“For some reason, American kids seem to be willing to put in the work with athletics, but not put it in with the one subject that’s going to matter more to their lives than any other activity.”
"for some reason"? I'll tell you the reason: incentives. The kids are learning by social osmosis that status is gained by athletic achievement, not by mathematical achievement. This is one of the ways in which popular culture lies to kids about likely outcomes, which distorts their ability to make rational decisions about the future.
Yes, part of the problem might be that mathematical achievement is not valued highly. But it cannot be the full explanation, since math is unpopular across the world, not just in the US. For example, I'm originally from Eastern Europe, one of the places where mathematical talent is supposedly valued highly, but I can tell you it absolutely isn't. I even went to a special math/programming-oriented high-school, and even there the cool kids were the ones that didn't seem to care about math at all, but instead had the looks/fashion/sports abilities.
Also, the comparison between American kids and Indian kids in the US is not quite fair, since these Indians are a highly biased sample of the true Indian population.
So the difference must be in something else, too. My personal guess is that the math in the US schools must be just too "easy". So, if kids everywhere on average learn about 60% of the math they are taught, they will be better in countries where the math taught is more advanced.
Arithmetic is given a lot of importance early in a child's education in India.
Kids learn multiplication tables (upto 10 atleast) even before they start their first year of school (1st standard).
This is so prevalent that reciting multiplication tables (the higher, the smarter you are) in front of guests, when you are 4-6, is a very common thing across all Indian cultures.
Extra math classes, like "Vedic mathematics", which provide shortcuts to faster arithmetic, are a rage in urban India.
Sorry, but your examples do not truly reflect the situation out here. (I am not too sure how much time you have spent in India.)
My take on why an 'average' Indian kid is a little bit better than an 'average' American kid in math, is just because (s)he has done more of it and with a bit more rigor. Everyone needs to pass a mandatory math exam here (as part of what we call class Xth board exams), and only after doing that one gets a choice to pick a stream of subjects of his/her liking (that may or may not include math).
As everywhere, some kids do have trouble liking/understanding math, but they do not have much of an option initially and their parents also keep the ante up, on studies for this particular subject. (Of all the kids who are not able to clear the Xth board exams, the percentage flunking in math is the highest).
Another reason that helps getting this subject more priority, is that for most of the better paying professions, it is a must. (Sadly, majors in humanities mostly have more trouble getting in to top earning bracket).
A similar example is about learning the English language. Kids in India do it more than kids in China/Japan, and hence do it better on an 'average'.
I have spent all my life in Bangalore, India and I'm nearing 30.
The Indian culture gives a lot of importance to having good math skills. If your mom asks you to get something from the neighbouring shop, you better have your math right. Kids are always taught to count the change and demand the correct change after a transaction.
So, addition and subtraction have to have on the spot without the help of a electronic teller. Perhaps that can give an insight into why I insist that the Indian culture requires you to be sharp with your basic math.
I have alternate story about maximum "fails" in the board exams. A lot of students dread Hindi (an artificially imposed third language in South India) and to a lesser extent English.
Yeah, I agree with your premise that good secondary math skills are a result of ultra-competitive nature of college admissions and job market. But, it still doesn't take away the fact that a student with average overall score in India will be better off than an average student in US when it comes to "usable" mathematics.
Just because the state syllabus mandates study of Hindi as an essential requirement to pass high school, it does not make the language welcome in all parts of south India.
The urban south-Indians learn Hindi, when necessary, by osmosis and from media.
AFAIK, passing hindi (score > 35/100) is no longer a criterion for getting one's high school diploma. Thank $deity.
I have spent all my life in Bangalore, India and I'm nearing 30.
Thanks, this helps in putting your comments in context. My first reaction to your post was that it probably came from someone has not spent too much time here. My bad.
who the "cool kids" are is a very shallow measurement of social expectation. As little as kids claim to value the respect of their elders, expectations do play a large role in what is valued.
Reserve some blame for the American college admissions culture which says that students who participate in a greater number of extra curricular activities are worth more than the student who did well in math.
>I'll tell you the reason: incentives. The kids are learning by social osmosis that status is gained by athletic achievement, not by mathematical achievement.
You're just rephrasing the problem, though. WHY do certain societies give more status to athletic rather than to mathematical achievement, relative to other societies?
Probably for the same reasons we have more televised athletic tournaments than televised math tournaments. They are visual, more visceral, easier for a non-participant to judge. Athletes are seen as healthier, more social, and more sexually attractive. Athletic competitions represent our desire to successfully compete in these attributes.
exactly. humans are adaptation executers, not fitness maximizers. we are adapted to measure the metric of success by physical prowess because in the environment we evolved in that WAS the most important metric for success. Our monkey brains can not wrap our heads around the idea that something like sitting in a class room playing with numbers would be a better predictor of success.
Physical fitness is also a much easier metric to estimate visually, and we are lazy, visual creatures. We like to make snap judgments and rationalize them later.
Well, that's not entirely true - athletics are associated with 'fun', and math isn't. How many students here have seen the poster in your math class 'math is necessary for....' and then lists a bunch of occupations (aka 'work')?
Why not focus on the fun side of math from an early age?
Exactly right. Relatively speaking, our culture is very anti-intellectual and backwards. Athletic heroes are praised by the entire community, while the math whizes are ridiculed and viewed as socially undesirable. In that kind of environment, not many people who have both options will go the way of the math geek.
"for some reason"? I'll tell you the reason: incentives. The kids are learning by social osmosis that status is gained by athletic achievement, not by mathematical achievement. This is one of the ways in which popular culture lies to kids about likely outcomes, which distorts their ability to make rational decisions about the future.