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by golergka 4421 days ago
By the way, there are schools where you actually do math. I was lucky to get into one of these on the second try, after 7 series of exams and interviews. The math lessons (apart from algebra and geometry, which we had to learn too, of course), were set up pretty simple: you were given a single sheet of paper with some axioms and definitions about the topic at hand and a list of lemmas and theorems that you had to prove. When you thought you could prove on of them, you called on of the teachers (there were about 5 per class), sat down with them, and tried to defend your proof. No homework, nothing else but this sheet.

I didn't pursue a career in mathematics, like a lot of my classmates, but these lessons gave me more anything else I did in all years spend on 'education'.

1 comments

Do you mind sharing more information? What school was this?
Here's the book on math teaching lessons, and although it's in Russian, you can get an overall idea of the level of math involved by skipping through the pages: http://www.mccme.ru/free-books/57/davidovich.pdf

It describes a 4-year program, from 8 to 11 grade of russian school, for kids from 13-14 to 16-17 years old respectively.

Thanks! I'm very interested in this approach and will take a look. Wish I could find something like it in English, as I don't speak Russian :)
Sure. Here's the website, but it looks the same as ten years ago, so I doubt it has the latest updates: http://sch57.msk.ru/index.en.html