What really surprised me was the core principle at British unversities - "don't assume prior knowledge of anything". It basically meant that on a CS course, they teach you basic level maths, basic programming skills, you spend the entire 1st year of university learning what we learnt in school around age 15-16. A Polish university absolutely won't be teaching you basic algebra,statistics or core concepts of programing on a CS course - you are simply required to know these things, otherwise wtf are you doing on a CS course.

Also in general, I find the elective system of subjects in British schools to be.....poor. As in, I was(and am) surrounded by perfectly normal adults who are good in certain subjects(the ones they picked) and who have zero knowledge in others(the ones they didn't pick). I feel like my own Polish education has given me a very broad understanding of a lot of different subjects even if I wasn't personally interested in them. Like, even though I went to a school with a "maths and CS focus"(which just meant these two subjects had 2x the number of lessons each week), we still had lessons in history, physics, chemistry, biology, Polish literature.....all of it was mandatory, you couldn't just decide to skip it. At the time, I thought it was useless, but in hindsight I am very grateful for it because it has given me at least basic level of knowledge in many different subjects, whereas my British peers just can't even have a conversation about basic chemistry for instance, since they never took it as a subject.

The rationale is that you want to give 18 year olds the opportunity to pick a field of study that they're excited about now rather than forcing them to choose something based on what kind of education their parents thought proper for them six years ago. If a single "intro to programming" course and a slightly easier first math course can onboard smart students who otherwise would be hopelessly lost, and the only downside is that a couple of better-prepared students feel a bit bored, that's a small price to pay.

What I really remember was EE40 taking like a week to explain Ohm's Law. I thought, Ok, I think I've got this class. But then it just went exponential and then the prof just dumped a bunch of chapters on us at the end that he didn't cover and said that'll be on the final. EE40 covered about a third of 105. EE40 just had an insane amount of material and labs. FWIW, I think 16A+B covers better material than EE40 did although I have a soft spot in my heart for what was EE20.

BTW, Calculus 1A at Berkeley, if you didn't take AP Calculus in high school, was brutal. Pointlessly so, since most math in non-math courses was pretty straightforward.

But all the freshman courses at Berkeley were hard. You either got up to speed or you got out. Upper division was even harder, but you were prepared by then.

Given that second-hand experience, I found the excision of all of SICP's math from the curriculum to be quite a good choice, as adding advanced math as another prerequisite would have raised the barrier to entry even higher.

(Side note: your description of EE40 sounds like a professor who didn't schedule well, not intentional difficulty.)

There was an intent behind the work. All of the lower div classes are hard with a massive amount of content. But you can show up a Berkeley from a substandard high school on the wrong side of the tracks and blow it out of the water; a buddy of mine was like that and went to Columbia for his PhD. It's very simple. You just have to work. Immediately. Day one. I don't think Berkeley EECS rewards creativity. Indeed I think EECS punishes creativity. But EECS teaches its students to work their asses off, regardless of whether they came from Lick Wilmerding or Skyline.

Go Bears.

In practice, some see the fact many tech employers give coding tests to people with CS degrees as a sign the standards at the end aren't as consistently high as one might hope.

I think a lot of interviewing style is fashion driven.

Also computer science isn’t necessarily about actually coding anyway. It’s mostly about algorithms and structure and complexity. Similarly, anyone who knows anything about university mathematics courses does not expect fresh graduates to be particularly good at arithmetic

Initial programming courses were electives, where you could choose between more basic or more advanced "intro to programming" course. Basic had python, while advanced had c and c++.

Similarly logic classes were in basic and advanced groups and it was easy to choose the group you want and switch groups during course.

In fact, I was the guy who came for CS degree after never doing great at math or CS in high school and it reaaaaaally helped me to get up to speed with the others.

What I imagine really smart person would do is: go to people giving the course for additional work or talk with them to show where they are at. Skip classes, read something else while in a class. Take advantage of knowledge to not care about the course curriculum and do his own research.

But that is my idea and maybe people who think their time is wasted could be a bit more humble and learn to work with other people.

>If those people who do not waste time are so smart why they have to be hold by the hand and given curriculum?

There's a culture of "rules apply to everyone" and people are not used to asking for special treatment. So if you don't make it super obvious, people will assume they can't ask for adjustments. Also, no tuition so weaker incentive to get your money's worth.

People who think they are exceptional are mostly just casual. (wink wink instagram)

Always seems to be the solution. It doesn't scale, even if you know how to make a PCB or a cupboard (for example), it doesn't take 0 time. That extra work would be extra time spent, which is nonsense if the goal is to demonstrate competency and reduce wasting time.

Plus, the extra work is still about the same course material - instead of one hello world you write two. It's not hard, it becomes depressing and demoralizing.

In many countries, these kids would probably not get into college in the first place due to failing preparatory tests. In the US there are many financial incentives to pull in as many kids as possible and that may cause a lowering of barriers.

An observation in the maths, many countries in Asia cover calculus at the middle school level and continue into high school, in the US I noticed many public schools categorize calculus as an advanced (sometimes elective) high school subject.

That said, if after your undergraduate degree you are unsatisfied by the amount of stuff you've learned thus far, there's an easy solution: continue on and pursue a master's degree.

A Russian university would absolutely hammer you with technical knowledge (including in many irrelevant subjects), but when it comes to actually doing an independent research project plagiarism is rampant. As a student, you are belittled at every step. You are unlikely to get involved in any independent research, initiative is discouraged, you learn a lot of things that are not useful.

However, I agree with other posters that British universities bizarrely seem to often reward/celebrate athletics more than academic achievements. Somehow, the top of the social hierarchy are the kids that are good at team sports. In a Russian university, how you do at sports is for the most part irrelevant and if you are not involved in the sport yourself, you will likely never hear about someone's sporting achievements. That makes for a healthier social environment, I think.

I'm not sure how you get that impression.

American universities do this, but (with a couple of famous exceptions, like the traditional boat race between Oxford and Cambridge) British universities don't care about sport.

The social hierarchy was just separate, and had no bearing on anything academic. I didn't care for a second what the rugby team were doing (generally drinking themselves into a stupor), and they didn't care about me. That's just a reflection on British culture in general.

And social life in colleges is (sadly) dominated by drinking at the college bar, drinking in clubs, and dinners in the dining hall, where everyone seems to sit according to some unofficial hierarchy (with being in the top sports team in a popular sport seemingly correlated with being near the top of that hierarchy). Inter-college and Oxford vs Cambridge competitions in all kinds of sports (but primarily rowing) are a massive part of college life. The university rewards athletes with awards of blues and half-blues, drawings on college walls celebrating sports victories, prominent mentions in college publications etc. Academics, on the other hand, are not given nearly as much attention - you would almost never know how good someone is doing in their studies, especially since they are probably studying a completely different subject to you.

It would be common to go and support your college sports team in, say, rowing; whereas nobody really cared so much about academic competition between colleges. Those academic victories were never really mentioned or celebrated.

When I was brought up, the image of what a successful student was, was a very well rounded one. The perfect student was a diligent worker in all courses and always an athlete. Athletics was very very tied to the image of being a proper student because basically athletics = team and team = learning to work with others to overcome challenges and work towards a goal + being physically fit.

This is the gist of it, it's a bit hard to explain without living it. Also there is a religious aspect thrown in because America.

This was the image of the perfect young adult given to me by Boy Scouts and the image my private school friends were given by their schools. At my public school though everything was a bit watered down as we got far less development attention than private school kids would get.

For non-Americans reading: private school = good, public school = bad, in terms of education in the US(usually). I know this is flipped in some places.

I think this idea is dead, or close to it. Almost all the people I knew in college were there for a simple reason: to get a piece of paper that says they can now participate in the work force. Being educated was more of a side effect.

Plenty of people complain about gen eds or other requirements for degrees that are not explicitly related to the major.

> For non-Americans reading: private school = good, public school = bad,

This really depends on the university, the professors there, and the field. My school (USC, no, the other one) is #1 for international business, etc.

Athletics is extremely emphasized, though. I understand that colleges have to discriminate somehow to give people scholarships, and that sports make an insane amount of money for colleges, but it always struck me as odd that getting a full ride for being excellent at a sport is even a thing.

To me, that seems like an odd culture for universities to encourage/perpetuate, given that most top professors at top universities are unlikely to be particularly athletic, and the word "intellectual" is often used as almost an antonym of "athlete".

And in many ways, e.g. when it comes to drinking and partying, I would guess the culture in other British universities is even worse. In a top Russian university you simply would not have the time, and they would not hesitate to kick you out; graduating from university can be more difficult than getting into one.

I went to Imperial College. "Work hard, play hard" was some kind of motto. Most people followed the first part, the second part was optional. There was more "play" at weekends, and less during the week, compared with my friends at other universities. Mostly, it meant focussing on work during the week to leave time at the weekend.

I remember two mentions of sport: when a friend turned out to be on the hockey C team, and when the student newspaper announced that we'd lost some traditional cup [1]. You can see just how little attention was given to the game by the number of spectators [2].

(It would help the UK if the drinking age for beer and wine were reduced to 16. People can then get too drunk and do silly stuff with some oversight from their parents, and be a bit more mature about it at university. See Denmark for a similar Northern European country with this.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_Match

[2] https://twitter.com/hashtag/bottlematch2018

The minimum purchasing/public drinking age is 18 (other than a single pint with a meal), but there's no practical restriction on parents letting their kids drink in private. My parents encouraged me once I was around 16 to join in with the adults whilst they had drinks. This led to me getting silly drunk a couple of times but with proper supervision. Same thing with going to some college house parties with 6th form friends - their parents knew that at the end of the night all the kids we're being picked up by their family.

The problem is if parents don't consider this and just ban drinking for kids up until they leave the house and aren't under their control any more. That's what causes people to go out of control at Uni since it might be literally their first experience with alcohol, or at least more than "1 glass with a meal" etc.

At Imperial, when the Google London office was new, the feedback from staff for why so few students hung around at their recruitment event was the lack of alcohol. Overturning this HQ-imposed very American policy apparently took significant effort.

Are you sure? I studied math in MSU in early 00's. Most of my coursemates drank a lot. I took some silly pride in drinking a lot and still learning enough to get good grades, but a lot of us just weren't bothered by getting worse grades. You had to be exceptionally and repeatedly bad at the exams to be kicked out.

"The prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or to accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. I took this as an invitation to do very little. I’m not proud of this, I’m just describing my attitude at the time, shared by most of my fellow students."

I think it is a good thing. There is a big difference between doing well on a test and understanding the subject. You may think you know basic algebra because you can find the correct value for x, but chances are that you don't really know what you are doing. So having a refresher course telling you what you are actually doing when solving an equation, and how it fits in the big picture is valuable.

The thing is: when you relearn these basic subjects, you do it with a wider field of view. For example, when I first learned derivatives, I knew it had was about rate of change, and I knew the formulas, but I didn't quite get the relationship between slopes and derivatives. It came back later, as I was more familiar with things like linear interpolation and how to manipulate curves in general.

Maths in high school focuses more on applying methods (taking a derivative etc.); maths at university (even on a CS course) is more about constructing mathematical models and arguments.

It can almost feel like a completely different subject.

At one point I met a guy who was working on ways for computers to solve math problems. He told me that early college level problems are actually easier to solve than high school problems for his algorithms. The reason is that while college problems have more steps, and are therefore harder for students, you essentially just need to string theorems together. High school level problems are simpler (less steps) but require significantly more intuition.

And that's what I think happened with my grades: I was never good at math, but I had good intuition. And the switch from using intuition to using actual rigorous mathematical thinking killed me. It was like a completely different subject, and it took me years to catch up.

I wouldn't say if was it was different when it comes to applying methods vs constructing models.

A major difference for me was the approach to grading. In Poland, you might attempt to pass an exam until you do pass it. In Britain, you take an exam and you either pass or not. You can even pass the year if you fail an entire subject. Universities specifically want a certain % of people passing so they do doctor the numbers.

The most important thing is the end result. And here, I believe, the UK universities are better: they actually give you way more practical skills, while Polish unis give you more knowledge. If you want to be a scientist you might prefer #2, but for having a good job #1 is way better.

Also it teaches you that if you don't cheat the system on the subjects that doesn't matter to you - you will have worse grades than people who have the common sense to focus on a few subjects and cheat on everything else.

I guess it instills some healthy scepticism and antisystem attitude, but it can't be good for society if everybody first instinct is "is that rule for real, or bullshit like most of them?"

American 4 year degrees require you getting a reasonably well rounded education.

I have a 4 year degree in comp sci but I was required to learn state history, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Art, Communications, and probably some other things off the top of my head that I've forgotten.

My issue with the US system is that the universities in general are pretty good, but before university the education is garbage. All of these "well rounded" things I just mentioned they could have easily taught me in high school instead of wasting so much time on random things or reteaching the same things over and over.

Essentially because of the cost of US uni they wasted my money making me have to pay for my well rounded education and now upon writing this I just realized that despite the downgrade so to speak I would prefer a British degree as I think theyre shorter and if I'm to pay I just want to get what I came for which is CS skills.

I believe British kids(non-Scottish ones) have to pay some amount for Uni right? Do you pay in Poland? This could be part of the reason for the difference.

But one effect the Polish education system has is rampant cheating. It was expected (if officialy discouraged) that kids good at "hard sciences" will cheat on "humanities". Kids who were good at biology and wanted to become doctors were supposed to care about math and language less, etc. But they still had to have good average grades, so they were cheating on everything that wasn't on the entrance exams for medical schools (nowadays there's final exam at school instead of entrance exams at universities, but it changes nothing - there's still a few subjects you have to be good at and everything else you just have to have good grades in).

In effect adults are saying "this you should really know if you want to be X, and everything else you should somehow have good grades in, I don't care how".

So kids cheated on the subjects they weren't considering important for their future. I had wide interests and treated most subjects seriously but still I cheated on some geography tests because they were absurd - teacher expected us to remember top 5 exporters and importers of each of like 30 different resources and foods. And to remember how many tons of X each produced...

It was literally remembering tables of hundreds of numbers for 1 test and then forgetting them immediately. And that test was the same every year (data was from like 10 years ago :) ), and we had the test and the answers from the previous year. I'm sure the teacher knew it, but making a new one was too much hassle. It was basically an exerise in cheating the system and showing kids how absurd it is and how dumb you have to be to follow the rules.

And then there were subjects that were unimportant for everybody (no entrance exams depended on them), so even teachers teaching them expected everybody to cheat. And that was like 30% of all the subjects in high school - stuff like economy, plastic art, music, philosophy, religion, ethics, defense training, politics and society knowledge, even computer science (because computer science entrance exams were all about math, and computer science in high school was mostly microsoft office tutorial and playing games while teacher pretends to teach).

It was definitely a thing where I went to college. The humanities classes were very easy compared to the engineering/science/math classes. The school required them to try and round people out. But the humanities teachers were lazy or unskilled enough that it became exceedingly easy for people to cheat.

The canonical example is the humanities teacher who gives the exact same tests every time he/she teaches the class for 20 years. After a couple years every fraternity & sorority had a file in their study room that had every assignment & test problem that professor ever gave. So you'd have one student from the fraternity/sorority who was low on the totem pole go to class to collect the homework/requirements. Everyone else would just look at the test files to get the answers and then show up for the tests. Generally everyone would get an A, including the students who never went to class except on test days.

This was partly evil, but it was also partly students prioritizing their work hours on the vastly harder courses they were taking in their fields of study, namely the courses that were important to doing well in their field.

I graduated with a 3.7, I didn't really cheat like this, but I did put lower priority on getting top marks in the humanities class. If I got a B in a humanities class in order to allow myself to spend more time on a Computer Science class so that I could get an A in the CS class instead of a B or C that was fine with me.

At the high school level in the US everything is bifurcated into a two tier system.. one tier for the serious students who want to do well and go to college. Another tier that is state sponsored baby sitting for the students who don't want to do well and whose parents don't care.

I went to a state university in the US, my science classes were pretty rigorous, with professors saying "you have 1 week to know everything up to Chapter 6, if you didn't get this in high school, tough".

In STEM curriculums, you have to choose an interdisciplinary science track, I chose Biology and Ecology because I thought it would be easier than Chemisty. It was much more complex than anything I was ever exposed to in High School and then spent 0 time on catching anyone up.

I don't regret it.

Some universities don't require maths and so will teach it to everyone who's applied. Some don't require it but force you to take a year of it if you haven't done it. and others require it and reject you if you haven't done it.

For GCSE, "minor" subjects can be abandoned -- I stopped studying art, "technology" (design/engineering) and German (since I continued with French). At A level, the majority of students focus on closely related subjects (e.g. maths and science), which I think is the weakness of this system.

Harry Potter has essentially the same system (GCSEs = OWLs, A levels = NEWTs), this isn't something J K Rowling invented.

It's unfortunate your sister couldn't study more subjects. Parents who knew the system might have been able to push the school to allow her to study more, but I can't find anything online where parents/students are grumbling about this. (Again, Harry Potter has the same situation -- Prof. Snape says he only takes the best students into his NEWT class.)

Similarly in the uk mathematics curriculum there are a bunch of “applied” modules and schools choose which to teach. Some students would have only done mechanics and some only statistics, for example, so the corresponding university courses would have to start at what might be already known for some students.

Probably this depends on the university, what they look for in students, and more generally the strength of the students they do get. There are a lot of university students in the uk but obviously some will be stronger than others and the distribution varies by university.

They will start with math you already know, but only in the first semester, so from October until Christmas, from then on everything is mostly new. But... to be eligible to study you kind of have to have had math on that level at school. with no exceptions.

But for anything programming related? In the late 90s/early 00s there was ZERO mandatory programming in school, and if you were really, really lucky if there was any graded course. We had some elective courses but they were not really awesome and only there because one teacher wanted to do them.

So, I'm also against rehashing stuff you should know, but if you can't know it from school, why wouldn't they start at the beginning?

My experience was that even if all of the students prior to university studied maths A-Levels, we all studied different topics. Before those two year A-Levels, we all studied different topics in GCSEs. There is so much time wasted giving everyone the same knowledge because of how our system is set up with different exam boards.

I don't know if this is the case in other countries.

There are multiple implementations of that standard, in the form of exams that meet the standards. The government checks the exams satisfy their standards.

For example, an exam on history might by on the 20th century Britain, and a different one might use 19th century Europe.

The advanced maths selective school will hammer you with more complicated geometry problems, and some contents of the first few uni courses.

For history, the government requires that they:

• develop and extend their knowledge and understanding of specified key events, periods and societies in local, British, and wider world history; and of the wide diversity of human experience

• engage in historical enquiry to develop as independent learners and as critical and reflective thinkers

• develop the ability to ask relevant questions about the past, to investigate issues critically and to make valid historical claims by using a range of sources in their historical context

• develop an awareness of why people, events and developments have been accorded historical significance and how and why different interpretations have been constructed about them

• organise and communicate their historical knowledge and understanding in different ways and reach substantiated conclusions

The topics should be:

• from three eras: Medieval (500-1500), Early Modern (1450-1750) and Modern (1700-present day)

• on three time scales: short (depth study), medium (period study) and long (thematic study)

• on three geographical contexts: a locality (the historic environment); British; and European and / or wider world settings

and "British history must form a minimum of 40% of the assessed content over the full course."

Beyond that, it's up to the people making the exams.

I think this is great -- everyone should learn the techniques ("to investigate issues critically" etc) but the school, teacher and student have some flexibility in their learning. At university or in life, it hardly matters whether I focussed on Roman Britain or European WWII history to achieve this.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

In other countries, all students get the exact same exam.

I think if you feel time is wasted for something like history, geography etc that people have uneven knowledge of, that's because they've failed to learn the techniques or fundamentals, and can only apply what they've learned to a single topic. There's little difference to everyone having to study WWII at GCSE, then only knowing what (not why) at A-level.

Science and maths have a lot less flexibility.

It was the same thing in Romania, at least in the '90s, when I went to school/high-school. It was always strange to me seeing all those American movies of the "nerds"/geeks getting persecuted by the "cool" kids, it certainly didn't happen to kids in my school and I'm pretty sure it generally didn't happen to kids generally around the country.

I know because I was a "nerd" guy but I also played sports and actively enjoyed doing that, was never made fun of by my high-school colleagues because of me studying/getting high grades, that would have been pretty awkward to hear.

A movie cheering for, or even trivializing anti-social behaviors would find it difficult to go past censorship (not to mention - to be conceived in the first place...)

It's for the same reason that you'd be hard-pressed to find a pre-1989 Central/Eastern European movie depicting any subcultures (like punks or hippies) sympathetically.

I wouldn't assume that's the case in American schools, though - not based on movies, at least. Could be just a convenient stereotype peddled by "college comedies", not a genre I'd take as valid social commentary

As someone who went through the US public education system in a lower-class neighborhood in the 2000s, I can't speak for wealthier neighborhoods [1], but people are definitely persecuted solely for their grades.

[1] One of the most interesting things about American culture is the dichotomy we have due to the large population and inequality (meaning there's ~no group overlap prior to college) - educational experiences had been so vastly different for many I met in college, and we were shocked at hearing the other side's experiences.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html

It's also sociologically interesting because Sava/Lazar/Vianu people (or, generally speaking, people who went to good Bucharest high-schools, it's probably the same for other big-ish Romanian cities like Cluj or Timisoara) are more "aware" of the high-school they went to and they generally tend to keep friends with their high-school colleagues for way longer (my so's boss went to Sava and he's still active friends with his former Sava colleagues 25+ years after finishing high-school). Like I said, we don't have that thing in small-ish cities.

I say it's interesting because I kind of noticed the same thing in this thread with people who went to prestigious schools in Moscow (#57, #2), they tend to remember fondly said schools and some of them kept closely in touch with their former colleagues.

There was no rivalry between Sava and Lazar 30 years ago, except for the Cismigiu park. They were in the top 5 schools in Bucharest, but there was no direct competition, they were all considered good places to study and kids used to choose based on the location and other preferences. Lazar had easier access to Cismigiu and lower admission grades, Sava was in a strange neighborhood but a nice, larger building, MF1 (Vianu) was smaller and harder to reach from some places, etc. They all had good teachers back then, no longer these days.

It's definitely a thing even in smaller cities with good highschools. Reunions for 10,20,30,40 years are very common and attended by all, including teachers still alive, etc.

Being good at everything was actually cooler than being bad, especially if you were pretending you're naturally smart and didn't have to work to achieve that. I never understood how come kids in American TV are bullied for being smarter than the others, usually being smart is an advantage. On the other hand if you worked hard for grades or (even worse) were a favorite of some teacher and sucked up to her - you were a "kujon" and that was very uncool.

So everybody pretended they are brilliant and never study for even 10 minutes just know everything :)

But as an American someone in their mid-40s...can anecdotally say it was definitely true in the 80s-90s.

It's a senseless/strange phenomenon that definitely existed but seems to have naturally died off. Guessing it's related to the increasing amount of tech-billionaires during this time. In general in American society, people with money are considered "cool".

At the end of the day, if kids are struggling, they're going to feel frustrated. And they're going to take it out on the physically weakest kids and the ones who are most making them look bad by being good at school if they're not separated, protected, or somehow made mutually engaged (all of which are expensive things to implement). I don't think it has anything to do with anti intellectualism personally.

Basically the adult cops undercover as high school students try to make a first day impression and they sortof trash academics and try to intimidate kids interested in studying etc. So they try to be stereotypical 80s/90s popular kids. It spectacularly backfires and they have to change their approach. It's actually a surprisingly insightful scene in the context of this discussion.

But I think you are wrong on "nerd" thing. Which doesn't mean technical excellence or excellence on a particular subject. "Nerd" means being weird while somehow interested in some technical matters.

There were a lot of "cool" kids doing great at math, physics or programming.

According to Mirriam-Webster, a nerd is "an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person".

> an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person

I was definitely unstylish, that's for sure, and I was no Adonis, that was also certain, but the good thing is that back in the day that didn't matter, how you looked and dressed as a kid didn't matter. I only had 2 pairs of jeans for my 4 years of high-school because that was all my parents could afford to buy me back then, but to be honest I wasn't aware of that back then. I'm afraid nowadays things are completely opposite.

In the United State there is an extreme anti-intellectual bias among conservative middle and lower class whites.

On the contrary, progressives in the US outright reject factual information and statistics and instead focus on political correctness and feelings.

There are many anti-intellectuals on both sides.

It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia):

https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/International_broadcas...

While I don't necessarily love the show, I've known many PHD students from China, Taiwan, and Korea that absolutely love the show. Hardly from countries that "don't value intellect".

"This permeates western culture across the board,"

I can't speak for Australia, but I went to high school in the US during the 90s. The 'cool' kids weren't necessarily anti-intellectual, they were just more social and were well versed in the ability to make friends. Most were in the top 10 in terms of grades at our school and I didn't go to a specialized or private school.

The 'nerds' and unpopular kids weren't necessarily smart either. Many had Aspergers or were on the autism spectrum, which means they most likely won't do well in social situations and most likely won't ever be popular.

Others were just anti-social or were just never taught how to make friends or be a friend.

Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is supposed to depict someone like this.

It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else, but the actual reasons are much more nuanced.

"The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby."

I suppose this is just the result of living in a stable and safe country. 12 year olds aren't adults and shouldn't take on adult responsibilities. It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile, which is something you can never get back as an adult.

Anecdotally, and based on depictions in movies and TV, status for American kids is directly related to how well they do at sports. Doing well in your subjects and "trying" in class can either lead to ostracisation at worst or at best doesn't make a difference to your social status.

Whereas in other places, such as where I grew up, kids who tried hard and did well in their subjects had the highest social status. They were the "coolest", in the eyes of their peers. Rewards in status meant that such effort was positively reinforced.

You know how Hermione Granger is thought to be a know-it-all and insufferable? I could never understand that. Where I grew up she'd have been the most popular kid. Most other kids would have wished they could be more like her.

If you pick 10 random people in Russia and ask them about this show, all 10 will either not have heard of it or react with disdain. I have no idea where you get the notion that it's popular in Russia.

> It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else

I was popular in Russia. Then I had difficulty fitting in at the Australian school until I learned to act like an idiot and not reveal my 'nerdy' (a word that doesn't even have an equivalent in Russian) hobbies and interests outside of select circles. The same hobbies and interests that were perfectly average in Russia - electronics, astronomy, chess, that kind of thing. After that I fit in again. It's pretty hard to interpret this as some sort of social issues like you claim. I think you lack perspective on this. This is also the same culture that teaches teenage girls to act dumb in order to appear more attractive, which is pretty well studied at this point and will hopefully die now that it's in the public eye.

> It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile

As one of the kids who would match your label, I think it's sad that children here are artificially held back from their natural maturation in order for the parents to selfishly extend the baby phase for their own enjoyment. Nor does this coddling have anything to do with stability. Plenty of stable countries across Europe where kids are allowed to grow at their natural pace, including several first-hand accounts in the comments section here. This is also why you'll find significantly lower age limits for things like consumption of alcohol, drugs, sexual activity in those same countries.

Coming back to the OP topic, soviet textbooks are 'hardcore' because the pupils are 2-4 years more mentally mature than their western counterparts due to cultural and education system differences. It's as simple as that.

I wonder how many languages actually do have an equivalent. Maybe English is the only one?

When I translate something to Slovak, I also struggle with the word 'nerd'. We do not have a word for this concept. A close one is "bifľoš", which means a person who puts a lot of effort into memorizing school material, but it is implied that the person does not truly understand it. Another one is "kockáč", which means a math-oriented person. But we do not have a word that means: a weird person, because they actually study and understand something.

To me it seems that America is like "no child left behind", while Russia and Eastern Europe are like "if a child gets behind, wolves will eat them, who cares, at least it motivates others to run faster". :D

And that's why it has 8.6 on Kinopoisk? I don't like it either, but imaginary statistic is not a statistic and your social circle is not the whole country.

> I learned to act like an idiot and not reveal my 'nerdy' (a word that doesn't even have an equivalent in Russian)

Of course it does have an equivalent, it's "задрот" if you're being mean or "ботан" you're old enough to actually have used that.

While this is true, I think we often don't give kids enough credit either. Around that age they can be quite capable.

I think we've gone too far the other way and just don't push kids whatsoever, so now most 18 year olds are completely clueless as they head into college. This is compounded by USA's growing anti-intellectualism where we're proud to be bad at math, argue about having to study literature, and so on.

> It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia):

I can make this same argument about a Korean tv show called Running Man, which is indeed popular abroad... to niche audiences, like me. :-) I probably wouldn't argue with a Russian person about what shows are popular in their country, though.

> It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia):

You are confusing popularity with agreement with the anti-intellectual undertones.

I landed on my feet as a programmer, thankfully, but not until the depression set in and my performance in sixth form and university utterly plummetted. Impossible expectations, zero family support (never good enough and never doing the right thing _for them_).

Hearing stories about the different priorities in Russia and Latvia, from my various friends who came frmo there, made me feel quite envious, although I only heard the good parts of it (like learning multiple languages from a young age).

It's definitely not just the education system that's to blame (although the repeated hammering it takes from successive governments is an issue), there's definitely a wider cultural issue where it's almost cooler to be ignorant.

The USSR coasted its first half of existence milking Tsarist legacy of science and engineering, then the other half copying the intellectual fruits of supposedly dumb Western jocks.

Modern Russia isn't even half of that.

Precious little to show for all the cheek puffing and talent grooming.

I call it "preserving tradition."

Post-Stalin they had an opportunity to develop their schools of science but it's only so much a few, even dedicated, individuals can do. By 1990 these efforts largely fizzed out.

As a Chinese student who studied in Australia for a few years I think you just misunderstand the culture.

Most of the popular kids got good grades and were not labelled as nerds. And the nerd kids didn’t really get good grades either.

I think Australians are very practical focused (maybe this is what you mean by anti-intellectual?).

For example the friends I know who wanted to do medicine and law - and are now successful doctors and lawyers - stopped focusing on maths at the end of grade 10.

This would put them way behind in math than an equivalent Chinese student who also wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but as far as I can tell it hasn’t had any negative impact on their careers.

Many great discoveries come from linking different disciplines. I hope there is more to live than just a career. I am very grateful for the broad spectrum I've been given.

Chances are they took a basic Epidemiology class -- or a class that had it as a component -- and covered "Stat for medical workers." And that should be enough.

Whether currently available statistics training is even adequate to the task of teaching this skill is a separate question, the answer to which is unclear to me.

I think you will find that your bar would exclude the overwhelming majority of doctors.

I had friends who came to Australia after starting their education in Singapore, and they were continually shocked how far behind we were. It's honestly gob-smacking how little is being done about this, we're doing a massive disservice to our young people which they will have to overcome for the rest of their lives.

Is this actually the case? Much of the most useful science & software comes from people educated in the Americas and Western Europe. I think that non-western schooling methodologies under-value problem solving and overvalue "raw" knowledge.

They have the basics, motivation, and opportunities.

Those that stay in poor countries don't have opportunities nor motivation. Those that come from rich countries don't have the basics nor motivation.

It's a generalization, of course.

>It's a generalization, of course

But there is a lot of truth to this.

One other thing that i have noticed, is that in "rich" countries, knowledge of trivial and basic stuff are celebrated in the name of "positive reinforcement". This gives students the false idea that they have "mastered" something while they have just started learning. IMO, this is extremely harmful to the student's psychology.

Of course, case point 1, comparing 'gymnasium' (more theoretical study-focused high school instead of say practical crafts, good preparation for university) with some US public high school.

Schools back home have gone 'softer' on students since we studied (don't all complain at some point about that?), so maybe now its more comparable.

The thing is, hardcore math skills apparently don't have that high impact on overall functioning economy. More open society, freedom to pursue ones dreams, freedom to try your own business idea (and fail hard if stars don't align) make overall a better functioning economy.

I talked to a couple of friends about this, and about 1/2 had similar course offerings.

I know nothing about your history, but usually moving to a new country means you are now an immigrant and by definition have less privilege than before, even if you can't immediately notice it.

Another hypothesis is that you left an elitist good school in russia and joined a not-so elite school in Australia. You could have done the same in Russia just by moving to a slightly cheaper neighborhood. Confirming the parent poster you were replying to.

Can anyone comment on how this translates into results in adulthood, in the current age?

Do we see more discoveries in fundamental science, more inventions, better medical care, or better-run businesses?

As I don't speak Russian or Chinese, I don't really have a fair view and it would be easy for me to mistakenly under-estimate what the graduates of these schools get up to.

University education fixes these problems. People who only finish high-school rarely do science later in life.

Ultimately, regardless of how the high school education level might be, these countries win out.

Nerd is different in that it's more about interests. If you're interested in any kind of science, biology, history, literature you're a nerd. Anime nerd is also a valid combination but it wouldn't work for 'kujon' because there's no repetition.

In Russia it used to be pretty common to see chess players in a park or train. Books readers were also more common in public spaces than in Poland. Russia has many problems for sure, but it has certain respect for intellectuals, composers etc.

Level of school while it is supposed to be same is night and day. The special Math/Physics school is one thing, but under that there are “good” schools in the city, ok, shitty then you have countryside etc

Same thing applies to other countries. Depending on where you went to school in same city you experience can be vastly different. Some school in let’s say Toronto have A- Math in high school average, other 20mins by bicycle can be C-. In Moscow you can have an awesome school, take metro for 30 mins and only thing you are learning is how to not get shit beaten out of you during a class break.

I went to a very good city school in Kyiv till grade 8, then specialized Math/Physics school from then on(I was bottom of the barrel at the new school in Math ouch). I used to come to my old school sometimes to hangout, level was absolutely different as in nobody there could solve a single problem in my home work. University exam at KGU in physics I took 1 hours instead of 3. But this is a trick. Once you get in second round of weeding out starts, I remember the breakdown people had after first couple tests. People who had 5 on all subjects their whole life, but they went to normal school. I think more then half of them did not make it through first semester.

I then left to Canada and went to middle of the road University there for Comp Sci. Honestly I liked it far more. It was more fun and flexible in terms of what you could take and learn, I could do a minor in Economics half way through because I liked it. I could work as research assistant in later and actually get my name on a paper and then go to a conference in Vegas :)

Australia is terrible at maths given its levels of wealth. By one measure students in Kazakhstan perform better.

This would be a national scandal if not for the anti-intellectualism that pervades the nation.

This is one of the reasons I think Australia (my home country) is in big trouble economically in the long-term.

http://tv.sohu.com/s2018/dsjshdbzdsyji/

tv.sohu is one of the largest streaming sites in China.

EDIT: My recollection is poor, long division and the associated concepts like fractions and decimals may have been later and spread out over more years, but I'm sure there were at least 2 to 3 wasted years in my mathematics education.

In my experience (left high school in the early 2000s), the kids who were bullied were the kids regarded as "weird", smart kids were mostly left alone or blended into popular groups. The "weird" kids were mostly kids with obvious issue. Social maladjustment, visible poverty, autism spectrum disorders, or just being unkempt. There is some overlap here with smart kids, largely due to autism.

The reason this narrative exists is that a lot of the children with issues told themselves they were bullied because they were smarter than everyone else, even though that wasn't the reality. I don't know if this was them internalizing the hollywood stereotype, or hollywood playing to an existing narrative. It's perhaps more tragic that kids who were already at a disadvantage were the ones who were bullied, but it makes more sense and is the actual reality as I experienced it.

Edit: I mean that in the Eastern block you were better off in mathematics than in things like physics and chemistry. This holds for countries with historically diverging cultures from the Russians too (like Poland and Hungary).

Edit 2: I think perhaps it is also worth mentioning that you have "hardcore" on the one side and then pure artistic poetry on the other side. I've heard that French mathematics is a pleasure to read as it is both hardcore mathematics and well written prose. Some of the limitations on the Russian texts was also imposed by other restrictions: For example, the articles often had to be shorter than the authors would have wanted.

> this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia

Anti-intellectualism does exist in Russia. Read for example Edward Frenkel's autobiographical works.

My speculation: This hasn't anything to do with the "eastern-ness" of a countries culture – but rather the ROI for education / medicine, which looks quite different under a communist economy, under which so many other endeavours scale so much worse.

Great point! I might add that this is also true of many "third world" countries even without Communism.

A few of my family members are teachers (in both private and government schools) and from what I hear there is not yet much of a shift away from the anti-intellectual culture.

Seems a bit exaggerated to me. At my high school (in the US) the cool kids were just the more socially outgoing kids. Some of them had great grades and others not so much. It was the same in the 'nerds' group.

From my experience academic achievement didn't really have any bearing at all on the social group you fell into.

But I guess experiences will vary....there are pretty huge differences in public school quality across the US and even within one local school district.

I think that image of high school has some truth to it, as I graduated high school a couple years before the movie came out and it was already beginning to change. Kids playing pokemon at lunch were the same kids on the varsity sports teams. It was okay to like video games, and to be upset about getting a C on a test. The image of bullies as "cool kids" was changing to "kids whose parents probably never told them they love them" - and everybody knew it. The cool kids are nice now. Not totally sure if the shift has continued in the last 7 years, but it is definitely happening.

So it is with the kids. I don’t think there was a lot of “participation trophies” and idea that “you’re a winner just for trying”. It was realistic. Women in Russia are told to look beautiful by their mothers, for example, and they are expected wear makeup and heels just going out to the store or to work. Imagine a US mother saying that.

STEM in Russia and China’s schools is wayyy more advanced than USA.

Not just in Moscow but every city center in every former Soviet republic. It’s one of the things the Communists really instilled early on after taking over backwaters (at the time) like Uzbekistan (along with equal rights for women, 95% literacy and electricity). Compare that to pre-revolutionary Cuba or Hawaii, for instance, that USA took over.

I think right around Sputnik time and the cold war, the US had a major STEM crisis and started trying to teach math more. But really, most of our brightest students are just imported - and they’re happy to come.

Gonna drop this one in there, from Dr Kaku, on a panel discussing this exact question:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM

As an Australian nerd who got higher than average grades, it's not accurate in the slightest to generalize your experiences to my entire country and I haven't seen the anti-intellectualism you claim is there.

When I was in high school I was very much a nerd. Good grades, tried to win the approval of teachers, head in a book, never played sports, interested in chess and video games.

I definitely did not fit in. Making friends was difficult, I was teased and all the things I gather you had issues with.

However I also had a close friend who despite sharing my interests and grades, was also much more outgoing, participated in sports and was generally well-liked. He had no troubles at all fitting in.

To strengthen the counter-example even more, in grade 9, all of the highest academic achievers got put in the same class. These people did not have issues.

So intelligence clearly wasn't the problem. What I think the problem was is that I was quiet, shunned sports, kept to myself and occasionally saw my brains as making me better than other people. That's what led to the ostracizm that might be misinterpreted as anti-intellectualism.

Also, all traces of this were well and truly gone by years 11 and 12. At this point everyone is doing what they can to get into their chosen university so they can't criticize you for doing the same.

> A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby.

I'm married to a Russian and my mother in law is a high school English teacher in Russia. I think you're very much overgeneralizing in these cases too.

Perhaps in some cities and families 12 year-olds are expected to behave the way you claim but it's definitely not universal. There are plenty of 12 year-olds who are allowed to be children in Russia.

> > Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia.

Which curriculum? They vary by state. I believe the curriculum for maths and sciences in Victoria (my state) was very similar to the International Baccalaureate (I compared topics with students in that program).

If you want to point at an area in which Russia is significantly different, I'd point at the arts. In Russia children are expected to study and learn poetry and read literature from a very early age all the way through high school. It's not at all frowned upon. Boys choosing to learn "feminine" things like ballroom dancing also seems to be well accepted from what I've seen.

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