Start-Up Teaches Math to Americans, Indian-Style
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
"for some reason"? I'll tell you the reason: incentives. The kids are learning by social osmosis that status is gained by athletic achievement, not by mathematical achievement. This is one of the ways in which popular culture lies to kids about likely outcomes, which distorts their ability to make rational decisions about the future.
Also, the comparison between American kids and Indian kids in the US is not quite fair, since these Indians are a highly biased sample of the true Indian population.
So the difference must be in something else, too. My personal guess is that the math in the US schools must be just too "easy". So, if kids everywhere on average learn about 60% of the math they are taught, they will be better in countries where the math taught is more advanced.
This is so prevalent that reciting multiplication tables (the higher, the smarter you are) in front of guests, when you are 4-6, is a very common thing across all Indian cultures.
Extra math classes, like "Vedic mathematics", which provide shortcuts to faster arithmetic, are a rage in urban India.
My take on why an 'average' Indian kid is a little bit better than an 'average' American kid in math, is just because (s)he has done more of it and with a bit more rigor. Everyone needs to pass a mandatory math exam here (as part of what we call class Xth board exams), and only after doing that one gets a choice to pick a stream of subjects of his/her liking (that may or may not include math).
As everywhere, some kids do have trouble liking/understanding math, but they do not have much of an option initially and their parents also keep the ante up, on studies for this particular subject. (Of all the kids who are not able to clear the Xth board exams, the percentage flunking in math is the highest). Another reason that helps getting this subject more priority, is that for most of the better paying professions, it is a must. (Sadly, majors in humanities mostly have more trouble getting in to top earning bracket).
A similar example is about learning the English language. Kids in India do it more than kids in China/Japan, and hence do it better on an 'average'.
The Indian culture gives a lot of importance to having good math skills. If your mom asks you to get something from the neighbouring shop, you better have your math right. Kids are always taught to count the change and demand the correct change after a transaction.
So, addition and subtraction have to have on the spot without the help of a electronic teller. Perhaps that can give an insight into why I insist that the Indian culture requires you to be sharp with your basic math.
I have alternate story about maximum "fails" in the board exams. A lot of students dread Hindi (an artificially imposed third language in South India) and to a lesser extent English.
Yeah, I agree with your premise that good secondary math skills are a result of ultra-competitive nature of college admissions and job market. But, it still doesn't take away the fact that a student with average overall score in India will be better off than an average student in US when it comes to "usable" mathematics.
I am voting you for that one,though I am not sure about the first part of your post.
Artificially imposed? Of the four states that make up South India, one state (Tamil Nadu) considers Hindi "artificially imposed.
Three of the four(Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh) have no problems with Hindi and don't consider it an "imposition".
Careful with the snap judgments!
The urban south-Indians learn Hindi, when necessary, by osmosis and from media.
AFAIK, passing hindi (score > 35/100) is no longer a criterion for getting one's high school diploma. Thank $deity.
I have spent all my life in Bangalore, India and I'm nearing 30.
You're just rephrasing the problem, though. WHY do certain societies give more status to athletic rather than to mathematical achievement, relative to other societies?
Why not focus on the fun side of math from an early age?
This startup can be immensely helpful but please, don't see this as a begin and end all for mathematics education. If a student is capably of grasping the axiomatic principles of mathematics, such a learning path is infinitely preferable to the do-lots-of-problems method. [2]
[1] This is pretty much the exact same gripe that I have with programs like Kumon which give students lots and lots of problems without giving a solid mathematical foundation for why these problems behave as they do. For more information, Lockhart's Lament (http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html) is an excellent essay written by a mathematician on this topic.
[2] This is not to say that an axiomatic mathematics education is for everybody. For one thing, a student may not be interested or capable of such an education (just like how I am completely incapable of remembering anything). However, for students interested in mathematics, it is the way to go.
For the average person, arithmetic is sufficient but for an advanced major,
giving them problems is crushing (I speak from personal experience).
I was also startled a bit by the following statement in the article:
Math homework in India consists of math problems that students work through, as opposed to the United States,
where homework is heavy on reading about math topics in a textbook.
For some reason, American kids seem to be willing to put in the work with athletics,
but not put it in with the one subject that’s going to matter more to their lives than any other activity.
An army is marching down a road at Xmph and stretches out 1 mile in length. An officer at the rear of the army notices a problem. How long does it take him to get to the front of the line traveling at Ymph and how many minutes does it take him to do the round trip?
Now, if you hand this to a bunch of collage students who have not seen it before a surprisingly small fraction is going to be able to do it quickly and they are not generally the ones who think of math a series of steps from problem to solution.
Anyway, I found the math classes thoroughly enjoyable. The teachers pretty much let me do whatever I wanted as long as I didn't disrupt the class. I'd usually be a few chapters ahead, or helping out the kid next to me, or something like that. Very often, the curriculum was challenging even for me. We had Fermat's infinite descent in the eighth grade! I distinctly remember ruler and compass construction problems in my ninth grade that I'd have great trouble solving even now.
The good thing was, the super-hard parts that I've mentioned were all optional and were never on the exams. It worked out perfectly -- students who were both smarter than average and self-motivated would spend most of our time on those parts. My teachers were happy to answer my questions about that stuff after class, even though it was irrelevant as far as our grades were concerned.
One teacher in particular was amazing. She rewarded outside-the-box thinking, and if there was more than one way to solve a problem, she let us present them all. She acknowledged when she was wrong. Damn, writing this has made me all nostalgic and want to find her and thank her :-)
One time, I was working through a textbook that was two or three grade levels ahead. I had a question that she couldn't answer right away. She went home, did her research, and helped me out the next day. How awesome is that?
We had one horrendously bad teacher. They fired her after two months.
Some other great memories.. we all learned to program in the fifth grade. That was tons of fun. A computer cost more than a building back then in India :-) Vector calculus in the ninth grade. And so on.
Of course, everything except math and science was a disaster, but there's no way there was anything wrong with the math curriculum. I'm quite aware that 90% of my friends at other schools had completely unmotivated teachers, but again, not a fault of the curriculum.
I distinctly remember a few who made subjects like Sanskrit, Organic Chemistry, History (that itself is interesting in any case) appeal much more, and never let the curriculum dictate or slow down the learning process of fast moving kids.
Maybe you daughter just isn't very fond of arithmetic (what most high schools teach). An introductory book on some axiomatic branch of mathematics may be useful in that case.