I loved these old books. I think I had the Seven Clam Sisters or something like it. My parents managed to rescue and bring to the US two childhood stories I really enjoyed: The Long Haired Maiden, and Shihan and the Snail[0].
These old folk tales are really entertaining. Often there’s no real moral or anything. It’s just a story. And to this day I really like these stories that are just “this happened and that person did that” and so on which don’t have to say “And the message is X”.
Unrelatedly, my wife jokes that I ended up marrying a Taiwanese woman because my childhood was spent reading folk tales about Chinese women.
Math and physics are more theoretical in curriculum and less students can grasp, but ones who do perform better. So, higher input filter, earlier talent detection. Western education is more applied to a business, Russian is more like a generic theory. This makes Western schools prepare to develop, Russian to research. Note this is a generic distinction, MIT and Stanford are higher standards and provide access to field practitioners so my take it is genuinely provide more quality than MSU or Baumanka alike.
I think part of it is that unlike in the US, access to education wasn't paywalled.
Higher education in the US, with the exception of scholarships here and there, requires you to come from a wealthy background to afford the best schools.
In other words, it's more about perpetuating class privilege than it is about developing the best and brightest of a generation. If you're a genius with poor parents, you have to really hope to get lucky enough to get a scholarship.
In socialist societies, despite the claims often leveled against them, things were more meritocratic. If you're a genius with poor parents, you got access to the best education as that's what's optimal for society.
It's also about poor children getting worse primary education . According to Google "roughly 21% of U.S. adults are functionally illiterate".
If you never learned to read, good luck getting higher education.
I'm not defending communist societies like Soviet Union or China but I think "social democratic" countries like those in Scandinavia have shown generally good education outcomes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739003
Someone (@rramadass) made me a good set of recommendations from the titles.
* Edit: I see now that linked comment too is from @clmul, the OP here. Thanks clmul!
These old folk tales are really entertaining. Often there’s no real moral or anything. It’s just a story. And to this day I really like these stories that are just “this happened and that person did that” and so on which don’t have to say “And the message is X”.
Unrelatedly, my wife jokes that I ended up marrying a Taiwanese woman because my childhood was spent reading folk tales about Chinese women.
0: both these are somewhere on archive.org e.g. https://archive.org/details/thelonghairedmaiden
What do soviets make great researchers? I noticed this pattern in ml, math & physics research.
Is it that they have better quality books?
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/06/why-so-many-top-hackers-...
Higher education in the US, with the exception of scholarships here and there, requires you to come from a wealthy background to afford the best schools.
In other words, it's more about perpetuating class privilege than it is about developing the best and brightest of a generation. If you're a genius with poor parents, you have to really hope to get lucky enough to get a scholarship.
In socialist societies, despite the claims often leveled against them, things were more meritocratic. If you're a genius with poor parents, you got access to the best education as that's what's optimal for society.
If you never learned to read, good luck getting higher education.
I'm not defending communist societies like Soviet Union or China but I think "social democratic" countries like those in Scandinavia have shown generally good education outcomes.