Now my kids are being educated and they track them with just three words and I even forgot the words. LOL. Something like this. Progressing is one of the word, mastering something something. I forgot the word for struggling since my child didn't have it. It is still absurd and it's hard to know how the kid is progressing. They still do test and some teachers are discouraging doing assignments. Weird timeline we are in.
When I was a kid, our 1-6 grades were letters (E, G, S, N) that generally corresponded to "above, at, below, well below expectations" The point was to detect what needed extra attention and to help guide focus of the parents and teachers. 30 years later my kids have the same thing but the labels are a bit different. Grades 7-8 introduce A-F and then high school is just percentages.
I've also seen the opposite in a relative's reaction to their kid getting number grades. They fixated far too much 3 or 4 points either way and not the general signal.
Holding kids back a grade is really just a sloppy solution. It kind of speaks to, "we have nothing to offer. The best we can do is just teach you the same stuff again." It's essentially a sign of bad, or underfunded education.
The top 6 countries in the annual PISA test are all asian countries where uniforms are mandatory in public and private education (China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, HK)
I can't speak for the US textbooks at that level, but I can confirm that the Norwegian ones were pretty lousy, especially in history. I particularly remember they loved to hide crucial details in margin notes or image texts.
> There are a lot of good points being made in this thread. I have had a theory that it is in part related to the funding available for lab equipment and computers. During the latter half of the 20th century, in Russia you were very lucky to get access to a “real” computer.
Lets not forget that, selling computers (among other products) to Soviet Union and the whole East block was subject to Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) established in 1949.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul...
https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-90-185fs.pdf
"Western export restrictions on civilian computer equipment were lifted in May 1991."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...
But also, look at where almost all technological innovation has happened in the last 50 years
I take this to mean:
1) Communism obliterated the Soviet Union's ability to fund science (or anything else for that matter)
2) The people driving science forward in the West are educated some other way than strictly according to a "Common Core" quality curriculum(In a Russian accent) “if you throw many eggs at wall, most will break, but those that don’t are strong egg. Igor was strong egg”
He had multiple top 10s at world championships and 1 medal… definitely a strong egg
More like "commercialize" rather then fund.
Also notice that the educational system getting dumbed down operates on a generational timescale. If you screw it up for the 10 year olds, it'll still be decades before they're the ones in charge.
Free market, capital, open borders etc.
During soviet times you research whatever party sees interesting (an exaggeration here) and produce whatever and however Gosplan dictates.
If you don't have to pay for your oil, for example, there is no need to innovate in motors and if all stores are state owned - there is no need in better management, digital goods or networks.
Nobody is fighting for their customers - people just stand in line and at the end of the month you send your books to Gosplan, Statistics etc.
Then 90s. People leaving. Then Putin and Co. People living and while there is a market now - they've managed to recreate old problems still.
From my personal experience, people who are successful usually come from highly educated and/or wealthy families. I don't think school plays that much of a role in the grand scheme of things compared to family influences. There's a lot of inertia to society in general.
However, what we lost is that modern educational systems are really bad at identifying and "pulling up" talented kids from poor / under-educated families, because the standards and expectations are so low that you can't differentiate them from their peers.
For the top talented "the west" has the approach to do individual focus, with focus classes and prodigies and all that. It may not hit everybody whom it should and may waste some potential here and there, but it's less scary too and I don't see that it's an obviously worse approach to this skill bracket. (Two data points from top of my head: Terence Tao and Magnus Carlsen, both widely regarded as absolute top in their field, grew up in "the west".)
For the average person, trying to make math approachable and following peoples instincts and interests could be helpful too. I know lots of folks "in the west" for whom even basic math goes over their heads, but I also have quite a few acquaintances from the soviet era who were beaten so hard with advanced math that nothing stuck and they have equal much trouble with very basic math. The conclusion isn't obvious either, to me.
It relates to whether the most competent mathematician is also the best suited person to teach. I'd argue, no. Deep competency in math is a requirement, sure. But so is a firm grasp on pedagogy. I've had my share of excellent math researchers as professors who were utterly incompetent when it came to teaching. Similar with text books.
mistrial9•41m ago
Seriously, public schools in California are proposing removing the advanced math classes completely. This is not an old story, this is now.
nothercastle•38m ago
bananaflag•23m ago
nothercastle•18m ago
mistrial9•23m ago
you are not familiar with public education here. In one coastal city, more than 40 languages are spoken by students at home, with Spanish being a large component.
What I am saying is that 9th grade through 12th grade public standard curriculum is the topic of debate, with some groups, today, advocating removal of "advanced placement' courses in a broad way.
There is massive difference between certain particular schools, and the broad standardized, State-assigned curriculum.
nothercastle•4m ago
thevillagechief•22m ago
mysterydip•36m ago
mym1990•36m ago
odyssey7•23m ago
While I seek out courses with high expectations and appreciate a challenge, I do my moral duty when I raise issues about courses that are “rigorous” in ways unrelated to that. When someone says “rigor,” unfortunately these days, you have to confirm what they mean by that word, because some faculty seem to use it as a cover for shirking their responsibilities to their students — or worse, as an excuse for being actively hostile.
We cannot allow incorrect assertions of “rigor” to lower our intellectual standards to that of our most incompetent instructors. Students should advocate for higher standards.
altcognito•28m ago
California passed SB1410 which protects access to Algebra, which is a little weird in and of itself, but there it is.
mistrial9•26m ago
altcognito•23m ago
lubujackson•20m ago
Keeping the "clever poors" in their place seems to be one thing the left and right agree on.
pizzafeelsright•5m ago
The teachers cannot fail a student so the illiterates move up with the educated, where the gap becomes evident, the disruptions turns to abuse and attacks because the feral children cannot maintain civility.
Scubabear68•4m ago
The result is we have control only at the local school district level, which is typically run by a board of locally elected citizens with no idea what they are doing and no experience in either education or running large organizations. The school boards are popularity contests that controls tens and hundreds of millions of dollars with no discipline.
Predictably, in that environment actual learning is dumbed down as far as it can go. Social promotion is rampant, as is grade inflation and things like coloring books being used as far as middle school grades. Huge monies are spent and wasted on technology and consultants.
In NJ, they need to add in hard-core oversight of budgets and get rid of the massive focus on "equity" and social issues, and get back to the Three R's. They are starting to go in that direction with elimination of "screens", but it is being done in a hamfisted way.