Soviet Textbooks Were Hardcore Because Students Had to Think, Not Experiment
Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)
A Quora answer argues that the legendary difficulty of Soviet math and physics textbooks stems partly from scarcity: with little access to computers or lab equipment, students and scientists had to reason analytically rather than run simulations. The author recalls Protvino in 1992, where engineers used homegrown 8088 clones while he had a SuperSPARC and Hypercube at Fermilab. This forced emphasis on closed-form solutions and deep problem understanding, reflected in the cheap, well-written Mir Publishers books.
Because of the traditional scarcity of equipment, Russian students and scientists had to think rather than experiment, whether with computers or accelerators; it was often all that was available to them.
- rdtsc
At least for up to high school level, it's because they didn't care if a good part of the class fell behind. If little Jimmy (well, little Ivan, I guess) can't understand how algebra works and is getting only 1s and 2s, it's too bad, he'll have to repeat the whole grade again I guess. The whole "maybe math is too hard and we should just make it optional or dumb it down" that I have seen in US was just not something acceptable or plausible as a policy in that system.
At the same time before we go idealizing that system, what Western folks often see are the best of the best examples. Individuals who went to great schools, emigrated and excelled in the West. They may have gone to better schools, with better teachers, or had parents who cared more etc. They don't see a representative sample. Many schools, especially in smaller cities and villages, were not as great, teachers not as caring, cheating was rampant, bribing teachers even more rampant etc.
- vintermann
My sister went to high school in the US for a year some time in the early nineties - we are Norwegian. She got perfect grades and some kind of award for American history. She explained it by saying, US textbooks wanted you to succeed. Whereas she was used to the Norwegian ones which were only out to rank you (on a bell curve - the grading guidelines didn't have set requirement, but instead told teachers to only give 5% the top grade), and if that meant being obtuse and reader-hostile, that was fine. If you were a really dedicated student you'd push through, right? So she thought it was ridiculously easy, but she didn't necessarily learn less.
I can't speak for the US textbooks at that level, but I can confirm that the Norwegian ones were pretty lousy, especially in history. I particularly remember they loved to hide crucial details in margin notes or image texts.
- hackermailman
Bulgarian/USSR Math Circles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_circle and problems they work on are in this book https://bookstore.ams.org/mcl-25
Regular school you would solve problems in combinatorics, algebra and geometry together in class by offering small ideas or strategies then trying each one to point out what works and doesn't work. You do enough of these everyday in class then reasoning about abstract sets in analysis isn't a huge leap. Same reason we used to read Euclid in class and make students demonstrate countless proofs.
CMU Discrete Math course has kind of the same techniques where he solves problems with the whole class https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0K540qqyJJU
The best students then joined the school math circle with professional mathematicians and became TAs like in university helping their regular class.
They tried and failed the soviet curriculum with New Math https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
Singapore high school students learn the equivalent of AP Calculus in Grade 10 then either spend years 11/12 at a trade school or stay to earn an associates degree to prep for university covering engineering electives like linear algebra and differential equations.
- jcarrano
I had a copy of "Differential and Integral Calculus" by Piskunov that belonged to my father. The prologue said it was used in the curricula of technical schools in the USSR. I used to think about that fact a lot and tried to imagine what those Soviet technical schools would be like. There was a lot of content there that I did not see in any of the seven math courses we had at uni.
- leonidasrup
From the article:
> There are a lot of good points being made in this thread. I have had a theory that it is in part related to the funding available for lab equipment and computers. During the latter half of the 20th century, in Russia you were very lucky to get access to a “real” computer.
Lets not forget that, selling computers (among other products) to Soviet Union and the whole East block was subject to Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) established in 1949.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul...
https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-90-185fs.pdf
"Western export restrictions on civilian computer equipment were lifted in May 1991."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...
- 100111011111
The hater comments and mental excuses by American posters are hilarious.
The usa doesn't value its citizens education unless you belong to the top club and pay, europe is better and eastern europe used to be the best since that was all they had.
This is coming from someone who went through the Swiss (probably was amongst the best in western Europe) and eastern European education systems.
The east math was simply much harder, deeper and on a better level. That is all there is. Look, China is valuing the education of their citizens and they are up and coming fast.
- vkgcr
I assume because they had not adopted the "dumb everything down to reduce variance in outcomes" educational ideology that has taken hold in most of the west over the past 50 years.
- martythemaniak
They're not, it's an illusion.
My older sibling went to HS in Eastern Europe and kept the textbooks, because my family had this same reverence towards math over there. I went to HS in Canada and in grade 12 when I was doing Calculus I had a look at the old textbooks and they were the same thing. Different styles certainly, but the problem sets were basically interchange. In Algebra and Geometry, the Canadian books seemed to have much more emphasis on algebra, whereas the eastern european ones had much more emphasis on geometry.
I think the illusion comes from the different rates at which you're expected to pick things up. Grade 8 Canadian math was much easier, so I think the Canadian curriculum was backloaded - easier in the early grades and much harder in the later ones, whereas the eastern european one seemed much more even.