The power of the Soviet education system | Po-Shen Loh and Lex Fridman
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- Опубліковано 15 тра 2021
- Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Po-Shen Loh: Mathemati...
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Po-Shen Loh is a mathematician at CMU and coach of the USA International Math Olympiad team.
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The best thing about soviet education was the equal level of study among all the schools. There are thousands of examples when children from the very small and far villages became scientists or brilliant engineers, doctors, etc... This educational system gave equal possibilities to everybody everywhere. And what is very remarkable it was free of charge for all, including means of living, every student of higher educational program received scholarship and free place in dormitory.
The equal level of study didn't allow for different levels of ability. The failure of schools in the west is that they don't have different learning paths for different abilities, but instead dumb the classes down until the least capable can absorb everything. Nobody who can go faster goes faster.
Also the Soviets taught a single, monolithic culture to all students of all ethnic backgrounds.
wont explain why africa never invented the wheel tho
@@IrishIwasJewishwho said they didn’t?
@@LevitskiSRGE it's the historical record. They never had it until after Europeans and Arabs made contact
Hahaha hilarious. You say 1 anti communist thing and off to the gulags
I am From India my father studied computer science and engineering in USSR ! Trust me it is really tough!
Wow share something about it please
Bro, share more please
Wow can you please tell us a bit about your father's experience in USSR ?
@@SayakKolaynot him but mine have a great time in USSR. Free fruit everywhere and he was an small asian man. He always want to come back Leningrad someday.
Знания не даются легко.
I am from Russia and had been in high school in mid 2000s. We had a math teacher, a lady about 60yo at that time, who was in an extreme love with teaching, math and kids of course. She grew up and lived most of her life druing Soviet Union, she was a soviet person. So when I was in high school in mid 2000s Russia was still recovering from disastrous 90s, there was still poverty and the schools were austere. Teachers were paid paltry salaries. The kids would sit in pairs or triples at one table having one schoolpook per table.
During two final years of high school our math teacher organised for us a pretty harcore curriculum. On top of the regular curriculum, which already included math of course, we would come to school on tuesdays and thursdays after school hours and have 1.5 hours of extracurricular math each time. And on saturdays it was a total hardcore for us young boys, we would come to school at 12pm and have 3.5 hours of math straight.
Even tho I was the laziest and most stupid boy in class, the sheer bombartment of our brains with math had let me pass exams to a university and get free tuition due to the scores.
Don't forget how everybody passed, the paying system to teachers in school and universities was known to everybody and still known, it's crazy
not boasting or anything bro, but here in india, in 12th standard, the system goes absolutely hardcore especially when the competitive exams are in a month or two. You are supposed to attend 10 hour straight classes on physics, chemistry and maths. and on above that you are supposed to do extra homework which amounts to 6 hrs. I think compared to this 3.5 hours of extra study time is slightly small 💀
Btw I do not support this type of system but this is how it goes in india. I think china is even tougher because they have gaokao which is even more difficult to crack than indian competitive exams.
" schools were austere. Teachers were paid paltry salaries. "
nothing changes under the sun in russia. still is.
its not to criticize teachers or schools, but governments´ lackluster resource allocation into them. its no secret that if soviet union would've just put its military money into education instead, soviet union would have no problem existing today.
but, alas..
Curious. I studied at one of the Moscow physics and mathematics schools (of course, in the mathematics class) in the 2000s. Our teacher loved giving "simple tests" that lasted 15-20 minutes. It was only during university admission preparation that I understood where she took them from - they were entrance exams for the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University from different years.
Very useful but very painful.
I once read somewhere soviet kids were taught in environments that although very austere, were so obsessed with intellectualism, kids in the Seventh Grade competed not on popularity, but rather, and for example, to see who was able to solve extremely difficult advanced calculus problems that western university students wouldn't be even able to solve.
My country was part of the Soviet Union. Our school system is based on the Soviet one. Its difference from the Western system is that we have a very complex school curriculum. The fact that we teach in the 6th grade in the West somewhere in 8 or 9 (depends on the country). Not everyone is able to master it.
@@user-db4ks2fg1k That's remarkable. Is it true that 6-7-8th grade kids did study advance calculus in the defunct Soviet Union?
@@santiagocarreno5881 This is not great! Many students cannot master the program. It is designed for children with high intelligence. It is not flexible because it does not take into account the level of development of a particular student.
Children learn arithmetic in kindergarten. At school, I taught the multiplication table in the 4th year.
@@user-db4ks2fg1k the system you described sounds very much like Indian education system (or at least what Indian school education system was till a decade or so ago)
@@user-db4ks2fg1k Are you kidding? 😂 The multiplication table is taught from grade 2, not grade 4. Late
I live in Kazakhstan, it's near Russia and it was an USSR member. Soviet math culture it was the best thing about communism era
Can you tell us a bit about how the mathematics culture was in Kazakhstan when it was in the USSR ?
@@SayakKolay I never lived in USSR. But there is a library in my little town with math books from that era. The level of soviet school students is much higher than now.
And it wasn't even related to communism itself. Just the way the society was at the time. They actually valued knowledge and intelligence, you know, the things that allow people to keep a society going without having it collapse at every turn. Sadly, when things like these are lost in a society, the care for the wellbeing of its people is lost, and we can't help but approach for the total collapse of said civilization.
@@tiranito2834 I think it's definitely related to communism. The way how Russian empire treated education vs how Soviets treated it was day and night. Education was simply ideologically important for bolsheviks, and they started mass education programs essentially from day 1. My grand grandmother was the first educated person in my lineage. Soviets also brought education to peripheral areas of Russian empire, to Kazakhs, Buryats etc. which was unprecedented.
Current generation of post-Soviet people is shockingly stupid.
@@Eldarlll, это связано с тем, что сейчас не обучают, а готовят к экзаменам, на которые есть все вопросы/задачи
There's like a glimmer of pride and excitement in your eyes Lex when explaining this. You have a deep love and respect for this system. It's nice.
I looked at my grandpa’s Soviet high school textbooks from the 60s. I think it was equivalent to 9th or 10th grade. As opposed to my post-Soviet generation which started learning similar stuff on our last year of school and first year of university. Soviet highschooler beating modern univeristy student.
And another great thing about Soviet education system were the youth organizations. Not only did the Soviet kids learn more (quantity and quality), but they were also NOT dissociated from each other. There definitely was a sense of comradeship and collective nature. As opposed to now, when we have closed off rigid cliques and generally disdainful attitudes towards our peers. My father and grandfather (Soviet citizens) saw their peers as comrades, friends, allies, while we are taught to look at each other like competitors and rivals from a very young age. That’s the free market thinking - everyone else is your competitor who you must beat.
So, not only was the Soviet education better in terms of acquisition of knowledge, but also in raising better generations
Oh , please. Soviet system maybe was good for certain people. I don't understand how it can be good if all of my nation's intelligent people died in gulags ? Our people lost all their wealth.
agreed, we need socialism without gulags. Like the benefits of socialism are not essentially linked to gulags lol@@bozok6360
Yiu are romanticizing it too much. It was better when it comes to pure education though at least at school level. I can agree with that.
It looks like China is finally undoing what it has done wrong in the recent past. They stopped private education last year and have now returned to public education for everyone. This is what once again gave me hope that they are really trying this Chinese Socialism.
@@aladimneto "They stopped private education last year and have now returned to public education for everyone."
And you view that as positive?
Sure if you want brainwashed by government generation you can have that. Litards fo the west push similar crap as well, gotta have newer generation of brainwashed.
That's so interesting you're saying that. My family came from Russia when I was very young, but my parents insisted on applying that Soviet education mindset even amidst me going to school in Germany. And I have to say that I'm extremely grateful for that.
What's Soviet education mindset? Can you explain more on that would love to know
Tell us about the mindset.
If Russians are so smart, then why do they have such low lifespan? Maybe they should work on that. They drink a hell of a lot too. I wonder why? A coping mechanism?
Russia is far behind the world in many aspects. So maybe its too much education which perhaps smothers common sense.
Look at American high schools and see how much value they place in the athletes, parading their trophies, buying them multi million dollar facilities. Academics should be praised by displaying their Olympiad trophies, buying them multi million dollar science facilities, etc.
It’s mostly because sports brings in the revenue tho
@@hermanosfernandez1537 unfortunately.
and why is science good?
I don't know, maybe the stuff that you used to write your comment was based off of millions of people's efforts based off of science?@@user-ou6dr8mt7k
As someone who values academics and an avid sports fan. Who are you to say something is better than the other? I think this is what is wrong with people today. You sound so hell bent on your ideals you don’t understand that sports bring people happiness and while I am someone who loves to learn, I also will say basketball is one of the things that has taught me to value a team and strive to a common goal. When someone is so quick to scrutinize something I tend to think they aren’t as smart as they say. Maybe you should learn a bit more, before being so judgy my guy.
When my parents and their friends gather if there is anything they praise about the soviet union it's its education of the sciences. even literature.
Well they did made man go to space posible
Here is a great US documentary about a rivalry between the US and Soviet systems of education.
ua-cam.com/video/GhJnt3xW2Fc/v-deo.html
I totally agree my friend my parents were greek soviets too and i get nerve when they say usa has the best education best scientist and all this bullshits .busa has money to steal the brain they dont produce the brain .because soviets diddnt have fansy cars it doesn't mean they were technologican behind
When I was in high-school, I had some Soviet Era Math books and I was very obsessed with these books. They shaped me up in terms of critical/analytical thinking. Would recommend it to anyone if they want to follow.
Please drop the titles of textbooks
Where did you get those textbooks? Can I get an english version online?
Could u please drop them here? Preferably English versions
@@umerghaffar4686 @delusionalplatonist6077 check out MIR publishers books
Ussr had done revolution in the education and health sector. Central Asian countries were the ones beniffited the most.
I went through a (post)-soviet educational system (in Poland). When I studied in the UK I was noticeably ahead of the western counterparts. More mature and more educated to the point I struggled not to consider them stupid (apologies, nothing personal).
Now, 20+ years after high school I realized I learned all the maths needed for the AI and despite being an artist I have very little problems understanding both concepts and maths within. Simple..
Yes but why all the west blame russia ii dont understand
@@user-hz1oy6ni6kpaparovitsbecause Russia has always been a strong competitor to the West
Yet America is far ahead in innovation and business and most other things.
Why is this?
We have to let ideas thrive, not stifle them.
Maybe the USA is better at this aspect. And the math and engineering can catch up to it.
I have same experience (post soviet education system in Poland in early 90s, moved to UK in mid/late 90s to highschool. I was way ahead of the curriculum in maths and sciences. All it took was to have a serious teaching system starting as early as possible.
@@nofurtherwest3474 no, the USA is ahead in innovation because of all the Asian immigrants (which the vast majority grew up under communism). It's because capitalism attracts talented individuals with chances to get rich (also because Asia was mostly poor until recent years), not the other way around. Also, the dark image of communism is entirely Western propaganda/indoctrination. If you go to China, capitalism is associated with drugs, school shootings, homelessness, etc. meanwhile, communism is associated with the eradication of poverty.
My childhood was in Socialist Bulgaria. The school was all about science + sports. Aside from the mandatory stuff, each kid would choose 2 practical subjects.
I chose Rocketry/Aircrafts and Informatics :D So, after school we would be making little airplanes and rockets with real engines and would test them on the field :D
That was in the late 80s, in a remote town - the Informatics classes were done in a room with computers - Apple2 clones.
The computers were manufactured after reverse-engineering the Apple ones :) quite an amazing feat for a little country...
Then in 1990 - the Democracy came - and all that was destroyed...
Capitalists don't need clever population, they need obidient sheep who would think they'll become rich capitalists themselfs if they work hard for their master
DEmocracy destroyed countries. Lets count how many countries were destroyed by democracy.
it sounds great. i wish i could have been through a education system like that. i grew up in china, where before college, the only thing every kids are expected to do is doing exam for six days a week and 10+ hours per day, which i think is some kind of torture and destruction of innovation and independent thinking.
... and replaced by a mixed economy that functions vastly better than both the Soviet and American systems, leading to the single greatest era in Bulgarian history.
Nice fairy tale my bro :D westerners may believe it :D
I am from post USSR country, my parents and grandparents can retell the poems they read at 6th class like 40 years ago by memory.
I grew up reading a lot of Russian Books. They were always loaded with Tough problems.
Same. Russian math and physics books are amazing and actually teach the subjects in the depth you need to truly understand them.
When I studied in a post-Soviet school we were told "Практика - критерий истины". You can translate it like "Truth is checked by practice".
And in practice, no, you can't provide a good level of education to majority of the population in "liberal" countries. Elites/establishment isn't interested, no one wants to pay for it and children have small chances of actually using this education (because social mobility is very limited) so why bother.
I very must disagree that social mobility is limited, but I do think the west has a more 'Learn what you want' mentality. I had to teach myself my entire knowledge of Computer Science and now I'm getting my degree in Electrical Engineering and you can definitely choose how in depth you're willing to go. The only different between an authoritarian system like that and the west is that all the hard studying needs to come from within you and not from outside pressure.
Soviet education not only about Knowledge, its about Possibilities too. Whole population clearly saw how much different sciences or sports or arts existens and which the way you may go for it.
Yep, Soviet Educational system was emphhasis on math, geometry, chemistry and physics. As well as history and writing with its Literature, when it developed into separate faculty. Very much classical quality learning - you do it or don't. Or science will go deeper into high calculus and so forth.
my father studied in a soviet style school and he always say that secondary subjects where great, every student had to choose one or two secondary subject that they were called (program KAD) and go learn it after school my father chose carpentry and photography and he always talk about them, although he didn't continue non of them as a professional job he still make tables sometimes for fun and take some photos and enjoy it
When Lex mentions innovation and knowledge being prized at a young age in the Soviet Union, what he's talking about is the motto, and general attitude, that "we were raising Creators (творец - творцов), not Consumers", which sentiment permeated Soviet society and culture. Soviet citizens could be lazy, unmotivated, stupid, etc. But they were not "consumers"; there was no such term in the first place: the closest synonym would be "parasite". They still fundamentally contributed in some way, (unless they were precluded by disability or something).
I would add that there was a system for disabled people which allowed them to somehow contribute too. They could become lathe operators, street cleaners, even teachers, etc. The system, of course, was largely born after WW2. Yes, mentally ill were not in that labor system largely, but there were special schools with adapted programs for them, so they could also have at least a bit of knowledge Soviet education offered.
It's still all about just making stuff and controlling that stuff. It's two different teams with two different game plans playing the same lame ass game
The best confirmation for the soviet education excelence is that a lot of russians are working for Faang and actually debeloped a lot ofstuff in that field
That's some bullshit argument. FAANG is full of people from all over the world, there're a lot of Indians, Chineese, British, Mexicans, Indian, etc, etc.
Right, they def makes up the majority of software engineers at faang
I am afraid you cannot extrapolate the Soviet system of education to the western world, because the Soviet system was raising creators and the capitalist system is raising consumers. Why would a consumer need to know calculus, geometry, etc.?
education is verry well horible in this modern era we need more creativity and not memorising facts about the things that not required for the job you want.
That's a retarded theory b/c the west CREATED well over 95% more tech than the Soviets ever did . Other than military & space , the Soviets created no tech , & most of the military/aviation tech was stolen from the west the same way the Chinese do now . It's no secret that back in those days , the components of most soviet machinery had unacceptably large tolerances , & their civilian airliners fell out of the sky at an alarming rate b/c of shitty design & construction . At the end of the day , they couldn't even figure out how to build toasters or microwaves FFS
@@bigmedge The Soviet State existed for 70 years. How old is the United States? How many revolutions and wars did the US go through? I mean those that devastated the country? How many times sanctions and embargoes have been applied to the US? How much did the US earn using free slave labor? How many inventions were developed by immigrants, including from the Soviet Union, that were educated in other countries?
@@evawind The Soviets have done far worse things, you're making them seem like little angels
@@C4rnee Is it because your mass disinformation media said so? Yeah?
Our school system has gotten worse and worse as years have gone by. It’s very sad. Kids don’t know the simplest things now. The schools pass all students even if they don’t perform at grade level. In reality the US leaves kids behind with this method. 😵
Bro you are complaining about US education system? Come to visit the indian education system then you will understand what true horror is
@@ayushjha3716 heh fellow 10 hours school
There is indian and Chinese education system that provides brains to USA. So why should US worry?
They have immegrants to back up
@@abhinavkrishna1858yeah truuu
Irodov is a book to solve in India for IIT.
Translate from russian:
Математический анализ в России использует его - Иродова
In help: antiirodov
Fun fact: IIT Bombay was established with the help from soviet union.
I love soviet physical from mir publications. I actually miss the USSR.
The idea that we have to cater to weaker students is extremely destructive, you get half of the class bored because the material is too slow, and half following passively, and the one or two really weak students who sure pass, but dont kearn much,
From what i have seen, there are no weak pupils, just understimulated underworked ones
Exactly
Catering to weaker students doesn't mean dumbing down the curriculum in general though. Modern teaching asks teachers to differentiate in the tasks they give such that a spectrum of needs is met. This has its own problems - particularly how labour intensive the class design becomes, but in theory this should lead to an increase in performance on average.
In reality that's exactly what it means and exactly what happens.
@@aufkeinsten7883In reality this does not happen at all and the entire class does get dumbed down as seen across the Western world who embrace this nonsense.
This is so interesting. I guess that is what I should work towards. Figuring out how to hack my way into improving my ability to learn skills.
The thinking in mathematics generalizes very well. That's a very compelling reason to study it. Teaching one how to think, not what to think.
Even after being awoken from deepest of naps I can name three russian author's who's books have made my cry, not necessarily with joy.
My neighbor, who lived here in NYC, moved back to Russia when her child grew to school age because of the horrendous $hytehole of an education system of the Rotten Apple. I applauded her and told her if she stayed here and went through the public school system her child would never have a chance.
@BKH NOTHING Name one, I worked in a public school IS 246 in Brooklyn, you know, where the lovely students lit a kid on fire, David Opont, back in the late 80's early 90's. Also the music teacher was caught giving oral to a female student after class, which we told him to stop having classes after school. Between the smuggling of guns into school and the Lewinskies being given in the staircases, which you couldn't say ANYTHING to the pre-teen students when engaging, and the defecation and urination in those same staircases, I left. All the public school teachers I knew in that shytehole, and there were many, didn't send their kids to public schools. That was the rule not the exception. You live in a fantasy, the only way a kid gets ahead after going through the ps system because of either hiring quotas.
Education is only good if the job requires the education like pilot need to learn physics and mathamtics computations
@@Strongnurgling Edication would have helped you to write a better sentence than you did. "if the job requires the education like pilot need..." should have been "if the job required education, (comma)like pilots who need to learn physics and mathematical computations. (you spelled mathematics wrong and you didn't put a period at the end of a sentence.) So you see you need education even to post on UA-cam. You must work for DMV
@@taxfree4 yes cause I don't care about english
@@Strongnurgling That's very obvious, public school will do that for you
It's called implement the college prep school standards nation wide.
Igor Irodov. I don't remember the book name, but we used in JEE prep in india. Solid Problems.
I kind of agree as a not so smart person a bit of pressure is needed but that pressure is difficult to implement in certain societies like the US. You'd be surprised at what someone can do under a bit of pressure. My favorite professor was a guy from Romania who "forgot" to go back after attending a conference in the US.
I disagree on the assertion that competition always brings out the best in math. Math is more artistic, creative than any other stem field. In the sense that it can be meditative .
Nope
If its taken casually but learning is a struggle
First thing first, USSR wasn't all that autoritarian as americans love to think, its not like it was completely democratic, it just wasn't all that authoritarian. Second surely you can send same messages everywhere, but Im afraid it won't be heard all that well, you see USSR tried to build a state of new type, and within that state it tried to raise a new type of citizen, creator, thinker with super wide creative sight(if it makes sense). Capitalist state regardless of how democratic it is, doesn't need such citizen, it needs first consumer, and second a tool for business to fill a certain role, so there is no, or at least very little, organic demand for such people and hence very few people in US have such wide and varied education. Don't get me wrong I think education in US is actually pretty good, it just was created with different goals in mind thats all.
USSR had more engineers than rest of the world combined , only photos made of Venus surface was Made by USSR
bruh you are forgetting INDIA
Yet still they had to copy a lot of stuff from the west
Why these engineers did not made a car which anyone in the world want to buy?
@@reeshomer516 Because the system was great at achieving significant societal milestones, advancing science, celebrating intellect etc. but had no desire or incentive to be competitive in raising a daily standard of living. Capitalist competition does wonders when it comes to consumer products, but sucks at achieving something that needs massive, country level coordination with the same efficiency as socialist countries did, or providing high quality affordable healthcare or education to all citizens. The tragedy is both systems suck, but in different ways, and a capitalist one is more competitive and adaptable,so it outcompeted socialism to death(it also kinda committed suicide)
General education and free universal healthcare for sure are a plus
most of the money went to military in soviet system, too.
Wow! So good
I still remember those mathematics and geometry classes of ussr systems, it was fun for me, you solve X and Y then connect the dots on the graphs or system of coordination it was like a Video game for me )) we had a game, naming countries, and their capitals.
I would mix capitalism with socialism to make a hybrid and benefit from both.
I have same opinion, optimal system is somewhere between the two with regional, cultural, etc. variations which need to be taken in account too.
Illusion. I point out to you that socialism is not communism and means only the dominating class is the working class. Private property still exists in socialist phase. Socialism is a process.
@@gaius_octavius that droveto the destruction of socialism, and there were some in the USSR, and in other socialist countries : they only wanted to destroy the Revolution and the endn they did and now, these countries are included into NATO
I play this game, Goroda, with my American nieces, they love it. We play with city, country, first name, plant, animal, body of water and famous person / movie / book.
The best education system is one that encourages and makes you want to learn, not one that pressures and forces you to withstand.
If you want great thinkers, teach that it’s fun to think, not that it’s a chore.
True. I grew up in Soviet education system, it just put pressure on you to learn things you never will need
@@bambomango9427 every education system teach thing that you wont use
@@bambomango9427 98% what your learn is a waste
@@bambomango9427 I have read feedback of a Russian kid studying in Finland, whose system of education is supposedly the best. Guess what he was complaining about -- there is not enough pressure and the teachers leave it up to you to do your homework. As a matter of fact, he was bitter that his math skills he learned in a Russian school were evaporating.
@@evawind Yes some soviet people work better when you hit / yell at them what to do all the time. But regular people would rather have some freedom in what to do
The trivium is taught in public school and some grammar schools.
Public school are expensive fee paying schools.
This is so true.
Hi that is very good, my training is German and Japanese which is just has hard.
I see lots of complaints in the comments about the U.S valuing sports more than intellectual achievements.
But keep in mind that the Soviets were really competitive in sports as well.
Maybe it's fair to say that their two main priorities were natural science and sports (including chess).
Well they did have free education
In the Soviet Union all sports clubs were free and coaches would scout young talented kids, put them in prestigious "Olympic Reserve" board schools. This way the best, not the richest, had a chance to make it big in any sport.
thats true i feel like in america we value a person and their talent but in the soviet union they valued the honor their country
in chinese idiom，文武双全， means a person with brain and brawn
@@evawindAnd that was violation of rights.
Taking from Paul, under the threat of the state gun, to give to Peter.
I think it's a mistake to teach to the lowest common denominator. Assuming ANY kid can become the next Einstein is the way to go. I know many anecdotes of kids that started out as "failures" in school but later began to shine brightly when the right circumstances presented themselves.
Math requires a lot of practice and dedication, and schools rarely teach students how to get really good at it and derive a reward from it.
After examining schools in other countries/cultures, it is amazing that the US can compete with them.
And yet not only does it compete, it manages to attract and bring in the best and brightest from all over the world
@@jb76489 it doesn't compete, only attracts. Even that is becoming less true now.
For a long time US was the place with best facilities and paychecks, because of defense spending. Even more so in 90s, when USSR collapsed and a lot of people came over.
@@wumi2419 do think that attracting talent isnt a competition? And if they aren’t able to compete, how do the manage to outspend everyone else?
@@jb76489 printing money. Being the country, currency of which is used by agreement for global trade despite 2 defaults in last century also helps a lot (great depression was a default as dollar can no longer be exchanged for gold, and in 70s it became entirely unbound by reality)
@@jb76489 by printing world’s reserve currency at will, no? See no other reasons since 1970s
Many people in comments discuss about advantages of education of USSR. But we should understand each and every country in that time was trying to develop its economy, because industrial revolution required well-educated nation, well educated nation needs good education system. USSR wasn't single example of good system of education in the past, there were other ones too.
I read "Mathematical Circles". I have wanted to visit Russia ever since.
can you provide the author name? Is it by Mir publisher?
@@rahulvats95 yea, but if you are seriously trying to solve it ensure you have a good math teacher (for olympiad and all)
this book is extremley underated in the west this was the book that got me and a bunch of friends into olympiads in general some of those friends went on to gain international medals (btw im not originally from the west where im from it is a somewhat popular olympiad prep book)
As someone who knows a bit of russian, loh is a cool dude
I went to United States college after Russian high school and had to study for year and a half before we got to something new from calculus. Us education system is very enjoyable and easy, and most of the times it does focus on the weakest person in a classroom which I find ridiculous. Especially if you consider the amount of lazy, spoiled idiots present in a classroom
So you are telling me that they did not have to rack up 250,000$ student loan for a degree that does not even guarantee a job?
I think what is missed is that while the USSR may have been great at fostering problem-solving skills the classroom, particularly in the spaces of mathematics and science, it was terrible at harnessing these skills later on.
What this tofu guy doing in show about ussr system of education?
It is very simple. Expect more and get more. The exams were random multiple questions that you had to answer in front of the class and teacher. My mother was a Christian(«штунда») and was heavily persecuted. Always “randomly” picked the hardest questions. Her grades were automatically dropped a grade level. If she got a 5 it was automatically a 4 (out of a max 5). She still managed to graduate with a “red” diploma (highest honors) but was told that unless she renounced her faith she would be relegated to menial labor. Working as a painter and drywaller in communal housing.
Even if you were dumber than a rock, all it took was a political family or a couple rubles in the weekly report card to guarantee high marks. American education is geared towards those who want to succeed, then the road is wide open. But if you don’t, then no one will push you. This seems unfair but the Americans have 1000+ F35s but the Russians can barely put together 20 Su57s.
Let's bring back the USSR.
Ummmm no.
Yeah
Math is good, being able to feed your people is better.
Working with children, I see it is mostly about the expectations of them that their surrounding provides.
Chinese and Vietnamese high school based on the Soviet principles
Beast mode
Yes! It's all about priorities. If American students spent the same time on getting good at math, science, innovation, etc as they do on athletics...one need only imagine the results!
Perceptions around Jocks vs. Nerds are deeply in-grained in American culture historically. Hollywood captures it pretty well. So, what applies to Basket ball (3:18) would not work for Mathematics in this culture unlike Russian culture.
1+1= $35 Trillion. American Math!
I'd like to see comments where there's a third debater who actually lived through education in the USSR instead of these two theorists who think they know what it was like because they've read about it...
For me, a super intellectual exercise in rhetoric, but zero in content, if anyone really wants to know about the system itself, they'll never learn from someone who hasn't experienced it...
The ivy league monopoly will never allow broad education to blossom.
How do you know that? People used to study right before exams only and there was no understanding of original research; people used to get PhDs after completely plagiarizing from foreign sources, they had up to 5 sources listed in their reference list. I'm a citizen of post-soviet country and it was very surprising for everyone belonging to previous generations that I had to study every day, they thought I was particularly hard-working :D I guess a positive side of soviet education was that people weren't focused only on making money, but theoretical knowledge was also socially valued, except such knowledge was superficial and people lacked skills which would help them being productive. What you're saying is true for Asian educational system today.
That's why they were first in space by cheating?
@@pamirbadakhshan9934 there's a logical fallacy in your assumption.
@@TakoGoksadze
Your opinion isn’t a fact. Soviet scientists were first in the space, fact.
That’s a single individual fact and none of those things I said is an opinion, it’s a description of educational practices that everyone from post-soviet countries know about . The number of references , plagiarism as well as other things I’ve wrote about can be checked. It’s ridiculous someone from India is explaining to me what was happening in the USSR, when all my family members belonging to previous generations literally lived there.
@@TakoGoksadzedepends upon which time period I guess. It must be towards the collapse instead of the stalin era
The ironic part is that nearly every major invention over the last 100 years was American, while Slavic athletes appear at the top of nearly any competitive sport.
One thing I heard about the Soviet education system was that in order to harvest the crops they had to use soldiers and high school students for gathering. In america we have strong schools and very week inner city schools. The private schools teach well but this only affects perhaps 15 % of the young people. Much room for improvement. For the best schools look to Finland where teacher slots are competively selected and the teachers are well paid.
In ex-USSR there's a bunch of anecdotes about that. One of these is about mafia leader traveling to USSR to learn how they manage to hide profits so well, they can claim losses even with students and soldiers helping.
I don't know about high school students, but it was a yearly event of sorts for university students and aspirants (don't know what aspirant corresponds to). Also you can imagine what happens if you have many young people in the field where not many are looking after work hours. And temporarily freed place in dormitories can be used to house people coming over for university exams.
Most people DON'T KNOW that school was 6 DAYS a week. And factory work was 5. And all the parents knew what each other was doing on Saturday after the kids went to school 😍
❤
This isn't true. The Soviet system selected the best of the best. If you didn't show potential you weren't let into the best schools. If you were dumb, you were sent to the Kalhoz. To be selected for sports teams, coaches looked at your parents to see if you'd be a good fit. Ballerinas in the Bolshoi theater had to be super skinny and there parents had to be skinny as well. I go to a Russian university and much of the same philosophy exists today. Much of the learning is rote and only when you've memorized the fundamentals are you allowed to be more of a "free" thinker. In Russia there is no "tell me how that made you feel" class discussions.
Have you been to an American public school?
knowing the soviet education system, right now I am confident that the german education is the best if considering it as the pathway to graduate from the university :-) However i find the tripartite school system in Germany outdated and the soviet way of offering one school for all with mutual help collabs between the classmates superior.
The Soviet legacy on education and science is Lysenkoism.
we got the best theatre, best physics, best MATHEMATICS from the soviet era. no doubts about that
IIT Jee aspirants still try to colve I.e irodov.
for Lex to romanticize soviet system while being from 11y.o. in US is very odd thing, i think. i went to post-ussr school in mid 90s, and believe me, there is nothing to romanticize. one example is the quality of studying material - it is vastly different. western education is trying to explain. soviet one is like - either you get it by your own or you don't. there is no chance if your brain works differently to the brain who wrote, for example, math books. this made me believe that i am stupid, although i studied in math school, participated in math contests and went to technical university, received masters degree and still was better at math than most of my peers. later in life i discovered US math books, which despite being written in foreign language, i could understand and progressed well beyond what i thought i was capable of
Eastern culture :
Eat(consume) to live,
and live to learn
Western culture :
Live to eat(consume),
and learn to live to eat(consume).
yeah? that's is why the western culture actually contains bigger ratio of vegans? and China having the lowest ratio of them?
you are an agenda bot, at most.
Is that why most discoveries and intentions came from the west?
No wonder the east built great empires..lol. No wonder citizens of the east are running to the west at each opportunity they get...lol.
There is a simple reason why that message can't be sent everywhere in a non-authoritarian regime.
Leaders in the west rely on pandering to majorities to maintain power, which seems OK in the beginning but we are going through a process of each low status group channeling cultural power to the next in a constant stream of imitation of the higher status group that empowered them.
That's why we're at this stage of almost imaginary identity group empowerment, why things like trans rights seems like an important issue to so many people.
Each low status group that gets stacked on the voting block, in turn wants to shed it's consciousness of being the receiver of beneficence by turning around and welding the power it's been granted to become the saviour of the next group down the line. This means you are in big trouble if you start championing the values at the top of the hierarchy on which the actual foundation of power rests. You threaten this iterated status tree and everyone sitting in its branches gets upset when it starts to wobble.
Ironically the Marxist Leninist Stalinist utopia didn't have to deal with this problem so much because they didn't have to rely on immediate popular support in the same way. Of course eventually that was their downfall so maybe our game is better, maybe there's some mechanism for self correction which I haven't been around long enough to see that will reset the status game without Adolph Hitler 2.0 coming along and flipping the board, I hope so. Maybe it will just be good old fashioned market competition selecting for marginal improvements in a way that no-one will notice very much until afterwards.
He talked with himself for 75% of this clip
There is an old joke: if Soviet education was so good where are people charging water in front of TV came from?
Any education system is good if it's punishes those who fail and rewards those who succeed. Many modern systems are focused on student's feelings not on results.
US public schools get a bad rap but are the most funded in the world - it's mostly the students who are bad because you can't blame everything on the teachers - everyone who went to a US public school knew some kids who just didn't want to be there and caused a lot of problems instead, while the teacher is just trying to teach - the teacher is not their baby sitter - some students are just bad, but like everything else in the US today, it's blame the system and not the individual - if there is any fault in the system it's that it does not teach enough self responsibility - it's always someone else's fault - the US is circling the drain
That just seems more like Russian culture, or elite culture. That isn't necessarily part of Marxism.
Its not that soviet system was hard or tough, its just that american system is lazy. In ussr they had a cult of health/sports and science/math. Now you can watch tv all day or play games, or download a waifu and wank to it. But then you would read books out of boredom. Take up combat sports out of boredom. Take up music instruments. Alpinism, outdoor tourism with tents and making rafts, playing music around the fireplace.
No tablets, no marijuana, much less bulliying.
Growing up in USSR and post ussr I would read these books about honor, dumas, three musketeers and such. Chevaliers and knighs, in their romanticised forms. Science fiction. And on tv they would brainwash us with ideas of people being actually good. Kind. Helping each other, not being in a rat race.
But watching american culture - you see infighting, curbstomping, kicking someone who is down, total violent animosity of people simply because they are different caste, skin color, political affiliation.
For a kid back then - a cop would be seen as this local hero. A kind and helping man who would catch the bad guys. And those bad guys - there were enough of them, but they werent talked about on tv. There was crime, there were serial killers and murderers, but people just did not know about it. In america there a live highway chases on tv, murder trials on tv, cops are viewed as "pigs", drugs are ok or even cool, calling someone fat is shaming, being unhealthy is normal.
I wonder if this idea of people being good and kind, without prejudice and without religion could ve flourished if there was no battle of capitalism vs communism. If ussr existed in vacuum. Without proxy wars with usa, without space races, and hired mujahedeen, without american freedoms and cultural export enticing people from ussr, without brain drain. Capitalism was like instagram for a modern female. So enticing to see how good other people live, how they go on vacations, and have nice cars, which makes you miserable and envious. But if you were oblivious to those shiny ads, you could live a "worse life" and be happy. But now, if you try to emulate instagram lifestyle you are having neither.
Sure, capitalism will always prevail vs communism, but, at many points in life I long for that simpler time I had under ussr.
thank you for reading my blog post.
That's an interesting point you're making, but even if you could have kept the USSR in a vacuum (and I don't see how that could happen), such moments of gritty realism that took people out of the romanticised brainwashing would have occurred from the inside anyway.
Best example I can think of right now is Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, perhaps the most legendary scifi book written in the Soviet Union. The authors portrayed a sick and degenerate society where the main characters were liars, drug addicts and back-stabbers, and made it all happen in the USA so it would serve the soviet narrative and show capitalism as a system of degeneracy and be able to publish the book. And it was still rejected by the state, because it was too ugly, it had no heroes, the protagonist was a morally-bankrupt drunk, and overall did not show humans as the beacons of hope and heroism the SU imagined. Only after the fall of the USSR could the brothers publish the original draft that you can find nowadays in stores.
Maybe well-intended reforms like the glasnost, and not keeping the people in the dark about world affairs is what put the nail in the coffin for the soviet narrative and the justification for such a state. The americans tried to keep the regular citizens in the dark as well about what the government was doing behind their backs and tried to make them feel safe and protected, and all it took was a plane crashing in 2 towers to make the average Joe question whether they truly are so great and mighty as a nation, and that maybe they are not so removed from the rest of the world.
Having grown up in the communist era in Syria, I can relate. Westernization demoted the entire education system.
They didn't force you to be strong, they hid the weak ones from sight
not true
I would disagree. There were various schools with varying degrees of adherence to elevated standards. Where you would have a chance to go was to be decided through informal relations and your place of birth. Teacher's knowledge varied strongly as well.
I went to school in Belarus in mid 90s, which had a system of education pretty close to what USSR had. Not only school mattered but the class in school mattered too. My peers were divided into 4 classes and one of them was considered to be deplorable. Class curators were just dumping all students that they considered "bad" into that class and there was no way back. Kids in that class barely had any education, and if your parents were not rich or didn't want to go argue with a class curator you had a chance to be stuck in that class because teachers didn't like you very much.
Spelling bee is the most bizarre thing I've witnessed in US. It still doesn't make sense. Just why?
I've read Russian literature a lot, and even in their stories you see characters who are highly driven in the pursuit of knowledge on both a technical level and in terms of Wisdom and even Russian prison Tattoos -- are absolutely soaked in knowledge and philosophy. After reading Kolyma Tales, I'm pretty convinced if you picked a random prisoner in a Gulag, there would be a good chance they are literally more well read than the average American literature teacher. That being said, I don't understand how a people so driven by the pursuit of truth have one of the worst track records in the world of human rights abuses against themselves, possibly of all time.
Answer to your question - communism
You can only think they have the worst "human rights" record if you completely ignore the history of the US and Western Europe.
This is for many Americans that believe that they have the best scientist because the have a channel in youtube i cant make them expert they are many russian and were soviets scientist witch noone knew them but they were brilliant scientist
Also i battling to me how all the theories come from the west and not from east
Your English is terrible
Communism is when there is no government and no money. It was never achieved anywhere. The Soviet Union had socialism, not communism
and no classes
The Soviet Union made soldiers, scientists and chess masters.
Солдаты были необходимы исключительно для защиты социализма.
That's akin to saying Nazi Germany created some of the most brilliant scientists in history.
Culture is more complex than the product of a single national identity at a single point in history, giving the Soviets unique credit for something like that is stupid, especially given how many others came everywhere else under completely different systems.
@@dudebros6122 dont angry boy
I've never seen good evidence that the Soviet education system deserved the praise it gets and was given. I think there were some positives in not being afraid to challenge children with advanced mathematics, technical subjects, and a general kind of 'serious intellectualism', merged with a valuing of lots of knowledge, but it kind of resonates to me with how the Russians since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been obsessed with mere competitiveness, sending their pop stars to the Eurovision with determination to win something no-one else takes seriously, or funding showy blockbuster movies in attempts to outcompete Hollywood, and all sorts of other ego-oriented, pride-based and ultimately shallow channelling of their intelligence. Allowing the finding of real human reasons for doing things, or learning or developing the ability to do them, and also the fostering of freer, critically-minded, creative minds was severly absent. There was room and sometimes even freedom for good and very high quality things in there sometimes, but on the whole it was prescriptive, didactic, and more about competition than any real meaning.
After USSR fell, there was a lot of effort spent to make Russia into a colony, especially during 90s. A lot of what you are talking about are remnant of that time, or plain waste of government resources. Everyone knows it's a waste, but they need to do something, and as liberalism won, there's no accountability.
@@wumi2419 There's maybe some truth in this, but not really. I was in Russia through the 90s and beyond, for a quarter of a century. And it's not just my own experiences in knowing Russians, working with them, seeing how their 'Soviet Education' plays out, but hearing literally thousands of them telling me about it. And the approach continues. It was mainly shallowly competive memorisation and obsessive fixation on specialized application of it. Critical thinking and experimentation were severely lacking, and this is still largely true of Russian education. We can see the results of this manifesting on an international stage as we speak. As for 'making Russia into a colony', yes, there were those kinds of centers of power and those kinds of efforts from western quarters, but the world (contrary to the Russian mainstream's simplistic fantasies) is not a uniform monolith, and the choice to take on the most extreme, 'economically liberal', basically American version of capitalism, especially at a transition point in which it simply was bound to not work, being nothing like America, was the choice of the kleptocrats just behind the doors of power in Russia at the time. There was a wealth of free market models to choose from, and ways to synthesize, adjust, adapt, and even be creative in moving to a market economy, but they chose the worst. Pressure came from those rich Americans, but in the end that was a minority position that they did not have to accept, and merely chose to. And not the people, but the criminal core left in the shadows of the state apparatus.
Lol almost only Lex talked
Lex should have Thomas Sowell on the podcast.
The education System in socialist states woes very good in most of the cases. Explicitly natual science.
I don't know why people hating on sports in the comment box ,USSR even communist country like Yugoslavia had one of best sporting leagues too... If you want excellence in one field it doesn't mean you have to hate other.
If true, then why hasn't Russia been able to produce a single decent automobile, commercial aircraft, or consumer electronics item? Where is the advanced manufacturing?
All the things you mentioned isnt dependent on quality of education nor the quantity of graduates alone.
The ability to offer the highest pay among developed nations and a special visa for the best it attracts with such remunerations is literally what has allowed USA to dominate the fields or science and technology.
Not despite.
Россия отправила первый спутник и первого человека в космос, создала самый большой самолёт и самый большой вертолёт в истории авиации
Po Shen Loh says the USSR is authoritarean but the USA is a free country, some people can be geniouses but still not have a grasp of class consciousness
"Why would I want thinkers when I can have slaves?"
India & Russia Collebration Future education system Development in India Indian Education Market Size 225 billion dollars by financial year 2023