Came across a post in the NYtimes .... It was about how weak Americans are in math ..basic or advanced, compared to their Indian counterparts . The article points out the flaws in American school system and how skools reserve advanced maths for the brighter students letting the average to cope with the world with basic skills.surveys shows Asians students are 3 years ahead of American students of the same age in math .
Out of the responses to the post, some blame cultural differences to be the problem , some blame the education system , lack of parental supervision etetera. According to some the problem lies in the attitude where mathematical proficiency is not respected and valued and how a person proficient in math is considered nerdy or how the importance is given to sports and athletics and not academics. One even commenting kids in skool are discouraged from taking up interest in math beyond their syllabus and how they are still taught basic arithmetic in higher grades.One of the interesting take on the issue was that Indian females are 50% illterate and hence the american kids cannot be compared to some upper caste Indians who had the liberty of educating themselves and also India is a failed state on basic necessities due to volience.The answer to this comment was ofcourse from an Indian asking to check the number of Indians accepted in american universities and how many of them are upper castes!!!
Anyway voices are being raised , thoughts are being put together by intellectuals , reseachers and commom man to fight the math stigma ..to save american kids from failing in the real world and one of them is a website "Indian math online" to help students learn the mathematics techniques the Indian way!!!
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2 comments:
I think it should be the other way. That Indian kids be too allowed an easier level of Math, except to those that were interested. Cause if you werent ending up a Mathematician, you find the basic skills good enough for any profession you land up in. You wont be needing Pythogorus theorum or Quadratic solutions in any other kinda job! But the basic Math could be taught so that it stays with you forever.
Just the way American kids complaining of less know-how, Indian kids have a problem of major stress!
totally agree to wut u said but the way they are looking at the problem is since students are not encouraged to take up interest in math at skool level, they are loosing out on good mathematicians .anyways this leaves us only wondering how many mathematicians India produce!Love of math can only make lousy engineers a.k.a future SEs in this country.
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