somewhere on another planet, not my own

from Illinois Loop

I was educated in Russia where school programs were also set by a central authority. I was in classes of 35 or 40 students. A sizeable proportion of my classmates had alcoholic parents. Many came from broken homes. Few of us were regularly read to, and some of our parents were virtually illiterate. Most of us lived below the poverty line by today's American standards. Despite all of this, we could all read by age eight, do basic math by ages nine or ten, and produce reasonably well written texts by fifth or sixth grade. Most of us had basic familiarity with major concepts in science, geography, and history. All of us knew some redimentary English. Our spelling, grammar, and sentence structure in English were better, in my assessment, than those of most of my son's American friends. As for creativity, I don't believe we are any less creative than our American-born counterparts. Most Americans of our age are impressed by the education we received and say they wish they had had the same opportunities.

When I hear educators talk about striving to reach a 70 percent achievement rate in standards that would be considered modest compared with those imposed on (and met by!) nearly all of my peers, I cannot help but see such efforts as naive, albeit well-intentioned, attempts to reinvent the wheel.

When I was growing up in Leningrad, there were two pedagogical institutes where future teachers received their training in how to teach. They learned, for example, that multiplication tables up to eight take second graders until April to master, if they practice four times a week for fifteen minutes and get three homework assignments on them a week.

four times a week for fifteen minutes + three homework assignments 'til April

That's the kind of info parents who have to teach their kids the math facts might find useful.

Too bad U.S. schools don't have any info like this.