From: gene@cs.bu.edu (Gene Itkis)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: US/RUSSIAN EDUCATION
Date: 5 Oct 92 00:14:29 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Originator: gene@cs


For whatever it is worth, here are two of my personal experiences, one in USSR
and the second in USA. 
 The first was in the second grade (8 years old) in USSR. I had a teacher who
taught us that zero times a number is zero, but a number times zero is the
number. By that time I knew (I don't remember where I learned it - perhaps in
the first grade, which attended at a different school) the commutative law -
the teacher, apparently, did not... She used her authority to shut me up. When
I told my father about it he did not believe me at first - I had to bring a
"witness" from my class. When he went to speak to her, she would not yield
easily even then. Eventually he had convinced her that he has more diplomas in
math (she later confessed to him to have graduated from a pedagogical institute
majoring in Ukrainian literature). He never did succeed convincing her that her
argument ("if you have no rubles in a pocket, then even in five pockets you
still would have none. but if you have five rubles in a pocket - where would
they disappear to when you multiply by a zero?") was flawed. The funniest part
was that she asked him to tell me to keep the whole thing secret in order to
save her reputation (avtoritet). So I guess the rest of my classmates (except
those who believed me in the very beginning :) went on believing her
multiplication table.  Later on there were quite a few cases in my schools
where the teachers demonstrated complete ignorance in the subjects they were
teaching (though never quite to the same extent).  It was quite common for them
to use authority to subdue questions they could not deal with. One of my
greatest surprises when I started in MIT was the ease with which the star
scientists admited their ignorance (and there is no question that my school
teachers were much more ignorant). I found that honesty quite refreshing (note,
I never attended higher education institutions in USSR and have no basis for
comparison here).

The second experience was in a supposedly good US school where I attended for
one semester the Advanced Placement courses in Math, Physics and Chemistry. I
don't remember much about Chemistry - I never really was interested in it and
the course was extremely boring on top of that. The Physics was very good - we
were covering material which was new to me and the instructor seemed to make it
an intellectual challenge (perhaps I would have a different opinion now, but I
remember that it was a small class with a great deal of class participation
where we had to think during the class and in the homeworks). The Math,
however, was terrible. If I have a stereotype of how bad Math education in US
can get, then that class gives good example of it. All I remember was
integration techniques thrown at the class with the speed of a machine gun.
Perhaps I am slow (I always had that problem - I often missed questions on high
school exams because I had to derive the formulas I needed, instead of, like
the rest, simply to remember them), but I cannot believe there was a chance for
anyone in that class to think. It was like trying to memorize a cook-book (and
without actually tasting the food either - just preparing it). There was no
room for intuition, understanding or global vision. This experience was later
complemented by talking to parents of younger children who complained that
their children in the first grade were doing arithmetics with one digit
numbers, in the second grade - with two digit numbers, and so on. And that the
requests for a more challenging program were usually answered with more
arithmetic problems assignments of the same kind. One teacher gave no credit to
a x-russian boy because "he did his divisions wrong" - turned out he used to
write them up in the russian, as opposed to english style (she could see
neither the equivalence, nor that his answers were right.) 

It is difficult (and imho meaningless) to compare russian and american
education on the whole. What seems to be of little doubt, though, is the fact
that russian best education system (the one of Kolmogorov's internats,
Gelfand's school by correspondence, specialized schools, etc.) hardly has a
parallel in US (need I add - unfortunately). An active member of that system,
Andrey Toom, who now teaches at U of Texas, describes american students at
their worst (and their parents!) as a patient coming to a doctor and instead of
asking for a treatment, demanding a certificate of health. (I have recently
read his speech at some educators conference - I highly recommend it to all
interested in this subject. Unfortunately, I had it in a manuscript form thru
some friends and don't know of any way of obtaining it other than directly from
him.) He goes on to note that it is indeed quite understandable - the
certificate is how the future applicant for a job is going to be judged (at
least "at the first gate"). I can testify it from my experience too: I was
quite foolish in my undergrad years, esp in the beginning (I remember a course
where my bi-weekly test grades alternated between the 90's and 20's). As a
result it took a great deal of luck for me to get my first job - the
interviewer was an (real american) math hacker who loved pretty problems, and I
never remember such a fun interview where we would exchange such problems (he
did ask me more :) and I was able to give the answers to most even before he'd
finish them. Even no doubt he was pleased with the interview he had trouble
getting me hired. And just to brag a bit more: there were three other people
hired a few months before me (btw, just to make sure we are not dumping on
americans - they all were immigrants from all over). They went on thru the
training period of 6 months. By time the finished their training I completed my
first project beating the time allocated on it (I did have to learn the same
thing they did -a completely new system - on the fly) and going on with other
projects. In the first year I was promoted twice. And all that bragging is only
to point out that if I did not run into my future boss I probably would not get
the job. (I am still grateful to you, Bob!) So, coming back to american
education, there is a lot of pressure on students to put grades ahead of
knowledge and (perhaps even more important) intellect ("thinking skills",
though I do not like the word "skills"). There is also a pressure to learn
buzz-words and have them in the certificate too. As a result, Toom points out
that the typical math text reads really complex and sophisticated in the table
of context, but the real contexts are missing. On top of this put the typical
american phenomenon of students complaining of instructor teaching them wrong
(Toom mentions that whenever he makes up problems for exams, if he considers a
problem even a little bit interesting, he knows he cannot use it). Even though
the right to ignorance is not in the american constitution, the students seem
to treat it as one of their most unalienable rights.

I was planing just to add my 2 cents, but it's gotten to be much more in volume
if not in value. To conclude, the issue is not a trivial one, and comparing the
two systems (are we really talking of only two systems?) is not easy. I am not
against jousting, but let's not in the heat of the argument trivialize things.
-- 
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	Gene Itkis		(gene@cs.bu.edu)