[this-pony]

I think maybe you mean "don't send your kids to an _American_ school if you can avoid it". Although I have no personal experience with the American school system, I would say that there are many schools in the world that adhere, to some degree, to your 'how not to teach mathematics'. I went to a public school in Europe and have had plenty of enthusiastic teachers that also tried to deliver the beauty of mathematics.

[rsj_hn]

Russia has an amazing math education tradition. I always recommend Russian math books and Russian math programs. They are excellent.

[geomark]

Any titles you can recommend?

I'm homeschooling my kid and have been using sample problems from both Russian and Singapore math. But I only have a single source for Russian math problems, which is a pdf of a paper by a Russian educator who taught in the US and then wrote a paper comparing the two educational systems.

It's interesting because he talks about how algebra is a big scary subject that is introduced late in the American system, while in Russia they start doing algebraic-type problems early in primary but they are solved with pictures. So when algebraic notation is introduced later it's just a next step to the types of problems that students have already been solving.

[quacked]

If you don't already have it, "Thinking Physics" by Lewis Carroll Epstein is very good.

Also: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18360071

[geomark]

"Thinking of Physics" is pretty great. Thanks for the rec.

[quacked]

Every Russian and ex-Soviet I've ever met was extremely proud of their school system, which arose from the Soviet system.

[rsj_hn]

They really did a great job at math. The humanities were terrible, it was hopelessly politicized. But if you didn't want to deal with constant lectures about the struggles of the working classes, or constant coursework on marxism-leninism, you studied math or physics, or engineering. It helped, of course, that the government had as a national policy the promotion of STEM. But they did an amazing job at it, and produced a fantastic crop of world-changing talent.

[geomark]

What a great approach. The easy social studies courses are made so horribly boring that it drives students to study the hard sciences.

[quacked]

I just don't think that a classroom can possibly match the free-form, consequential education that comes from serious one-on-one time with a skilled, productive adult performing a consequential task. It is extremely likely that European schools are much better teaching math than American schools are, and I admit that my perspective is characteristically American, but I don't think I've ever been as impressed as I am by students and scholars who had the benefit of extensive non-classroom time with free-form learning from a learned tutor.

If you look at another of my response comments to my parent comment, I mention that I don't really know if the system could be replaced with something better, but I don't think standardized education is good for anyone when compared to non-standardized education.

[insert_coin]

> I just don't think that a classroom can possibly match the free-form, consequential education that comes from serious one-on-one time with a skilled, productive adult performing a consequential task.

While true, I just don't think a one-on-one education, however skilled the tutor might be, could possibly match the social development that comes as consequence of classroom education.

[quacked]

Is it really your opinion that students of modern education are "well-socialized"?

[insert_coin]

My opinion is that students not on classrooms are much less prepared to deal with those, according to you, non "well-socialized" students from traditional schools.

[quacked]

Children who grow up spending the majority of their time in school are raised by their peers, rather than by productive adults. They look to each other for behavioral and moral cues. I have found that students from classrooms are, on the whole, rude, lazy, arrogant, cruel, apathetic, jealous, dishonest, narcissistic, anxious, and depressed.

I admit that their ability to not embarrass themselves among their peers is greater than those who are homeschooled or from experimental private schools, and their traditionally-schooled biting, ironic sarcasm is unmatched among the more naive non-schooled population. Traditional schoolchildren are also much better at taking instructions, falling in line, acquiescing to the wishes of their superiors, and bearing assaults on decency and freedom without complaint.

I made it through 12 years of public school and am extraordinarily "well-socialized", and I am disgusted by what it took to make me that way. It's only now that I've been out of school for about a decade that I've finally started to turn into a human being.