Chinese Math versus English Math
A BBC News article shows the difference between an entrance exam question into university from China versus England:
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
At first glance, I find this funny and embarassing (for the English University). After a little bit of thought, I realized that it all depends on the way we look at it.
I taught at an international school for a couple of years, where I had the opportunity to teach students from around the world (including China). The students came to Calgary to study High School, and eventually wanted to go to a Canadian University. The students from China were extremely hard working and most of them were bright in the Maths and Sciences. However, after a while living in Calgary, most of them became a lot less studious, and a lot more rebellious. A few factors could have contributed to this change (for instance, no parents to back them up at home, as most of them stayed with distant relatives or canadian families), but I think the type of schooling (the curriculum, the amount of homework, the way teachers interacted with students, the types of exam questions) was the big part of the picture.
Another thing to consider is the fact that in China, it is extremely hard to get into University (too many people and not enough universities), so the exam questions must be killers for the best to get admitted. But then once they're in, the courses, and content aren't as bad (or so one of my Chinese students told me). Maybe in Canada, England, States it's the opposite.
I saw a documentary about chinese jugglers. They excel at it completely - they strive to be the best in the world, and they dedicate their whole lives to it, spending every minute on practice. I guess it's the same with math (or science, or gymnastic, or whatever else). This doesn't happen in Canada very often. How is it that the Chinese have such dedication, and Canadians don't?
Chinese Math vs. English Math
We hear constantly that our math/science education is inferior to that which is offered by the rest of the world. I think it's clear by comparisons like this one that systems like China's raise the bar to increase achievement while we (the US) are more apt to lower the floor.
Matthew K. Tabor
mktabor@gmail.com
www.matthewktabor.com
Indians Too!
India also has also long been a source of world-class engineers, better than North America. They have extremely high standards of entry and training in their technical schools. Trouble is, until fairly recently, they didn't have a way to let these elite people realize their potential since the economies were state-controlled and nobody cared too much about the leading edge. The result is that the Chinese and Indian geniuses went to North America to work for businesses that valued their abilities.
Of course, now that India and China are on the capitalism march their huge population of well trained people allow them to outcompete N America in many areas.
i agree Indian and chinese
i agree Indian and chinese dominate the physics and math department at my school. Most of them are educated from overseas (india and china) hardly are from the US. it appears to me that Indians and chinese from india and china respectively are more hard working ,possibly making them smarter, than Chinese and indian brought in th US
Eastern Europe Too
Students from Eastern Europe too are awesome in Math. It's funny that the countries that had (or have) the stricktest governments, and no "western" influence do so fantastically in mathematics. Maybe mathematics needs so much concentration, so much dedication that all the outside distractions take away from the learning. It's kind of like programming a robot... a robot doesn't get distracted by the TV (or the whatever), just takes the program and does it. Math is like a program/language, and needs to be executed perfectly - distractions take away from it.