[vntx]

Indeed. A disgrace for education but a win for educational communism. It’s a good thing the US can import talent because California’s students are being trained to be cognitively lazy. How will these children fare in a society that is getting more technologically advanced, dynamic and complex by the day without the problem solving tools to handle it? I can’t wait to find out.

[throwvirtever]

> A disgrace for education but a win for educational communism.

I was under the impression that (actual) communist educational systems were geared predominantly toward the most advanced students, rather than the other way around. Cranking out prizewinning physicists, mathematicians, and chess grand-masters at a somewhat greater than expected rate.

[anthk]

Spivak. Heck, even Yakov Perelman. Recreational Math books that could make American teens cry over themselves.

[vntx]

Read my comment again. I made no mention of education systems implemented in communist states. I said educational communism, education where everyone is pulled towards the mean no matter their individual effort or talent.

[thaumasiotes]

"Educational communism" in that it seeks to eliminate inequality (in education) by reducing everyone to zero, just as communism sought to eliminate inequality (in wealth) by reducing everyone to zero.

Not "educational communism" in the sense of educational systems modeled on those of communist countries.

The analogy is from "if I can't afford a car, then nobody should be allowed to have a car" to "if I can't understand algebra, then nobody should be allowed to learn algebra".

[vntx]

Exactly. I have no idea how people can’t differentiate between educational communism and education systems that were implemented in communist states. Was my wording too confusing?

[anthk]

Communism? The Soviet books on Math were crazily more deep than the US ones.

Read about Spivak's Calculus.

[todd8]

Spivak's Calculus is intended for use in a two semester course covering differential and integral calculus. It is a challenging but rewarding introduction to calculus; in my opinion, this text is appropriate for math majors while other STEM students might be better off with a textbook that didn't focus quite so much on learning proofs. It was used at MIT for the first year of Calculus, but only by the math majors.

Michael Spivak is an American mathematician born in Queens, New York.

[anthk]

Then, Perelman. Or any of the zillions of books of the Eastern side of Eurpoe.

[todd8]

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with your main point. I just had first hand experience with Spivak.

Your point reminds me of an experience I had in grad school. A good friend in the program was from (communist) Romania. We were both looking at the weekly math challenge that one of our professors posted in the hallway. It was something like construct with compass and straightedge the eight circles that are tangent to all three given (arbitrary sized and positioned) circles.

I was good at geometry in school, very good, head and shoulders above my fellow students. I really had no idea how to solve the problem and was fumbling around with it when I Romanian friend took a look and knew the correct approach immediately. It involved an isomorphic mapping of the circles into some alternate collection of straight line segments, solving the problem in that space, and then inverting the isomorphism (I think. It was many years ago--before the fall of the Berlin Wall). His high school training in geometry was clearly much deeper than mine was.