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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

The most striking comment was this:

> Growing up with Indian parents in California, I was exposed to both. My mom would write daily Kumon sheets out by hand for me to do, and teach me from Indian textbooks from the same grade (which were much more advanced than the US equivalents). The result was me breezing through the US school system without much thought.

Ukrainian refugees I know are finding the same things in the UK school system, where the maths is much less advanced. Philippines schools, meanwhile, have better discipline and more motivated students.

I conclude that Western public education is in a bad state, and this is a source of chronic social weakness.

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With the caveat that I haven't looked in a while, the rot seemed very anglo-specific. Coming over from Germany almost three decades ago, it was amazing how much US text books just didn't cover.

There were a few developments in Germany that pointed in the same direction, but there a large gap at the time. Meanwhile, even back then, eastern Europe certainly had even higher standards. (I replaced a lot of math textbooks with a copy of Bronshtein & Semendyayev)

The influence of religious and conservative types has weakened US textbooks. Do a deep dive into how Texas can dictate what is presented in schoolbooks nationwide.

There are plenty of south/East Asian counties that have just as much if not more restrictions in textbooks. So I don’t think that alone accounts for the discrepancy

Be careful about reading and comprehending schoolbooks in Texas. Parents don't like to be pressed on most of the content, and are sometimes going to great lengths to get your book banned entirely.

That story wouldn’t work in deeply secular England, & it seems unlikely to explain underperformance in maths.

> Ukrainian refugees I know are finding the same things in the UK school system, where the maths is much less advanced.

This doesn't appear to be reflected in PISA scores (489 UK, 441 Ukraine)

Maybe because UK education system knows about this PISA and Ukraine and other countries don't even care?

For example one thing that puzzles me in western education is this reading comprehension. What exactly is this for? I studied in Russian school/university and we had nothing like that.

Reading means you should understand what you are reading, reading without comprehension is just nonsense for me.

I am Spanish. We call it text analysis and it is quit common at all levels in school and university.

So what exactly is it supposed to teach/train? If I understand meaning of individual words in the text I just put them together and I understand it. If its relatively complex topic I would sit and think about it.

It teach you resources for text construction.

The different meanings of a word relative to its semantic enviroment.

When, how, and why to use all the different time vebrs.

How to understand and use figures of speech.

And it gives you tools to analyze all of that.

People dont do that in Ukranian?

First of all I must say that I can only speak about Russian schooling, Ukranian is probably similar but I can't be sure about it.

> resources for text construction Not sure I understand this, there are words in a given language, you put them together and you have your text.

> The different meanings of a word relative to its semantic enviroment. I agree that some words may have multiple meanings, but this again sounds to me like a language skill, be able to understand what exactly each word means in a context. Not sure how this is different for reading or speaking.

> When, how, and why to use all the different time vebrs. This is an interesting one, I guess in Russian (I assume its similar in Ukranian) we don't have many complex time forms, I know in English and Spanish there are like 10 or more.

Somehow we only studied language and literature and did some exercises related to reading and understanding text, but it is not a whole separate subject.

In each school class kids are supposed to read books and learn from them, just like that.

Also, this problem is a vicious cycle. Bad math students become bad math teachers. I believe that one has to be significantly good at a subject in order to teach the basics well. In school I got a feeling that many math teachers did not know a chapter of math beyond what was in the textbook.

Doesn't help that in the American economy, good mathematicians can earn 10x more than a math teacher's salary.

Why do you assume Ukrainian math is memorization based? They actually do a lot of problem solving, they are not doing rote memorization.

Indian math system is not memorisation based either.

Math anywhere in the world is all about how many patterns you know/seen. And inventing new math is all about changing one small thing about the stuff you already know and see if it remains logically consistent.

Knowing what to change largely depends on the stuff you already know. To that end even if you don't memorize facts, you still need to memorize patterns.

You have to memorize something. Nobody invents the Apple pie from scratch.

You don't "memorize" when learning math. You solve problems and then you happen to learn to recognize patterns and start to remember some things. Those are not the same learning activities.

Memorization is something else. I have seen students trying to memorize math and these were all bad students. Completely lost when the exercise changed slightly.

If we start to use "memorization" for "any time something is remembered" then the word will loose its meaning.

"Drilling" is perhaps the better word. The point is it benefits from repetitive practice.

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