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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They actually rush through a bunch of topics, do not teach them effectively (using worksheets, group lessons, and pretty much anything other than teacher involvement). Because they haven't taught them enough, they have to "spiral" around to them again, year after year! So you expect most kids to just get it through osmosis? [/quote]

I’m an immigrant and this is the main problem I find with math education here - rushing through topics, not enough reinforcement, not enough depth. A spiral approach to education- come back to the same material year after year. They will quickly go over a topic in class and then not touch it for the rest of the year. Of course, kids forget everything and next year they come back to the same concept.

In Russian math you lay thorough foundation, layer by layer, you learn the concepts really well before progressing to the next level, there is a [b]lot of repetition[/b] and one concept is derived from the previous one.  It stays with you for the rest of your life and with my very  average math education in an average Russian school I pass complex math exams at US university without any prep.[/quote]

Yup, exactly. There is a lot of repetition here too but it's done only for basic concepts/exercises (aka worksheets with mainly calculations), but not for actual problems. Kids get bored out of their minds by these repetitive worksheets with simple exercises. Because they're on auto pilot and not engaged to think, they forget mostly everything, and then they have to drill the same topic again next year.

Quality programs build things from the ground up like you said, explain the ideas, give the kids some repetition, then let them explore problems that make use of those concepts. Problems are things that are supposed to test understanding of concepts in new situations, and that's where much of the learning gets done. But the problem aspect here is minimal to none, while the drill repetition of basic stuff is way too common.[/quote]

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