I've also went through what could be considered a "brutal" system, very similar to whats described, although i wouldn't use that specific term.
We had ~40 problem sets to solve every evening for homework, hours of work. I don't think anyone ever got an A+ in anything. If the student was better/stronger at something - they'd only get harder and harder questions thrown at them during oral exams until they crumble, and harder and harder sets added to their homework.
As for the "stupid" Americans? STEM classes are full of foreign kids in top US schools.
There are a bunch of different approaches that can lead to top scores in that ranking. notably Finland does well with a non-brutal approach.
> a "brutal" system, very similar to whats described, although i wouldn't use that specific term.
the term was used by the parent, not by me. We just happened to assess its value differently.
> they'd only get harder and harder questions thrown at them during oral exams until they crumble, and harder and harder sets added to their homework.
It depends on what you think the purpose of school should be. If you want people to understand the world they live in, understand the "why" of things, think critically and creatively etc. then problem sets and ritualistic humiliation during oral exams won't take you very far.
They do just fine because they aren't selected to do jobs where they need those kinds of skills, because they tend not to have them.
If they were taught the stuff at least they would have the choice.
I'm not in favour of brutalizing the kids though, I think that ruins the experience for them. But a lot of kids are more capable than we think and ought to be shown advanced subjects.
at the very minimum, pressure during oral exams taught to work against the clock, develop conviction and do your best to defend your position.
In some students. In others it just engendered the feeling that they're morons and that math is just "not for them". Math and science are for absolutely everybody. Not everybody will make a career out of them, but everybody can enjoy them.
Most people will do just fine with basic math training because it's what you normally need later on in life.
Most of my math training in the Eastern European school system has probably gone to waste. I only saw the point of advanced maths, calculus later on in technial university when I had to apply it in science. During my engineering career I only used the math I learned up to maybe ninth or tenth grade. No calculus. For materials science we also had to use maths up to tenth grade because of non linear properties of materials. However, calculus and advanced math was required to understand the physical phenomena. What went away was solving tricky integrals and series for which you had to think of an obscure substitution - the type of grinding math excercises we had to solve in high school. Last month I had to solve some RSA and ECC cryptography problems at work that could not be easily solved with existing crypto libraries. For example RSA signing checks were reimplemented using a big numbers library. That also did not require advanced maths, but rather a lot of grinding research done by reading crypto standards and technical guides.
In Romania I attended one of the "elite" maths/cs highschools. Except a hand full of people who would win medals in the imo etc. the rest of us were mostly clever, overworked automatons who learned problem solving tricks that we regurgitated on the page come exam time.
I think the subjects where so hard that it forced kids to cooperate, smart kids where considered a resource that potential bullies didn’t like to harm, as they would help them in the future. Additionally there was this sense of … maybe “esprit de corps” as we all were going through the same tough training.
I think that those hard problems were actually very rewarding and I saw very little of the “teenage problems” that are so prominently displayed in American media.
There was some bullying back when I was in school, but possibly less than in the US. However, I think this doesn't have much to do with the curriculum, but with social conditions.
In my case I was bullied in secondary school (by kids in my class) even though school was tough and I was easily part of what you would consider "valuable resources".
The result was that the bullies would copy their homework off of the kids that copied their homework from me and I still got into fights daily.
In highschool bullying disappeared completely, but that's because I went to a selective school (the equivalent of a US magnet hs) where everybody was academically oriented and also came from more stable social environments.
In less academically strong highschools there are a lot of nasty things taking place - students abusing eachother, teachers abusing students, students beating up teachers etc.
This has changed for the worse with capitalism and social inequality. We had some bullying back when I was a primary school student but it was physical bullying by higher graders towards younger students and it was mostly done outside the school. We had none of the psychological bullying that you see in the US and to a greater extent in Korea or Japan. We had roma and very poor students in our class. There was also almost no bullying during high school. The more odd kids were usually ignored and had friends of their own.
> I think that those hard problems were actually very rewarding
Well, maybe rewarding for some. I didn't like them and would rather go outside and play or ride my bike in the neighbourhood. Math for math's sake was never my thing. I only started to really like math in university when I saw its potential to solve real world problems.
I went to American public schools my whole life and never saw any evidence of bullying.
An interesting perspective which I feel might be the actual core of the problem. I grew up after the Revolution, so I can't make a before/after comparison, but (as I mentioned in a different comment) I see a tight connection between how aggressive other students were and how bad their family situation was.
> Math for math's sake was never my thing. I only started to really like math in university when I saw its potential to solve real world problems.
Perfectly legitimate. Pushing hard math early on can actually put you off the subject forever. Some of us started liking it in university, but a lot of capable students decide it's just not for them. With a different approach many might have ended up understanding and maybe even loving it.
Brutal was the term used by the parent, I just picked it up from there.
> if the kid has no interest in Math he/she would regard that as brutal and for others who do have interest it's just challenging and maybe even fun
Throughout my education I was in both camps at different times. The more "brutal" things got (dry, formal curriculum, tough teachers) the more it put me off. On the other hand patient and engaging teachers could get me to spend countless hours after school working on math problems.
Interests are things that develop based on intrinsic attributes but also based on environmental feedback. I suspect the latter is fast more important.
> American schools are too soft on science in general. [...]The Albanian school was brutal in teaching science
How on earth is brutality in teaching a good idea? What was the effect of this approach on the average Albanian or Romanian student? Sure it worked fine for a few of us, but overall the results are disastrous, just take a look at the PISA rankings.
Have you ever wondered how it's possible that the same "stupid" Americans that don't learn integrals and group theory in highschool somehow manage just fine in university and later on in life?