\priv\2000\09\steinbo.txt
great, any more details could fill in on this situation 
could clarify this. My details on the Russian 
education path is fuzzy, it's the germans who put their
college kids through to G13. The Americans are the only 
ones crazy enough to propose that everyone be proficient
in university prep math and science. (Or am I wrong on this
too?) Not even the communists were crazy enough to assume
that all students were equally capable, as is the assumption
of standards based education.




-----Original Message-----
From: Assessment Reform Network Mailing List
[mailto:ARN-L@listsrva.CUA.EDU]On Behalf Of Victor Steinbok
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 6:57 AM
To: ARN-L@listsrva.CUA.EDU
Subject: Re: If the USSR is so great at math, why do they suck?




Arthur Hu wrote:
>
> All the russians I've talked to claim


In the great laugh of a book Losing Our Language, Sandra Stotsky claims
that "all the Haitian cab drivers [she had] talked to" claim that
they've taken their children out of public schools and placed them into
private ones, so that the kids would learn English faster. Of course,
the statement would remain logically impeccable even if she talked to NO
drivers. How many is "all", Arthur?


> that all their
> 7th graders master algebra, and all their 9th
> graders master calculus, so their "skilled" track is
> finished with our pre-college math sequence by grade
> 10, and done with freshman calculus for the precollege
> track by grade 12 or 13.


On Planet Mars, all the Russian master calculus by grade 12 or 13. On
planet Earth, Russians graduate from secondary school after grade 11.
Please check you facts.


If you are, on the other hand, referring to the extended programs in
voctechs, they do not "master" the same materials even though they are
supposed to "cover" them. The main difference is that the voctech
students are bound for the military upon graduation, not for college.
Actually, the automatic conscription has now been eliminated, I believe,
so they are bound for unemployment instead.


And their women are also all 7 foot tall--"mastery" never enters the
picture. See the earlier message for details.


> That's way the heck beyond
> the US, if that's true. But other than fighter planes
> and space stations, USSR science stinks compared to
> the US. How do you explain total US dominance in
> science and math if we suck so badly?? Bracey
> has written about this dilemma as well.


I wonder... Could it be... immigration?


> The best Chinese are great at math, but they can't
> get their population beyond middle school graduation.


Despite your assurances on the Russian front, the same applies to them
as well. The Chinese "population" is also not educated evenly. The
dropouts are mainly in the rural areas to the west of the main
population centers. In urban areas, there is more of a control over
schools. There is also a great distinction between the educated class
and everyone else. This has been detailed in the press over the past six
months.


        VS-)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L
to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.


Arthur Hu wrote:
>
> I don't like the sound of this, this is how we got to
> fuzzy math and discovery based no-facts science. The
> Russians make all their 7th graders master high school
> algebra, but which nation is #1 in science in the world?


You really should be more careful with your language and your claims,
Arthur. "Fuzzy" math and "no-facts" science are propaganda terminology
and have no basis in fact. discovery-based science is only "no-facts" in
the hands of a truly ignorant or truly devious teacher. The math is
fuzzy in every classroom a teacher can only recite what's written in the
textbook--the text could be as straight and cold as Saxon or as warm and
fuzzy as MathLand (was that the origin of the term? "warm and fuzzy"?).


As for the Russians mastering 7th grade algebra, your claim is just
plain silly (and I am speaking from experience). First, "algebra" is
taught from grade 7 to grade 11 (the final year of secondary school), it
is taught alongside "geometry" for the duration (and physics and biology
as well, and chemistry for 4 out of 5 years). And the average Russian
student "masters" algebra in 7th or any other grade no more so than the
average American student "masters" the corresponding material.


And, on top of it, they have four tests in grade 9 (used to be 8, when
the school was only 10 
years--they added mandatory K as grade 1 and
shifted the rest up 1)--oral Russian language and geometry and written
essay and algebra. The results of the tests, COMBINED WITH THE GRADES,
determine whether the student continues in the secondary school or ends
up in a 4-5 year program at a voctech. At the end of either grade 11 or
the last year of voctech, all students take exit examination, of which,
I believe, there are six (there might be more, or fewer--I do not have
the most recent data). These tests, however, are NOT high-stakes. They
end up on the final transcript, but they do not actually prevent anyone
(with rare exceptions) from getting a diploma. College entrance,
however, is a different matter. This is where the transcripts matter the
most AND the high-stakes are the on the entry exams, although the ethnic
minorities (and Jews, in particular) often run up against test score
manipulations (particularly on oral tests, which is a strong argument
against such things). One of the latest Field Medal winners was
initially rejected by Moscow State University, ostensibly because he is
Jewish. Luckily, he had friends who discovered that the problem he was
offered to solve at an oral examination is a currently UNSOLVED problem.
They called other friends, who put pressure on the examining committee
to give him another chance. Obviously, it was worth it (he is now in
Paris, after a brief stint at Berkeley).


        VS-)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L
to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.


Arthur,
You are forgetting that Russia, Japan and just about everyone else in
the world have national curricula. To the best of my knowledge, there
were at most three math textbooks at any given level at any one time in
Russian-speaking schools as late as early 1990s. Now, they have more
different versions, but, fundamentally, there have been few significant
conflicts over what should go in the curriculum AND, when the change
happens, as it did several times with the Geometry 6-8 (now, 7-9)
textbook when Kolmogorov and Pontriagin had a big fight over the
axiomatic systems, it is always wholesale. You do not have individual
districts suddenly deciding that they want a new book because there is
not enough drill in the earlier one.


Japan has cut down on school time, in general, and math classes, in
particular. This is happening at the same time as a few people here are
screaming, "More teaching time, like Japan!" The Japanese, the Chinese,
the Taiwanese who want reform, come here to look at the less
drill-oriented ("fuzzy") programs, so they can adopt something similar
at home. The one thing that the educational right admires the most about
East Asian math teaching is the one thing their teachers and
mathematicians want to see reduced or eliminated! Japan even appointed a
Nobel-prize physicist to change math and science education by bringing
in more creativity into the classroom (at the same time that OUR Nobel
Prize winners are signing letters to Riley, without reading them).


As far as Americans of Asian or Jewish descent are concerned, their
academic prowess seems to be matched by the Russian Jews (although there
are few left), but not the Asian ethnic minorities in Russia (most of
them, in fact, are not well educated). This is not to say that ALL Asian
Americans or ALL Jews in the US or in Russia (or other parts of the
former Soviet Union) do great in mathematics. It is simply a perception
from the outside because there seems to be a greater percentage of
high-achievers coming from these groups than predicted by the
demographics. However, to assume that these groups are somehow better in
math is no less racist than to assume that the ethnic groups that are
less represented among the high-scoring population are somehow not good
in math. The differences are cultural, with at least significant parts
of the Asian American and Jewish populations placing high emphasis on
education as means of advancement, particularly with recent immigrants
and the already entrenched intellectual groups. It is as if there are
two separate populations within these ethnic groups--there is a
self-selected part whose children are uniformly high-performing, and
there is the "other" part that has the same distribution of performance
as the rest of the American population. This division is actually
mirrored in China, where the intellectual class is largely
self-perpetuating and rarely gains new blood from other social classes
(one must make allowances for the post-revolutionary periods however,
when large chunks of the intellectual classes in Russia and in China
were eliminated; once their ranks have been replenished, however, by the
newly educated intellectuals, they had become as closed off as they had
been before).


As far as Russia, Japan and China being more mathematically
"enlightened" is concerned, it is just a part of extended Cold War
propaganda. With the Russians, it was the space program that got our
attention, with the Chinese, it was the rapid economic development, with
the Japanese--tons of cheap electronic goods and cars, which Americans
seem to think require a lot of mathematics to design.


As I have already mentioned, about the only country *I* would place in
the "mathematically-enlightened" group is Hungary. For all the hoopla
about the high-scoring Singapore students, there is not even a handful
of mathematicians or other math-professionals coming out of Singapore
(it is, of course, a tiny country), and for all the high-powered
mathematicians that come from the cultural elites in Russia and China,
there are millions of mathematical illiterates in both countries. There
was one time (and it is probably still true, for the most part) when the
Americans were looking to Japan and China as models of math education,
the Japanese and Chinese wanted to emulate the Russian programs, and the
Russians were positively struck by the American system. The grass is
always greener on the other side, but the reforms must come from within,
as they did in Hungary, in the 50s and 60s, and in the Netherlands, in
the 70s and 80s.


        VS-)


Arthur Hu wrote:
>
> so does that mean the Russians don't learn / teach math
> any better than the Americans? Is there any nation that
> can compete with our Asi