It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots. One could argue that for whatever reason, many of the professors, researchers and postdocs at those schools learned math in other countries, but, if these lists are to be believed, the US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world.
So two questions:
1) Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education?
2) If the primary and secondary education in the ROW produces such a high level of capability relative to the US population, why aren't their universities better represented in the rankings?
We do a great job with the extreme students. The top 5% of private and public schools in the country produce more than enough folks capable in mathematics. It's the rest of the country that struggles.
There are a lot of reasons why the US does well in Universities and poorer up until then relative to the rest of the world:
1 - In much of the world, the school you get into matters more than what you did there. (The lowest University of Tokyo graduate is considered higher than the top grad of any other school - so getting in there is the hard part)
2 - In the US we invest more in higher ed than K-12 relative to the rest of the world on a per-pupil basis - especially at the top schools. (Look at the Harvard or Yale endowment on a per-student basis)
3 - In the US, college professors are at the top of their peer group academically. It's a mixed bad in K-12.
Spot on. The US education system is fairly elitist. It supports the top 5% and neglects the lower scoring pupils. That way (and with imported brains), the US can maintain a high level at academia while at the same time affording a fairly bad average education level of the total population in comparison to some other industrialized countries. The university system is also very elitist through student fees, Ivy League schools, academic societies, etc.
That's why it's such a weird contrast for us egalitarian European schmucks when we get to know US colleagues in academia, who are extremely professional and well educated, while watching the daily news makes us think that the majority of US citizens must be mentally retarded and suffers from chronic lead poisoning.
>the majority of US citizens must be mentally retarded and suffers from chronic lead poisoning.
You probably think we only pay attention to news from the US but the Brexit vote is merely the most recent example to show that Europeans can be just as manipulable and unintelligent as Americans.
Brexit Vote is an indication people are not drinking neo-liberal kool-aid. You and I might have benefited from Internationalism, but not every one and they are making their voices heard. They may not be as sophisticated as you, but their concerns are from economic insecurity, either solve or at least empathize rather than reach out to some stupid propaganda play-book and stamp them "bigots".
I would say that our problem in K-12 is a self-perpetuating one. The teachers were taught math badly and so never really learned it (and learned to hate it into the bargain). So then they teach it badly.
I'm not sure there's any solution except for tuning the students in to Khan Academy and suchlike programs.
I'm a college math professor, and I've talked to people who've taught the required "math for elementary ed majors" class.
From everything I've heard, it's bleakly depressing. The students (i.e., the future teachers) show little aptitude, curiosity, or work ethic. They just want to be shown algorithms that will always lead them to the correct answer.
I haven't taught such a course myself. I hope what I've heard is exaggerated. Liking kids is well and good, but if you're going to be a teacher then you should also like learning. My own elementary school teachers did, and everyone deserves an education as good as the one I got.
The limit of learning in a classroom is the teacher. If there's a great teacher, the kids can learn a lot. When the teacher lacks capacity (intelligence, leadership & empathy) then the learning is capped.
Outside of people who explicitly want to teach math, the math skills of most K-8 folks I've seen is abysmal.
This is likely different state-to-state, but I am aware that in the upper midwest primary education degrees are cross-subject area in focus.
Your elementary teacher may not be a math major because they are expected to teach all subjects. There is also probably some bias against deep content knowledge because "it's elementary school after all".
Secondary Education degrees are subject specific, so secondary education math students would, in fact, be mathematics majors.
In the US, rules are not so strict. In 2007-08, 71.6 percent of secondary math teachers had been math majors. An additional 16.2 percent were certified in math but did not do a math major. 12.2 percent of secondary math teachers had neither a major nor a certification in math [1]. The number of uncertified non-math-major math teachers is much higher in lower grades, as you point out.
In general they won't be, and I wouldn't expect them to be. The subject matter of these classes is usually much simpler than freshman calculus.
It's not math per se that I care about here. If, for example, these future elementary teachers disliked reading and displayed the same attitude towards being asked to write critically about a novel, then I would consider that equally disqualifying.
I went to a university that used to be a normal school. I am not sure the math ed. majors "showed little aptitude" ( they got better grades than I did ) nor curiosity, but they were quieter people.
I should clarify that these are the elementary ed students. I've personally taught students training to become high school math teachers, and they have been pretty good.
> tuning the students in to Khan Academy and suchlike programs
I think parents have an enormous role to play in the effectiveness of K-12 education. If they are not very much involved (e.g., enforcing, participating, encouraging) then school isn't valued or prioritized, nor will the average student see how fun many subjects can be to learn (assuming the teacher may not be effective at this).
> were taught math badly
> teach it badly
Just an aside, wouldn't this be expressed as "taught poorly"?
But the parents also suffered through incompetent math instruction. Unless they are among the few who loved the subject anyway, they're not going to be able to help.
> Just an aside, wouldn't this be expressed as "taught poorly"?
I don't think there's anything wrong with "badly" here, and at least one dictionary [0] seems to support me; see esp. sense 2. But "poorly" works just as well.
> But the parents also suffered through incompetent math instruction.
Agreed, but that doesn't mean parents are not able to be encouraging. Their support, I believe, is more valuable than their level of absolute education on the common subjects.
our best students to really well. our average students are doing poorly / lagging behind. the US also has an anti-intellectual bent to it. You can be smart, but you can't be too curious or question anything.
> The top 5% of private and public schools in the country produce more than enough folks capable in mathematics.
That's because it's a very easy job. Once you've filtered out 95% of students, the rest would thrive if you threw them in a closet with a book and a flashlight.
The single biggest factor on student performance is not any in-school factor, but rather the socioeconomic status and educational level of the parents.
The best American student mathematicians are the equal of anywhere in the world. But when people talk about poor math performance in the US, they're talking about the average—average math performance is terrible. This is because the U.S., more than any other advanced country, tolerates a high level of poverty and economic inequality. This inequality is reproduced within the educational system, and brings down our averages.
The average is lower not because the U.S. has lower performance across the board, but because so many more students lack the most basic numeracy. Too many students are going to school hungry, come from families torn apart by joblessness, abuse, and addiction, or where the single breadwinner has to work 80 hours/week in order to achieve a higher level of poverty, and simply doesn't have time to help the kids with their school work or ensure they are disciplined students, much less ferry them to all sorts of enrichment activities.
US society/culture in general is the main cause of this problem as most people here do not value math. Math requires deep, creative and original thinking and thinking is rather difficult to perform act. It seems that the US culture derides analytical thinking in general, with many popular public figures flaunting their "inability to do math" as some sort of great achievement and sending out a loud and clear messages, like, "don't analyze just enjoy your life and avoid math as math means analysis". This paper titled "Student Apathy: The Downfall of Education" [1] is a good read in this respect too.
The bad effects of such societal level bias against math can be seen in public spending in schools also. Enormous amounts of money are spent on football coaches/teams[2] in schools whereas not enough money for math teachers/students.
The society seems to equate success only with one's ability to earn money. Then you can see that many such popular public figures "getting successful" without math as they can be seen to earn large amounts of money.
This is sad as such people even if are successful on money front, cannot understand any of the complex aspects of modern societal/business/political structures (be it, things like privacy issues, or many public policy issues like taxes) and of course cannot understand any of the modern technological/scientific discussions (be it discussions regarding global warming or genetically modified food or statistical significance of some tests).
>> It seems that the US culture derides analytical thinking in general, with many popular public figures flaunting their "inability to do math" as some sort of great achievement and sending out a loud and clear messages, like, "don't analyze just enjoy your life and avoid math as math means analysis"
I am generally not a fan of speaking in terms of "privilege" and "identity", but this is precisely an example of "developed Western country privilege". The attitude goes, "See, I can still be successful/well-off without having to hunch down and study math like those third-world FOB immigrants do." It comes down to status signalling: not having to do math becomes a status signal. It also appears it is mostly this attitude and not the widely blamed "bro culture" that is the major reason why women (in the West, because this didn't happen elsewhere) abandoned CS sometime in the late 80s/90s.
>Math requires deep, creative and original thinking and thinking
That is absolutely not true of anything the average non-math-major has ever been exposed to under the heading "math."
It's rote symbol manipulation requiring diligence, practice, and attention to detail. American K12 math education asks for fast and reliable algorithm execution, not insight.
Only math majors and attendees of a few exceptional private high schools will ever seriously engage with proofs.
China comes to mind. They seem more technocratic than we (USA) do (legalist hierarchy?). Can you imagine Deng Xiaoping saying, "Ha, I'm just a policy guy" or something alike
You're probably right. those rankings have a lot to do with the research papers published by those schools from non Americans.
Relative to the US population, the primary and secondary education do not produce a high level of capability.
Looking at the fields medals per capita[1] you can see that the US doesn't have as much as the UK, Russia, or France. You can also see that the university with Fields medals recipients [2] for more details, and indeed you can see that of the mathematicians associated with Princeton are not Americans.
As a specific example, in [1] you can see that France is generating more than 4 times more fields medalists per capita than the U.S. Why is that?
It probably has to do with the more rigorous Math education.
Look for instance at this translated Math final[3] exam for French high school students. This is for the "Literary" students, those who focus more with the worst level of Math.
You can see examples of the "Scientific" math test here [4]. It's in French, but it's Math, just by looking at the symbols it's possible to understand. It has some differential equations solving, probabilities, geometry with vectors/planes in 3D spaces, Series analysis, etc. Integrals and derivatives are also part of the program. In Physics these concepts are applied to calculate velocity/speed/radioactive decay etc.
Most math (and physics) programs, especially at higher tier universities, have not only a disproportionate number of foreign professors and researchers but also students. So it's largely people who had superior primary and secondary school math education teaching others who had superior primary and secondary school education.
You can see this especially strongly in graduate programs, where US citizens can often get a sort of "affirmative action" because they are the only ones eligible for NSF student fellowships (incentivizing universities to admit them). There's just very little domestic interest in math and physics, despite both feeding into rather favorable job markets (as long as you aren't dead set on being in academia long-term).
As for your second question, it's an extension of US universities' preeminent standing in most fields (on average, there are of course exceptions). I don't think there are really any math specific effects going on there.
Both quantitative finance and more general data science draw heavily from physics PhDs (you can see this if you look at job listings for these jobs; physics is almost always listed next to math in the list of desired PhD degrees). Depending on area there can also be a significant number of industry pure-research positions available; quantum information is a good example.
As long as you are willing to go into industry, you're looking at a 90-100k starting salary[1]. That's pretty damn good considering that in the US nobody pays for a physics PhD; the average TA stipend is around $30k with tuition and medical insurance covered. You also have a decent chance of getting a research assistanship to provide the stipend once you start working seriously with an advisor.
The high number of physics PhDs getting postdocs off the bat is driven by people who want to go into academia/research, not by a lack of industry options. Admitidely if you're dead set on going into research (especially right off the bat) you better be ready to play the same low-paid tenure lottery as everybody else, but if you're just looking for a good career a physics PhD is a pretty good bet.
Why would you get a PhD in physics if you would go into data science? Just get a data science job. Why would you think that someone that spent six years of their life thinking about light, energy, matter and the universe would be satisfied thinking about graphics to show the results of A/B testing an advertisement?
If all you want is a career in data science, sure. But with a Physics PhD you (a) get those six years to study physics, which many people enjoy and (b) get to take a shot at getting a research gig, and fall back on a solid foundation in a good career track. Not to mention a PhD makes your chances of not having to do something as boring as A/B testing advertisements markedly higher.
If getting an art degree meant you could try and become an artist (with the same astronomically low chances of success you see today) and then immediately fall back on a solid career if you fail, don't you think it would represent a pretty good option? If you enjoy physics or math, you already live in a world with that possibility.
Funny fact: a couple of my former classmates won gold/silver medals on the international mathematical olympiad. One minute googleing sais that at least 4 of them are teaching on US universities you mentioned. I am from eastern Europe.
The US does have the richest mathematics knowledge in the world because the US can buy it.
We shouldn't mix up the max skill level with the average skill level. They are very different issues, and different educational systems may optimize for different things.
For example, maybe if you are a very good mathematician in the US you can get high-paying jobs for intelligence agencies, data analytics, that sort of thing. But if you are a mathematical genius in another country, maybe they don't have the same job opportunities so you have to go into math teaching.
That would cause the US to have very good mathematicians and at the same time terrible math teachers.
To me the state of math instruction is illustrated by a 3rd grade math book, teacher's edition, with the answer key in it. (3rd grade math answers should be obvious by inspection.)
My guess is that as with most things people need to feel that what they are learning is relevant. Start teaching finance in high school and math will become a lot more useful, quick.
I would hope that conventional K-12 at some point would include instruction on what a balance sheet is, a P+L statement, and a bit on what the jargon is. Should also include the basics of sales, how a business operates, finance (as you said), etc.
"It's an interesting question when you consider that in at least two university mathematics department rankings[1][2], the US holds 7 of the top 10 global spots."
It's a fallacy. US is a large country, so those talented students concentrate in fewer universities. In Europe for instance, due to language and culture barriers, talented students from Czech Republic do not very often go to Cambridge. You need to look at mean or median if you want accurate assessment.
China is a larger country with extremely promising mathematics scores. So why is it not 8/10 China and 2/10 US (in proportion to population) or even more extreme? A large country having access to a large talent poll doesn't get very close to explaining what's going on.
It's hard to tell, but it can be because most maths research is published in Chinese, while these rankings are little anglocentric. Also lot of Chinese probably migrate to the US as soon as they can. Anyway, I was just pointing out that the ranking is not such a simple argument.
I once heard an anecdote that might describe some of what's happening. In the trenches of WWI, when it was time to fight, soldiers would have to climb up a ladder onto a battlefield. The problem was that German snipers could see the tops of the ladders. The Germans would keep their rifles fixed on where they knew the enemy would emerge and simply shoot them down once they saw helmets appear.
The European Allied soldiers were so disciplined that they just kept climbing up the ladders and getting killed one by one, following their orders to their deaths. The Americans saw this and said, "fuck that, I'm not climbing up there."
I think most Americans are pragmatic and they won't do something unless it makes sense. And to be honest, most people don't need to study math. Or at least it's not obvious that they do. I think most of the math professors I've talked to would agree. They view math, as it's taught in core curricula, more as an art than as having vocational value.
> In the trenches of WWI, when it was time to fight, soldiers would have to climb up a ladder onto a battlefield. The problem was that German snipers could see the tops of the ladders. The Germans would keep their rifles fixed on where they knew the enemy would emerge and simply shoot them down once they saw helmets appear.
> The European Allied soldiers were so disciplined that they just kept climbing up the ladders and getting killed one by one, following their orders to their deaths. The Americans saw this and said, "fuck that, I'm not climbing up there."
Wow, that anecdote explains American supremacy better than anything to date. /s
Without a citation I'm going to have to call bull-shit on that one, I'm just trying to imagine their CO standing there with an ever mounting heap of corpses at the bottom of the ladder and not once thinking 'this doesn't seem to work'.
Some googling does not turn up any evidence for your story either.
It's a stupid anecdote to point out the fact that differences in cultural attitudes can explain and somewhat justify test scores. I'm not even American, and I never claimed that the anecdote is true.
> It's a stupid anecdote to point out the fact that differences in cultural attitudes can explain and somewhat justify test scores.
It would if it were true.
> I'm not even American
That's immaterial.
> and I never claimed that the anecdote is true.
Well, you didn't claim that it wasn't true either, but the whole thing hinges on whether or not the anecdote is true so if you bring it up I'm going to assume that you at least believe it to be true and that the conclusion is supported by the anecdote.
If we're all just going to make stuff up to prove some point then it becomes very hard to reach conclusions.
I don't know about any americans, but isn't the Souain affair pretty much a CO ordering his soldiers to keep going despite an ever mounting heap of corpses?
Sure, but that's not structural and there are definitely parallels in the American civil war.
war is an exercise in stupidity to begin with, it shouldn't be surprising there are pockets of even worse. But to claim that structurally Americans refused to get out of the trenches in a certain way in order not to get killed whereas docile Europeans were led like lambs to the slaughter is not something I've found in any history of World War I (or II for that matter).
Both wars had extremely heavy casualties on both sides, and in both wars there were quite a few instances of CO's treating their men like disposables. The Christmas Truce is a beautiful story about such behavior. Even so, both sides were desperately trying to win the war and the rule would have been to not take action hastening the demise of the men on one's own side.
I've yet to come across any substantiation of the anecdote related above, if it was structurally true you'd think it would be more than a mere anecdote.
OTOH, the terrible truth is that it was necessary to order thousands of soldiers to their almost-certain deaths in order to win the war, and without a disciplined army this would not be possible. This says something about the value of discipline (in war or maths!) even when it's not obviously in your personal interest.
Is that true? I mean: is it true that the actions where it was necessary to "order thousands of soldiers to their almost-certain deaths" were significant causes of the final outcome?
WWI was the first 'industrialized' war, trench warfare implied the certain death of a huge number of men if the lines were ever to move, it's basically a never ending meat grinder until one of the parties runs out of warm bodies, supplies or ammo.
The final assault on the remains of the entrenched opposition were without exception extremely bloody and the side that would take the others trench never did so without significant losses.
I've read (once, somewhere, on the internet) that these types of rankings are also distorted by the fact that in the US the top research institutes are usually teaching and part of a University, while they are not teaching in many other parts of the world.
I'm not sure whether non-US research institutions are less teaching focused overall than their state-side counterparts but there are plenty of other confounding cultural factors. In Russia, for example, the most elite science/engineering university (PhysTech) isn't as well known globally as MIT or Caltech because it is made up of dozens of research institutes that publish under their own name instead of under the umbrella organization. As a result most academics dont know that all of this research is produced by a single (albeit distributed wrt geography and branding) powerhouse.
"Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education?"
Because preeminence of top tier institutions (which are kind of global centres anyhow) - has absolutely nothing to do with teaching math to the commons.
Here's a hint:
+++ Americans don't suck at Math +++
There's a very un-PC but very large elephant in the room that people won't discuss.
+ European American and Asian American 'testing scores' are actually pretty good - and have been holding steady for a very long time. (Asians do a little better). Nothing has changed.
+ Latino American and African Americans fare poorly, but having been getting better since we've been measuring by standards (i.e. 1950's-1970's).
Here's the trick:
+ European Americans actually do better than Europeans - on average.
+ Asian Americans to better than Asians - on average.
+ Latino Americans do better than Central/South American Latinos
+ African Americans do better than Africans.
The key correlating factor here is 'ethnicity'. 'Ethnicity' is the broad, generalist predictor of educational outcomes. This definitely not 'race' and it's not even 'IQ' (those things are plausible but controversial) - it's a series of behaviours, social norms, examples, attitudes towards work, success, access to services, social networks, mentors, role models, etc. etc. etc..
Educational outcomes (and crime stats, income stats) break down along ethnic lines. In a manner of speaking - America can be thought of as 'four nations' - White, Black, Asian and Latino. Obviously - it's very crude and generalist, and policy based on this would probably be racist - nevertheless - you pretty much have to look at the data given this.
In the end: American test score results have more to do with the changing ethnic composition of the American population than they do anything else. Again: White people and Asians in America have performed consistently he same for decades. Teaching methods haven't changed much, students habits haven't changed much - so the outcome is naturally consistent.
More economic prosperity, access to services and different attitudes + deeper integration have meant Latino A. and African A.'s are doing a little bit better - but because there are so many more Americans of those groups - particularly Latino Americans - it changes the outcome of the 'average american test score'.
Analyzing educational results does not make sense until you break it down along ethnic lines. Once you do - it becomes crystal clear. It's the absolute #1 most important thing about the educational data that turns 'paradox' about educational investment (teaching has remained largely the same) and outcomes into 'perfect sense'.
Unfortunately, it's so sensitive few will want to talk about it - for fear that the general public equates educational outcomes to 'intelligence' and try to strongly correlate ethnicity + race to this, which would be fodder for racist/KKK types, which wouldn't really help the overall social situation in America.
Anyhow - America is actually doing pretty well overall.
> European Americans actually do better than Europeans - on average. + Asian Americans to better than Asians - on average. + Latino Americans do better than Central/South American Latinos + African Americans do better than Africans.
I've always heard this explained as a sort of "selection bias". Since immigration to the US (particularly for university education) is often seen as desirable, the people who manage to pull it off tend to be above the mean. Do you feel that explanation rings false?
> I've always heard this explained as a sort of "selection bias". Since immigration to the US (particularly for university education) is often seen as desirable, the people who manage to pull it off tend to be above the mean.
I think this is an explanation that could only be come up with by the descendants of those who have emigrated.
Thinking here in Scotland, the people who emigrated were not necessarily the most able or genetically superior somehow. Often, they were simply the most desperate. People who were cleared off their farms by landowners, people who had no other options available to them but to roll the dice and go abroad to Canada or Australia or the USA.
Most folk don't want to emigrate, certainly not in the 19th century. It is a last resort that you do if you are out of options. But perhaps the most capable and able have other options to take advantage of?
We no longer think of people whose ancestors showed up in the 19th century as immigrants, unless we're trying to make a point about indigenous peoples' rights. In 2005, 22% of immigrants to the US came in on an employment-related visa; the only larger category was family reunification. Immigration patterns "back then" are very different than they are now.
It's not clear that capability was that much of a factor. As the scion of Scots emigrants from the 19th Century, at least the 20h century version of my family was made up of bright capable people but hardly brilliant.
It's pretty awful to read how people regarded the Highland Clearances, like this from the Scotsman:
"Collective emigration is, therefore, the removal of a diseased and damaged part of our population. It is a relief to the rest of the population to be rid of this part."
I'm talking about contemporary migration mostly; although IIRC some migration waves in the 20th century were more about perceived opportunity as opposed to desperation.
That could very well be true, and I'm not stating it as proof of anything, other than to claim that Europeans score 'ballpark the same' on either side of the Atlantic.
I suggest your theory is probably very true for Asian Americans - the one's who came here are 'la creme do la creme'.
But not for Europeans. Europeans that came here were the poorest, the least educated, criminals, fringe religious types etc.. Europe was 100x more civilized than America during early history - why would anyone with any social status leave London in 1800 - to go and live a million miles away, a very, very hard, back-breaking life?
Well - those tenant farmers who could get cheap land and get out from under the thumb of their landlords etc..
People below are saying their poor Scottish ancestors didn't seem that unusually smart. Immigration restrictions have changed who comes to the US. Pre-migration parental socioeconomic status/educational achievement is one of the best predictors of educational success among children of immigrants. Your trick is simply an observation that Asians immigrating legally to the US come on certain visas which bring a non-representative socioeconomic mix to the US, and their children (who are now Asian-American) do very well. The people who stayed in Asia are not the same as the people who could afford to fight for a US visa.
The "immigrant advantage" fades in three generations, at which point achievement by children reflects the US average. This is the influence, if you like, of American "ethnicity", which is often quite anti-intellectual.
This is a somewhat worrisome comment. It reaches for a lot of conclusions with zero supporting evidence.
There is no need to bring up race or ethnicity to describe this effect of scores getting worse. Everything you attribute to being Black or Hispanic can more simply and more accurately be described by being poor. SAT score is most directly tied to family income, not race. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/07/sat-scores-and-inc...
Instead of worse scores being the result of changing ethnic composition, they are the result of changing income distribution, and the expansion of the lower class.
" Everything you attribute to being Black or Hispanic can more simply and more accurately be described by being poor. SAT score is most directly tied to family income, not race. "
+ This is not true +
Even when normalized for income - there are still large variations in outcomes.
Again, I'm not really saying it's 'race' or 'genetic' or 'IQ' so be careful with your disdain :).
My friend - do you know the stereotype of the 'Asian who works hard in school because his parents compel him to' - well, it's not just a stereotype, it's true. Some cultures value education more than others. That will show up in the results.
Asian Americans are 600% over-represented in tech (i.e. 5% of population but usually 30% of tech companies). That's not some fluke - and it's not because 'Asians are super rich' - it's obviously a cultural preference. They are choosing STEM and tech for whatever reasons.
It doesn't make some people better or worse than others as human beings, it just means some variations in outcomes whenever you measure something.
This this is what actual 'diversity' really means, though ironically I think most 'pro diversity' advocates really intend to have a hyper-egalitarian situation wherein there is little diversity beyond skin tone :)
> Unfortunately, it's so sensitive few will want to talk about it - for fear that the general public equates educational outcomes to 'intelligence' and try to strongly correlate ethnicity + race to this, which would be fodder for racist/KKK types, which wouldn't really help the overall social situation in America.
I don't see any statistics in his comment. I actually don't see any supporting info at all. All I see is wild conjecture.
If he did go looking for statistics, he would find that the effect he describes is better explained by the expanding lower class in america, regardless of race.
Several of your recent posts have crossed the line into incivility. Addressing people as "buddy", telling them about the "fetish of [their] ideology", etc.: all this is patronizing and rude. Please don't do any more of it on Hacker News.
If you're going to engage in difficult topics, you have a responsibility to do so with extra respect, not less.
So two questions:
1) Why doesn't the preeminence of the US math knowledge appear to seep into the primary and secondary school education?
2) If the primary and secondary education in the ROW produces such a high level of capability relative to the US population, why aren't their universities better represented in the rankings?
[1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mat...
[2] http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/universit...