Voices cite resource scarcity and computer access restrictions
3 Nov 2 10:30 AM · 6d ago · 6 comments · 1 source · development 3 of 9
Commenters point to Cold War export controls (CoCom) limiting Soviet access to computers, forcing emphasis on theoretical mathematics, and note that Western labs could afford computational overhead that Soviet schools could not.
“selling computers (among other products) to Soviet Union and the whole East block was subject to Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) established in 1949”
leonidasrupAndrey Kolmogorov Soviet mathematician; curriculum curatorTerence Tao Mathematician raised in the WestMagnus Carlsen Chess grandmaster raised in the West
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What people said 7 voices · verbatim
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From the article:> There are a lot of good points being made in this thread. I have had a theory that it is in part related to the funding available for lab equipment and computers. During the latter half of the 20th century, in Russia you were very lucky to get access to a “real” computer.Lets not forget that, selling computers (among other…
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My sister went to high school in the US for a year some time in the early nineties - we are Norwegian. She got perfect grades and some kind of award for American history. She explained it by saying, US textbooks wanted you to succeed. Whereas she was used to the Norwegian ones which were only out to rank you (on a bell curve - the grading…
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I’ve seen the same explanation used for why static and functional languages took off more in Europe while dynamic and object oriented languages took off more in America: American research labs could afford more expensive computers that could handle more runtime overhead. The shining example of this being Xerox PARC with their Alto computer…
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In Canada they still learn multiplication table in fifth grade, while I was done with multiplication table in my first grade in USSR. I know a math teacher in pre-university college (cegep in quebec) and she is from ex-USSR country and according to her the students coming from high school have very minimal grasp of mathematics and those are the…
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I assume because they had not adopted the "dumb everything down to reduce variance in outcomes" educational ideology that has taken hold in most of the west over the past 50 years.
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I tend to agree with your position.But also, look at where almost all technological innovation has happened in the last 50 years
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False rigor is common among societies that are economically behind. Same reason poor schools mandate uniforms.
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