Why Asians are Better than Americans at Math

[MachineGhost]

Since elementary school, we learned basic mathematics skills as little children. As we grew older, our math improved as we learned new concepts. Yet have people ever wondered why Americans lag behind Eastern Asian countries, such as China, in math? The answer might not easily be what you think:

http://blog.studentrnd.org/post/3745565 ... ns-at-math

[Pointedstick]

That article doesn't do anything to explain Asian kids who grow up in an English-only environment.

[AdamA]

Why is it so important to be good at math?

[Pointedstick]

Why is it so important to be good at math?

Speaking of that subject…

http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf

[l82start]

Why is it so important to be good at math?

Speaking of that subject…

http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf

wow that is awesome....

[Tortoise]

That article doesn't do anything to explain Asian kids who grow up in an English-only environment.

The exact same criticism popped into my head when I was reading the article.

The article also doesn't mention how deaf Asian people perform against deaf non-Asian people mathematically. If the hypothesis is that a language's phonetics has a big impact on math performance, then an obvious control group in any test of that hypothesis is people who were born completely deaf. By definition, such people's thought processes are unaffected by their native country's phonetics.

Why is there such vociferous objection to the idea that intelligence and certain types of skills may be highly heritable? If it happens to be true, and an oppressive dictator happens to implement a forced eugenic policy based on it, is that the fault of the truth or of the dictator?

[RuralEngineer]

Is there any real evidence to support a genetic answer?  Isn't it more likely that the differences are due to cultural or social reasons?  I have both parents, my wife, one sister, one grandmother, and several aunts who are all teachers.  I can fully attest that the U.S. education program is just terrible.  Unless kids are getting supplemental help from their parents at home, I fully expect American children to under-perform.

At this point most teachers have given up on critical thinking skills and just teach rote memorization.  It's the only metric that is measured.  My sister was just told that the metric for her being a successful teacher this year is going to be whether 80% of her students get at least a B on the final exam.  Um, bell-curve much?  It's not challenged because the teachers write the tests and can easily manipulate the results to get a favorable outcome.  Instead of challenging our students we just lay the bar on the floor and encourage them to step over it.

[Tortoise]

Is there any real evidence to support a genetic answer?  Isn't it more likely that the differences are due to cultural or social reasons?

Yes, various evidence is provided in this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

At this point most teachers have given up on critical thinking skills and just teach rote memorization.  It's the only metric that is measured.  My sister was just told that the metric for her being a successful teacher this year is going to be whether 80% of her students get at least a B on the final exam.  Um, bell-curve much?  It's not challenged because the teachers write the tests and can easily manipulate the results to get a favorable outcome.  Instead of challenging our students we just lay the bar on the floor and encourage them to step over it.

I agree, the U.S. school system has been a joke for a while now. And this superficial, rote memorization, assembly-line approach to education has spread into our university system to some extent, too. I see it as part of the larger trend of form over substance that's been chipping away at American society for decades now.

[Pointedstick]

That article is about heritability of IQ, not heritability of math aptitude.

[Tortoise]

That article is about heritability of IQ, not heritability of math aptitude.

RuralEngineer was asking about evidence in support of my previous remark, "Why is there such vociferous objection to the idea that intelligence and certain types of skills may be highly heritable?"

My statement mentioned intelligence (not just math), hence my reference to the Wikipedia article on the heritability of IQ.

[RuralEngineer]

I'm not questioning the heritability of IQ.  You are asserting that not only is IQ highly heritable (a fact few people would debate) but that it is unevenly distributed among the human population.  Namely, that people from East Asia have a higher rate of inherited high IQ than other populations.  Is there any evidence that this is the case?  If not, non-genetic factors will have to explain the discrepancy in test scores.

[Tortoise]

I'm not questioning the heritability of IQ.  You are asserting that not only is IQ highly heritable (a fact few people would debate) but that it is unevenly distributed among the human population.  Namely, that people from East Asia have a higher rate of inherited high IQ than other populations.  Is there any evidence that this is the case?  If not, non-genetic factors will have to explain the discrepancy in test scores.

Race and intelligence is an extremely controversial topic with plenty of evidence on both sides of the debate. See, for example, the lengthy article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence. (MG posted a link to this recently in that other race-related thread.)

Given the nature of the findings in the copious studies mentioned in the article above, I think the best we can say at this point is that performance differences between groups are most likely a combination of both genetic and non-genetic factors. I've never argued that the differences are due to only genetic factors. Most of the time when I happen to broach this topic, I'm merely arguing that genetic factors should be part of the discussion and shouldn't simply be ignored based on political correctness.

I don't have much more to add to this thread, so I think I'll politely take my leave now. It's been a pleasure, gentlemen.

[Indices]

If Asians are so smart, why is Asia so poor? Is it smart to be poor?

[doodle]

Is there any real evidence to support a genetic answer?  Isn't it more likely that the differences are due to cultural or social reasons?  I have both parents, my wife, one sister, one grandmother, and several aunts who are all teachers.  I can fully attest that the U.S. education program is just terrible.  Unless kids are getting supplemental help from their parents at home, I fully expect American children to under-perform.

At this point most teachers have given up on critical thinking skills and just teach rote memorization.  It's the only metric that is measured.  My sister was just told that the metric for her being a successful teacher this year is going to be whether 80% of her students get at least a B on the final exam.  Um, bell-curve much?  It's not challenged because the teachers write the tests and can easily manipulate the results to get a favorable outcome.  Instead of challenging our students we just lay the bar on the floor and encourage them to step over it.

I too can attest (from many years of experience both as a student and teacher) that the US education system (K-12) sucks. I spent half my educational years overseas and half in the states. The schools over here always felt more like prisions that institutions of learning. There is plenty of blame to go around so it would be ingenuous to lay it entirely on the government (although they certainly have contributed in their own way to the problem).

Overall, if anyone or anything is to blame, I would say it is the myopic focus of society of the "ends" of everything, instead of realizing that it is in fact the "means" that are themselves the end. In other words, scholarship, education, learning need to be viewed as a pursuit that are an essential part of what makes us human. We study and learn for the sake of learning and the pursuit of knowledge. Instead we have turned education into this race where the only goal is to go out and make a paycheck. And so students become so focused on getting through this drudgery of schooling so that they can get to the "real game" that they forget that all of life is a neverending learning experience.

I think this short video explains this concept quite well. http://youtu.be/ERbvKrH-GC4

[Pointedstick]

What a great video. I totally agree, doodle. I've probably learned more in the four years I've been out of school than I ever learned while I was in it, and I've certainly retained a far, far greater proportion of it. Among the aspects of my K-college education, some of the things that stick out as being particularly useless or harmful are:

• Standardized tests
• Homework
• Disruptive kids bussed into school
• Non-negotiable deadlines for assignments
• Pushing unprepared kids into expensive colleges
• Tyrannical teachers
• Outrageously biased teachers
• Bored or absent teachers
• Underuse of the internet
• Reading Emma

[MachineGhost]

• Homework

Doesn't homework teach discipline and being rewarded for effort?  I have a hard time seeing how it is bad, especially considering most schools don't even seem to even bother with homework anymore.  If a kid never learns to struggle to get to the promised land, you wind up with...  well, America today.

[Pointedstick]

• Homework

Doesn't homework teach discipline and being rewarded for effort?  I have a hard time seeing how it is bad, especially considering most schools don't even seem to even bother with homework anymore.

Is that true? My 17 year-old sister goes to a fairly average public school and is absolutely overloaded with homework. IMHO, homework is just busywork that usually doesn't reinforce the classroom lessons, especially in the cases of humanities and social sciences classes. I could see the case being made for math and foreign languages though where rote drills can actually help.

Furthermore, it's too easy for academically-oriented parents to help kids with it or do it for them entirely, thus giving a huge penalty to kids without such parents.

Homework also diminishes kids' time outside school to pursue their own interests. If 3 hours of homework is academically useful, why not simply extend the school day by another 3 hours instead? I see homework as inhibitory to letting kids develop their own outside interests, many of which will probably have more value to them than reading Emma and writing useless essays about it. 

[MachineGhost]

Homework also diminishes kids' time outside school to pursue their own interests. If 3 hours of homework is academically useful, why not simply extend the school day by another 3 hours instead? I see homework as inhibitory to letting kids develop their own outside interests, many of which will probably have more value to them than reading Emma and writing useless essays about it. 

I'm not that well-versed in the pros and cons of homework compared to public schooling per se, so I'll take your word for it.

What's wrong with Emma anyway?  What's it about?  It sounds like a Jane Austin novel.

[Pointedstick]

What's wrong with Emma anyway?  What's it about?  It sounds like a Jane Austin novel.

That's what's wrong with it. 

[Benko]

homework is just busywork that usually doesn't reinforce the classroom lessons, especially in the cases of humanities and social sciences classes.

As someone who was an engineer in college and had one class in which the weekly homework could take upwards of 15 hours, your bias against homework strikes me as totally wrong.  Whatever you do in life you need to learn to have a work ethic and learn to put energy into things that are important to you.  I believe that a work ethic is something lacking in many young people today (boy I sound like an old geezer) and your (what sounds like typical liberal) point of view does not do children a favor. As someone who had lots of asians around me in my college classes, I can tell you that they all have strong work ethics.

[MediumTex]

• Homework

Doesn't homework teach discipline and being rewarded for effort?  I have a hard time seeing how it is bad, especially considering most schools don't even seem to even bother with homework anymore.

Is that true? My 17 year-old sister goes to a fairly average public school and is absolutely overloaded with homework. IMHO, homework is just busywork that usually doesn't reinforce the classroom lessons, especially in the cases of humanities and social sciences classes. I could see the case being made for math and foreign languages though where rote drills can actually help.

Furthermore, it's too easy for academically-oriented parents to help kids with it or do it for them entirely, thus giving a huge penalty to kids without such parents.

Homework also diminishes kids' time outside school to pursue their own interests. If 3 hours of homework is academically useful, why not simply extend the school day by another 3 hours instead? I see homework as inhibitory to letting kids develop their own outside interests, many of which will probably have more value to them than reading Emma and writing useless essays about it. 

When my 8 year old son brings home 1-2 hours of homework I always wonder what the teacher has been doing with him all day.

In my experience, with only a little extra effort and planning the person who works 8 hours a day can get about the same amount done as another person who works 12 hours a day.

[FarmerD]

When my 8 year old son brings home 1-2 hours of homework I always wonder what the teacher has been doing with him all day.

In my experience, with only a little extra effort and planning the person who works 8 hours a day can get about the same amount done as another person who works 12 hours a day.

I wonder the same thing myself.  I spend 1/2 hour per day with each of my girls teaching them math.  My 10 year old is almost finished with algebra 1 and my 7 year old is 3 grades ahead in her math.  Imagine if I had all day long to teach them.  I think teachers are so bogged down with so much extraneous junk curricula that they neglect the basics like math science and reading. 

[FarmerD]

What a great video. I totally agree, doodle. I've probably learned more in the four years I've been out of school than I ever learned while I was in it, and I've certainly retained a far, far greater proportion of it. Among the aspects of my K-college education, some of the things that stick out as being particularly useless or harmful are:

• Standardized tests
• Homework
• Disruptive kids bussed into school
• Non-negotiable deadlines for assignments
• Pushing unprepared kids into expensive colleges
• Tyrannical teachers
• Outrageously biased teachers
• Bored or absent teachers
• Underuse of the internet
• Reading Emma

Gotta disagree on standardized testing.  My mom was a teacher and she always said if a teacher wanted to make parents happy and get good appraisals, all she needed to do was give almost all kids A's and B's.  That mindeset pervades the educational system in K1-12. That's why I was usually tied with a dozen other students for highest grade average yet I was the only one that scored every year at 95% percentile in the yearly aptitude tests we took.  The only way I can know as a parent if my kids are actually performing A and B quality work is to see their standardized test scores and see how they did compared to other kids their age.   

I also think having hard deadlines teaches kids responsibility so they are prepared for their first job but that's just me.