Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Red sun learning: The Japanese and the Indian school fad
So, you think that American schools pile on the homework? Do you believe your own little milksop has to study too hard? Mothers of America, you just do not know what hard work is:
Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.
Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.
Can you imagine how few Americans would pay attention to "reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine"? What is not entirely clear is whether our national inattention to such things is a bug, or a feature.
8 Comments:
By 
davod, at
Wed Jan 02, 10:40:00 AM:
Technology is the big killer here. Why memorize anything if you cn use a calculator to do the work. This is what teachers encourage.
What is forgotten is that the time taken learning by memorization could well be a training tool for the brain. A skill usefull for more complicated issues.
By joated, at
Wed Jan 02, 10:53:00 AM:
These folks need to get their hands on some copies of that other well known Indian tome: the Kama Sutra and lighten up.
On a serious note, I've seen Asian students (middle school) in tears because they got an A- on their report card while I taught in NJ. That ain't right.
By drank, at
Wed Jan 02, 12:09:00 PM:
It mostly illustrates the immense gulf between proposals to reform math education in the US (usually premised on how badly our kids do on international tests) and the actual education practices of the countries that score well on those tests.
I think it safe to say that there is not a single US ed school graduate that thinks we should have children memorize multiplication tables into the double digits.
By 
, at
Wed Jan 02, 03:18:00 PM:
"So, you think that American schools pile on the homework?"
Yes.
Kids should be allowed to be kids. If you ask a mid-school teacher why she's piling on the homework, she'll say it's to get them ready for high school.
If you ask a high school teacher, she'll say it's to get them ready for college.
If you ask a college teacher, she'll say it's to get them ready for real life.
Then they graduate from college, get a job, and watch TV all evening.
So it's a little hard to figure out what value homework has at all -- unless it's simply a translation for "more school work". And, if that's true, then why aren't they teaching them well enough in school so that they don't need the extra work?
At some point, the whole thing begins to smell like an excuse to pawn off bad teaching skills and a curriculum that's out of touch with reality.
"What is not entirely clear is whether our national inattention to such things is a bug, or a feature."
It depends on the goal. If you want to win international contests and produce sharp college graduates, then I guess the rule of the day is 'the more, the merrier'?
On the other hand, if all you want to do is turn out citizens armed with the knowledge they'll actually use during their lives, then:
A C
-=-
B x
is about all you need to know in the math department, outside of the basic multiplication tables.
(the software is collapsing the blank spaces in the above formula but it's "A over B equals C over x")
I aced all of my geometry and algebra classes in high school and college, and the only thing I've ever used from them was the above formula. Given that, I use it all the time. If I want to resize a 320 x 240 video to 450-wide, what height do I use? Plug in the values and what I learned my first day in algebra class provides the answer.
The other days, not so much.
But if we view our college graduates as one of our greatest resources, then wouldn't it be safe to say that their computer skills would be a lot more valuable than their math skills, at least during their school years? If they need to bone up on theoretical math sometime down the road because they're going to get into the field of quantum mechanics, fine. I'm not sure, though, that being able to multiply 13 times 17 in one's head is exactly the skill the quantum mechanics people are looking for.
For the other students -- except those planning on attending international competitions -- sheesh, what a waste of childhood.
Doc's Theorum #3,536: If you want to do something nice "for the children," don't do anything at all.
By Fausta, at
Wed Jan 02, 04:33:00 PM:
When I was in third grade we had to memorize the multiplication table to 12 x 12.
Ah, the olden days....
By , at
Thu Jan 03, 12:12:00 PM:
Having a good grasp of the multiplication tables and of basic math helps throughout life not just to get better prepared for beer drinking in college.
Let the computers crunch out the double integrals, but use the multiplication tables that we learned as kids help us estimate so we can wave the flag when a computer answer does not meet the common sense test.
By Nooyawka, at
Thu Jan 03, 12:23:00 PM:
Having just spent a year in India, I can comment on some of the claims about Indian education. Yes, Indians are studying hard and are rightfully getting some of the rewards of their hard work. But just about all the comments on education I read in Indian newspapers and blogs lamented that too much of Indian education is sheer memorization, with very little room left over for creativity. There must be a few Indians at the top of the pyramid who do new things, but almost all the educated Indians I met, dealt with and read about could not think outside the box if their lives depended on it. There certainly is some virtue to memorization. But not if excessive memorization closes the rest of one's mind.
By davod, at
Fri Jan 04, 09:43:00 AM:
New York dude:
Listeningb to those who complained about to much memorization is how the US educators got us into the position we are in now.
I would suggest the Indian complainers are reading to much from the US educational establishment.
