China's playbook has some gems; learning maths until the end of school is one of them.
Australia has a similar policy: maths is taught at school from Kindergarten classes up to year 12. The solution is to have multiple levels of maths for the same year (after reaching a certain point).
For example, a Year 10 student can be in one of 4 possible maths classes, 3 of which are selective, i.e., available to students above the specific thresholds.
I don't really like the idea of forcing anything on anyone in school, but if I had to chose - I'd rather that they force philosophy on kids, than math.
The way I see it, math is a really powerful multiple purpose tool that people just don't use all that frequently in day to day life.
Philosophy, on the other hand, while intersting from a history of human thought pov, and an inspiration for divergent thinking when having an overview of its evolution, is not actually a field with a strong tether to reality. It is useful as an idea incubator. But whenever a topic starts becoming scientifically riguros it splits and becomes its own field of inquiry.
In my “living experience” philosophy was used as a tool to enforce the “correct” thinking. It can be easily converted to such a tool, exactly because it has no strong tether to reality. Math is much less susceptible to such a conversion since each statement needs a proof, at least in principle.
And I don’t like the tendency to eliminate something just because it’s too hard for somebody. It may be reasonable in some cases, maybe even in this one - but where do we stop?
Well that still happens, but instead it's in history classes.
But in soviet countries during soviet times we had precisely that kind of "philosophy" classes mandatory. I wonder if that is what they meant?
Also, note, I have some doubt that math is too hard for the majority of people. It is simply though very badly and most people develop a hatred for math very early on, subsequently making it a pain during each school year.
Know what, brother? I tell you that studying the humanities in high school is more important than mathematics — mathematics is too sharp an instrument, no good for kids.
Stephan Banach quoted by Steinhaus in Through a reporter’s eyes, Roman Kaluza, 1995
It must be terrible to be an opinion columnist and have to come up with hot takes on schedule, regardless of whether you have any strong feelings or original thoughts. I weep for the plight of our bylined intelligentsia.
On one hand - yes. In our math classroom there was a quote of Lomonosov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov): “You should study math because it puts your brains in order”. I tend to agree with it.
On the other hand - my parents tried force on me playing a piano. It was both a tyranny and a failure…
To emphasize, this is the opinion of a person who never learned any maths past multiplication. She understands the usefulness of the maths she learned, but thinks anything more is akin to child abuse.
I think there’s a valid critique to be had at centrally managed education systems. We take our freedoms for granted in the west and the author is simply showing the mirror across in communism.
Creating a bunch of subservient robots is not a winning strategy in the long run as any education leads to later moments of self reflection which will create hate for the system that interned you.
As for modern day journalism, I’m with you I wish there was better way to fund voices but this is what we have for now! At least the topic is relevant to the larger debate going on.
Australia has a similar policy: maths is taught at school from Kindergarten classes up to year 12. The solution is to have multiple levels of maths for the same year (after reaching a certain point).
For example, a Year 10 student can be in one of 4 possible maths classes, 3 of which are selective, i.e., available to students above the specific thresholds.