Math and Culture
While there are overarching similarities concerning the acquisition of math skills, researchers have shown that children’s mathematical abilities differ across countries. In Canada, students score substantially lower in math problem-solving and operations than students in Korea and Singapore. Researchers have conducted thorough comparisons between countries, and have determined that in countries such as Taiwan and Japan, parents place more emphasis on effort rather than one’s innate intellectual ability in school success. Moreover, parents in these countries tend to set higher expectations and standards for their children. In turn, students spend more time on homework and value homework more than American children. (Stevenson & Lee, 1990).
Read more about this topic: Mathematical Anxiety
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)