countries aren't doing laps around USA or other western countries if they were learning calculus in pre school.

View on HN

For one, they don't all have 11 aircraft carriers and 62 destroyers backing their money as the reserve currency in the world. For another, China certainly is.

Probably because high levels of math skill don’t translate to economic success. Analytical thinking is a good skill that math can teach you, but there is more than one path to that. In the context of a college education the ability to write clearly and persuasively is far more an important skill to learn.

As someone with a degree in math, I’ve always found the monomaniacal focus on how America is “behind” on math education quite baffling. Do people really thinking calculus skill is necessary to succeed?

It's not just math education. It's science as well. I'm bewildered that this is even something that people are even contesting what I wrote in 2022 on Hacker News of all places. The majority of PhDs in the STEMs are done by international students and have been for many years now. It's well known that American K-12 is woefully insufficient. But sure, I guess a-ok. But carry on with the straw man.

> The majority of PhDs in the STEMs are done by international students and have been for many years now.

Isn't this to be expected simply by virtue of the US's small population vs. the rest of the world?

A possible explanation that the US is still somehow leading despite the drop in proficiency in education (if that is indeed actually true), is that the high level of tech and investment done in the 70's and 80's are still playing out (and returning dividends). It might take one or two generations to pass before the cracks show up as real problems - like a demographic transition, you cannot patch it after the problem is discovered, but must anticipate and pre-empt the problem.

If the education in the US is in decline, then the next 2-3 decades will show a decline in innovation and tech improvements coming out of the US.

Look at where the design and manufacturing skills (especially electronics) went...

I don't know the answer to this and hence, don't know what this is trying to imply.

They're all too busy studying to run laps around us.

The USA is unique because we accept the best and the brightest from everywhere, but East Asian countries are doing laps around other “western” countries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com