Day 3:
Well, it’s midnight, so technically day 3.
Train station it is.
Oh yeah, did I remember to mention before: it’s “don’t drink the water” around here, or at least that’s the recommendation I got, and bottled water goes for absurd prices. I generally have found it to be about 50 rubles ($2) for a bottle, or some places even more. And the typical starting salary for a teacher, which is in the range of $2000+ per month in the US (don’t count Castilleja, or the Bay Area, right? Look nationally), is more like $150 per month here, so at least in some respects the prices should be multiplied by 10 to find out what they look like to the locals. And what I find is that restaurants (with the exception of ones in hotels like ours that cater to tourists) tend to be about half or 2/3 the price of what I’d expect to pay in the US – so to the locals, as a percentage of their budget, it’s something like 5 times as much. Yikes. And bottled water is completely ridiculous. On the other hand, the metro is pretty cheap indeed. I haven’t investigated the price of vodka yet. Hm, even the Hermitage gift shop was pretty reasonable. Yeah, 50 rubles for a bottle of soda, but also 50 rubles for a very very nice pastry that would surely have been well over $2 in the US. And great prices in the gift shop.
There’s definitely a lot of food for thought about how they run math circles here and how it compares to what we do in the US. There is so much more dedication here: could we get a core group of 15 kids to commit to coming twice a week to math for 6 years? Could we find the money to pay teachers to do it? Could we stick to the no-collaboration attitude, and do we want to? How do we get students involved in presenting their solutions? (Here, they say it’s around 10th grade when much of the circle gets taken over by the students presenting solutions to each other, because it takes them 4 or 5 years to get to the point where the quality of their solutions is high enough. Could we wait that long, and do we want to?)
One of my frustrations today was that several members of our group, including me, tried to ask various forms of the question “What is math curriculum like for those kids that aren’t in a math circle or attending a special school like this?” (In StP there are about 60,000 sixth graders; about 100 of them attend this school; and I think only 25 of those are in this circle. So what do the other 59,900 do?) We never got an answer, except for the honest “Getting worse and worse, and soon it will be as bad as America.” True enough, but bad in which ways? Lots more lecture, lots less “seatwork” and “going over homework” in the bad sense in which you see it in America. But not the amazing problem-oriented approach like we use at Castilleja and like they use at school 239.
More on this topic later …
The train ride was pretty good, in that I don’t remember very much of it. Good sign. One particular station that we had a long stop in also had an announcer helpfully announcing something – I think it was the current time? My Russian still needs work – every couple minutes. That was a sleepless period for sure, without the soothing sound of the train moving and with the annoyance of that loud announcement. Other than that, though, mostly good sleep until it was daylight. And that means from 1am until close to 9am probably, with only that one serious interrupted chunk. Probably the best night’s sleep yet.
Still, we arrive pretty exhausted in Moscow. Lots of good pictures coming (in addition to mine, I downloaded a bunch from a colleague’s camera and he’s a much better photographer than I! So I’ll have to sort through his 200+ photos and pick the right ones to show here.)
We were met at the train station by a friendly guide and a much bigger bus than the one in StP. That turned out to be a sign already of how much more luxurious this (longer!) phase of the trip is going to be. A long bus ride through Moscow, with some humor (when the bus became wedged in a narrow street intersection and we wondered if we’d ever get out – finally the bus driver got out, talked to the driver of one of the cars, which then moved enough out of the way that the bus could back up and turn). Lots of good sightseeing out the bus window. Then we arrived at MCCME/IUM – the headquarters of the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematics Education and the Independent University of Moscow. There we were treated to a late breakfast in their cafeteria, which is one of the most amazing little rooms I’ve ever seen (see photos&captions in the next blog entry I hope). The folks here have much better English, which helps for me, and they seem in general to have done a lot more work in preparing for our visit. I’m very excited about the next few days!
[I’m half-writing blog and half-unpacking in the hotel Ukrainya right now. Much much much nicer hotel than in StP, feels much more international and modern, and the Stalinist architecture is amazing. They’re more generous with the soap and towels and stuff too. However the power outlet in the bathroom has a sign indicating electric razors are OK but hair dryers are not; I think the building’s electrical system might be Stalinist too! I can finally unpack – we’ll be in this hotel for the rest of our stay, until Mon. morning – and I pulled a couple books out of my backpack and thought “my goodness, I bought these in the Hermitage and I’ve been carrying them on my back ever since!” But then I realized that the Hermitage was yesterday morning, and since then the suitcase was in the bag check at the StP hotel until about midnight, when I rolled the luggage across the street to the train station, and then here in Moscow from the train station to the bus. So while it seems like a LONG time ago, it was really just yesterday. Unbelievable.]
Today’s agenda is already going to be amazing and the next few days even more so. I’m just glad we convinced them to reschedule so I have an hour here in the hotel room to gather my thoughts a bit, unpack, take a much-needed shower (yes, I did get one yesterday morning, but then I walked all over StP and the Hermitage and slept on the train – oh, I did sleep pretty well, but I did forget to mention that the bunk is barely long enough for me, so unless I squished my pillow up against one end my feet would hang out the other, and the width of the top bunk is just enough if I lie on my back with my hands flat next to my hips, one finger reaches the wall while the other reaches the edge of the bunk. It is extreeeemely nice to have a bed with an actual mattress here at the Ukrainiya; the hotel in StP, and the train, had inch-thick slabs of heavily used foam, and that’s it.).
Anyway, today we have already heard from Alexey Sossinsky, one of the directors (VP I think?) of the IUM. He gave a great summary in response to one of our questions. Approximately quoted:
The Russian way: problem-oriented, with the active participation of students. E.g., “Ivanov, come to the board, and show us how to solve this problem.” [So far, sounds a lot like Castilleja, particularly the new Exeter curriculum.] If they fail to solve the problem at the board, give them a good long tirade, and perhaps make them cry. But “we can’t do that with American students.” [says Sossinsky. He’s talking about the college senior math majors who they get as visitors at the IUM.] It’s not the French formalized way; the Russian way is geometric, concrete, with lots of applications. [Also sounds a lot like Castilleja in that sentence!] “We don’t think of applied math as being third-rate” [in contrast to the French/Bourbaki style approach, so axiomatic.] “Mathematics is that branch of physics where experiments are cheap”. They are Platonists, view math almost as a natural science, investigating the reality of the mathematical objects with an experimental attitude much as a scientist. Which is not to say that they don’t also value rigor.
Ivan Yaschenko, the director of the MCCME, then gave us a short talk to let us get here and have time for a shower and all that. Key points of his talk: visit www.mccme.ru . They are developing new HS curriculum; a database of HS problems mostly appropriate for math-circle level but also some for the curriculum; they publish 100 new and classical textbooks every year; they are working on how to improve teacher qualifications, and one of the ways they do that is to make a teacher’s math contest, which differs from a student math contest in that one part requires them to solve an easy problem in as many different ways as possible [a common weakness of American math teachers, in my view, is that they are too rigid in doing things by the “book method”: I was surprised to learn that many Russian teachers, even with the problem-based curriculum, have this same problem, that many of them think that the book solution is necessarily the “best” or sometimes even the only way, and that this is why the teachers’ contest has to focus on this issue.]. Another part of the teacher’s contest is a student paper with many mistakes, that the teachers have to find and correct.
One question that I immediately raised (on the bus ride to the hotel) was what we can do to collaborate with this group. I figured that American money was what they needed most, but some of the more politically savvy (and more informed about Russian culture, too) had a different and I think better idea. The suggestion is that the best thing to show is the places where we are trying to be like them: Castilleja’s problem-based curriculum, the math circles movement in the US, and so on. Bring a group of Russian mathematicians, teachers, and also politicians to see what it’s like, and help convince the politicians that the “old-fashioned” Russian way really does have advantages compared with America (and our obsession with shallow multiple-choice tests, for example, and the breadth-over-depth of much American curriculum, and the lack of rigor and proof in most of our math classes). Then maybe the Russian government would make preserving this Russian tradition more of a priority.
The main organizers of our delegation, MSRI in Berkeley, are working toward making a national math circles organization in the US. I wonder if this experience will lead to a more international organization. At the very least I suspect we will end up making a lot of use of that web site (cited above) and the database of Russian problems. Now we just need a translator! Of course several in our delegation are fluent … but they are also busy.
There’s plenty more that I can say, too, just about these short introductory talks, but I’m sure that by the time I next get a chance to blog, I’ll have much more new stuff on my mind.
…OK, now it’s many hours later, and I’m back at the hotel. 10:45pm local time. Just finished dinner and the walk back from MCCME to the hotel Ukraiyna (did I spell it right this time?). AMAZING dinner. First of all, it’s the first time that anyone has tried to give us some vodka. It’s quite a different drink than in the US. But anyway, it was not as I feared – I feared the endless rounds of toasts and the expectation that one has to drink a shot of vodka each time. But instead, you could sip, or take wine, or water, or other beverage options, and at least nobody thought it sufficiently rude to give me a good stare or anything. Lovely dinner, fantastic buffet of food, mostly Russian items but with some tastes of home too (like a beautiful fruit plate for dessert) – all buffet style, stuff piled in the middle of the table, at least three times as much food as our very hungry crowd could eat. Salami, smoked salmon, an amazing mushroom dish with I don’t know what variety of mushrooms, some potatoes, various salads … no borscht, though, we had that at lunch. And a surprising (for Russia) lack of sour cream and other such piles of dairy all over everything: a refreshing change. Yum. I’m very full now, and after the walk back in the very cold but nice air, not as sleepy as I need to be (I have to be at breakfast by 8am tomorrow and it’s 11pm by now…)
Jetlag is very weird now: we’re sleeping roughly midnight to 8am or thereabouts, usually fewer hours of course, but then today for example we ate breakfast at 10am or so (well, there was “breakfast” included in the train ride), and then lunch after 3pm, and dinner started at more like 8:30pm. Not at all the schedule I’m used to. Ah well, I’m (relatively) young and adaptable. Some of the other members of our group aren’t handling it so well, though: falling asleep in “class”, or heading back to the hotel early to get some sleep.
It’s tempting to work backward from dinnertime, since those memories are fresh, but mostly I want to talk about some of the more memorable quotes randomly scattered through the day. Today was just awesome.
OK, here’s one: Over dinner I asked about the fact that only 20% or so of the output of these math circles are female, and indeed I was talking to a 25-year-old or so example of exactly that category, named Tanya. She’s a graduate student now, and an instructor of the math circles, and many other things as well. Specifically, I was asking about the method of recruitment into the math circles, which is mostly from competitions, and speaking from my own experience that competitions tend to be less attractive to girls, even to girls who would ultimately want to go on and be successful mathematicians. From Tanya’s point of view, though, there were some significant differences: she first told me that here in Moscow girls are very close to 50% of the competitors in 6th and 7th grade, and it’s only as the years go by that they tend to shift their interests to other things (both less competition and less math). And she told me that she personally, and in Russian culture generally, they don’t see the lack of girls as a problem! Instead, they see it as human nature, that a bigger fraction of girls will leave the math circle pipeline, and it’s fine for those who want to stay, but they see it as just a fact of life that girls on average are more drawn to humanities.
[As I walked in to the hotel lobby, the bar had some live jazz going, and now it’s stopped. Bummer. I wonder if I should stay down here in the noise or go upstairs. Maybe they’ll start again.]
Anyway, surprising news about cultural attitudes toward the participation of women in mathematics. (Perhaps my view was skewed by the large number of Russian and Eastern European émigré women that I know from US math circles.)
Another memorable quote from today (paraphrased): “You may have done it dozens of times, with lots of different people, but you need to come back to it every time with the same enthusiasm as the very first time, to do your best to remember what the experience was like, and what you saw then when your eyes were first opened to it.” … “Practice is not so important, nor experience, nor training: lots of enthusiasm for it can make up for a lack of skill.”
[Now “it” of course is a … very beautiful … math problem. That’s what you were thinking, right? Good.]
Right. What else from today?
Nikolai Konstantinov, storyteller extraordinare. His English was not bad, but he preferred to speak in Russian and be translated by a real fluent English speaker. So he’d be telling his story in Russian, and I’d still know just when to nod, or laugh: he communicated so much by the nonverbal parts of his storytelling. Amazingly charismatic guy. Sort of the elder statesman of the math circles movement around here: everyone else who spoke referred to him in some way, and he’s also pretty well-known in the US because of the international “Tournament of the Towns” that he founded.
Storytelling is what he does best: I can imagine how wonderful a math classroom structured that way would be. All the lessons about math circles that he had for us were communicated by specific anecdotes that illustrated the general point he wanted to make. Sometimes several anecdotes for the really important points.
Konstantinov, first of all, told us that the long tradition in Russia is key. Yes, we’ve been working on math circles in the bay area for 8 years now. But we need to think longer-term: how long does it take before the students we worked with in high school return to the Bay Area as professors at Stanford or Berkeley? That’s how long it takes to establish a program, is when you have one generation passing things on to the next.
He also talked about a Lomonosov (did I spell that right?) tournament, for younger students. The ostensible purpose was to bring kids to university, given them a chance to do some fun problems (in math and many other fields as well), and do a little teaching by explaining the problems. But the real purpose, and many other speakers echoed this, is to collect a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of interested kids. Going through other PR avenues, or their teachers, or their schools, doesn’t work: get hold of the interested kids directly. This is sort of a vicious circle, though: how do you get the interested kids to come to the Lomonosov tournament in the first place if they don’t hear about it? And how do they hear about it if you don’t have their names and addresses? This is a problem we face at home, where most of the math circle kids (except for the very specially-designed San Francisco circle) come from the already-advantaged Gunn and Paly and Monta Vista and Lynbrook. Well, they have the same problem here: at the Lomonosov tournament, they get some 7000 kids, which is great! But still 5/6 of them come from maybe 100 schools (of the 2000 in Moscow(!)), and the other 1/6 come from another 200 schools or so, and then 1700 schools send nobody. The belief here seems to be that those schools have no good teachers (and they are not surprised, given the extremely low salaries they get paid, and the mountains of bureaucratic unnecessary paperwork they get buried in – sound like familiar American complaints?)
This group (of Moscow math circle people) sounded philosophically very much more similar to what we do in the US. For one thing, they support some group work. For another, rather than focus on math above all else, they talked a lot about how the special math-focused schools and so on should only be for the last 2 or at most 3 years of high school. At younger ages, math circles are OK, but there should also be opportunities for other circles. And the purpose of the whole project is not about math, but about raising well-rounded kids. Now that’s a lovely sentiment, and people often say that while not really meaning it, but they really meant it. Or, more specifically, they talk about things they do that show what they mean by it.
“Support the natural curiosity of a 13-year-old”: they run a math circle from 4:30 to 6, in the zoological museum of Moscow State University. Then, after the circle, there’s a separate science circle, which first took them on tours of the zoo, and then did some experimental physics, some hands-on geology, and so on. They talked about how sad it is, what happens to young people with potential in gymnastics: their lives are over at 18, and they don’t know where to go. And they talked about similar stories about kids who devote their lives to trying to become the next world chess champion, and then what do they do when there’s no life for them there? Give a broader exposure.
Ivan Yaschenko, the director of MCCME, also said “The circles are not about creating future research mathematicians, although that’s a quantitative way we can try to measure our success. The real goals are too hard to measure: “Teach high level math in context of world culture” (I could not believe I was hearing “in context of world culture”! After StP, I was sure that the Russians were very sure that their way of teaching math was better than everyone else’s and that they didn’t care a bit about world culture.) And “Teach students to work hard, work honestly, and enjoy the process.” That sounded American! Well, except maybe for the “work hard” part (and of course Castilleja is an exception to that, but in general in the US …). And that the goal is “to raise students well and to help them have a successful life, not necessarily in math and physics.” They do take their role as almost a surrogate parent in some ways. In the special schools, students might have 10 hours a week of math class (as one of their 13 subjects, some for only two hours a week, but school is generally 6 days a week for them). And they might also have one or two circle meetings for two or three hours each, with the same teacher. So that does start to approach parenting kind of hours. (See below for some comments on individual attention.)
Another fascinating thing they said, which was not at all what I expected (again paraphrased): “We cannot just translate Russian books for teachers or students. They must be rewritten. The culture is different so the math books have to be different.”
Then they talked about competitions: “The reverse side of the medal you can award when you try to develop mathematical aptitude from too early an age is that the professionalism you teach the kids will kill their interest. It’s harmful to their personality to be too professional instead of enthusiastic.”
Hence the quote above, about enthusiasm. You must love your own problems, and imagine facing them for the first time.
They seem to face some of the same problems we do in the US. MCCME is doing a lot to bring professional mathematicians and graduates of teachers college together. In the US, you also see mostly hostility between those two groups. Same in Russia. But at least here’s a group doing something about it, like my teacher’s circle back home.
It’s also interesting how I keep running into the political history of the country. Of course at the Hermitage it was all about Catherine the Second. But there were some other comments at StP about it too. More specifically, though, we heard today about why Konstantinov founded the tournament of the towns: “For political reasons, he was no longer welcome as part of the Soviet Union Math Olympiad group. So he had to start his own.” I wish I had taken Russian History at Castilleja, where I know I’d have the best teacher anywhere. (Speaking of which, Sasha Golovanov in StP (I hope I got the last name right) seems like he might have a set of students who would be interested in being pen pals with the Russian History group; I’ll send an email and find out … and I’ll also bring up that question with the teachers I meet in the next couple days.)
Anyway, there are a lot of interesting things they said along those lines: “We want students to rediscover math, not memorize it” also sounds very much like Castilleja, and like US math circles, to me.
Lots more to say, but it’s midnight, and I’m sitting in the hotel bar hanging out with a couple of the other folks from our group, so I’ll upload this and maybe a few photos and sign out.
I love that there is history everywhere -- that makes sense to me. And of course there is math everywhere!
Amazing Blog.
Posted by: Mrs. Pang | November 20, 2006 at 08:57 AM