Can China Do Math?

[Randy W]

from Inkstone

 

"Chinese social media loses its mind after China’s high school team is defeated and ranked sixth in an international math competition. Americans took the gold."

 

A high school contest loss leaves China wondering if it can do math

 

 

 

In this year’s Romanian Master of Mathematics contest, an annual event for high school pupils, the Chinese team came sixth – with the Americans taking the gold medal.

China won the gold medal in 2009 and 2012, was the runner-up in 2010 and came third in 2015 and 2017.

This year’s relative failure has prompted a heated debate on social media, and the topic has attracted 12.4 million searches on Baidu, the country’s most popular search engine.

Some internet users blamed the way Chinese students are “force-fed” in the classroom as the reason for not winning.

“They are cultivating students like chickens raised for meat, confining them in a coop and dosing them with hormones,” one commenter said. “Only education by interest can cultivate true talent.”

 

[Dennis143]

And all this time I thought it was simply Chinese innate ability.

[Randy W]

I have to wonder how much of an effect the use of chopsticks and Chinese characters has on pre-school child development and how much that carries over into the mindset while growing up. Chinese children often won't become proficient with chopsticks until the age of 5, and reading may have to wait for the first grade at the age of 7.

[fluffyballs]

I have to wonder how much of an effect the use of chopsticks and Chinese characters has on pre-school child development and how much that carries over into the mindset while growing up. Chinese children often won't become proficient with chopsticks until the age of 5, and reading may have to wait for the first grade at the age of 7.

An article I read a while back (can't find it now) claimed that Chinese kids, on average, spend an additional two years just learning the mechanics of their language compared to languages like English, French, Spanish etc... This includes stuff like memorizing characters, learning to write characters etc. Seems like a colossal waste of time.

Edited March 3, 2019 by fluffyballs (see edit history)

[dnoblett]

I can understand the “force fed” concept, from what I see Chinese learn by memorization and drill.

 

From my personal experience with my wife learning to drive, early on in her learning and preparing for the road test she kept insisting on practicing on the roads where the test would happen trying to memorize the test area, it took her some time to get away from the memorizing and understanding the concept of adapting to the situation.

[Randy W]

 

I have to wonder how much of an effect the use of chopsticks and Chinese characters has on pre-school child development and how much that carries over into the mindset while growing up. Chinese children often won't become proficient with chopsticks until the age of 5, and reading may have to wait for the first grade at the age of 7.

An article I read a while back (can't find it now) claimed that Chinese kids, on average, spend an additional two years just learning the mechanics of their language compared to languages like English, French, Spanish etc... This includes stuff like memorizing characters, learning to write characters etc. Seems like a colossal waste of time.

 

 

 

But, once they begin learning, they only need to learn around 2000 characters for a newspaper level of proficiency, compared to around 20,000 for an equivalent fluency in a Western language. They catch up fast - but still, the pre-school years can shape their later interests. My artistic ability, or lack there-of, pretty much precludes any abilities I might have in writing Chinese characters.