Posted on 09/21/2024 7:48:21 AM PDT by grundle
Malcolm Gladwell in his book "The Outliers" states that the reason Asian kids consistently outperform western kids in international math tests is because of the cultural attitude these kids have towards solving a math problem, or any task that requires patience and effort for a long period of time.
In China and other Asian cultures, there is a logical pattern to learning math based on a confidence and expectation that if we apply enough effort the problem is solvable while in the West, kids believe their ability is innate and can't be changed or influenced.
Malcolm's theory is that the reason for this difference in attitude has to do with the historical agriculture practices in both cultures, where the rice growing Asian culture had a different lifestyle for thousands of years that required consistent hard work which translates in the today's attitude of their kids when trying to solve a math problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
That is partially true. Upbringing has a lot to do with it but it seems survival skills has more to do with innate talents. Look at the pioneers, the building skills of the European settlers is incredible. The log cabins and huge barns didn’t just pop up on their own. Western civilizations main problem is they have too few problems to solve.
Western civilizations main problem is they have too few problems to solve.
That’s why they come up with 57 genders and all kinds of different pronouns. It’s something to keep people amused and trying to break new barriers, even when they don’t make sense.
This species has amused itself to death.
“And the older kids couldn’t start their homework until the younger ones had successfully completed theirs.”
That doesn’t make sense to me. Are the older ones helping the younger ones?
“Western” is increasingly non white. Import low iq morons, become low iq morons. Plus the American/government school system is designed to produce dumb students. That’s it.
do you agree it’s because of ancient agricultural practices?
Cool, they should stay in Asian countries
“Hey Hey Ho Ho Western Civ Has Got To Go!”
Well, they got their wish.......Embrace the suck!
Also Chinese, Korean, and Japanese have stroke orders and numbers for writing, so much of the foundation of their language is mathematical. We say ‘a’ and you can write it anyway you want as long as you get close, but if you write 亜 it’s written in a specific stroke order and direction, with a certain number of strokes.
Also, most Asian parents force their kids to learn multiplication tables from memory, so kids are used to memorizing formulae, functions, etc.
“But I should also point out there is a much higher suicide rate in Asian countries, because the pressure put on kids is overwhelming. There has to be some middle ground.”
I’ve heard the same, but look at this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/
The above is for high-school aged kids. Wikipedia says about the same for all people, per country. Bottom line, the US is in the middle compared to Asian countries.
I have a feeling we’ve been played, yet again, by the Teachers here in the US.
The biggest problem is how history is taught.
The purpose of learning History is to learn the repeatable patterns that happen throughout time, and to better understand the motivations that led to historical events, so as to better understand what is happening today and will happen in the future.
It’s used in our schools to simply indoctrinate.
Single mommys. No dad horizon.
Culture.
> Are the older ones helping the younger ones? <
Yes. As I noted, homework was a group effort. The parents helped all their kids. And the older ones helped the younger.
And now it’s time for an interesting observation: I taught for a few years at a city high school that was (at the time) maybe 60% white, 35% black, and 5% Asian.
Every teacher there had a “duty” besides teaching. Monitor a hallway, or whatever. My duty was after-school math and science tutoring. It was rare for a white kid or an Asian kid to stay after school for help.
My clientele was almost exclusively black kids.
I still can’t explain that. But I will give those black kids great credit for making the effort.
Did anyone ever try and learn Mandarin or any other Asian language? I did. The Army in the 80s was giving a huge bonus for fluent speakers of Chinese. After a couple months, file 13. No amount of $, at the time, was worth the effort.
Sure, it’s on of the easiest languages to ‘learn’. But speak, write, read...a whole nother ball game!
But I do notice students who do come here from Africa, especially places like Nigeria, tend to be very bright. Of course they probably come from the upper class families there.
… because they’re taught right (at home) and do their homework.
Homework, Asian kids do their homework
Saw an article yesterday.. forget what state it was. It said school standards are being lowered to pass migrant children. This is the future.
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