Quote (BovineDesi @ Tue, 20 Jan 2009, 19:34)
Haha stereotypes -- nope, they learn more broad and basic stuff in grade school -- that however doesn't mean its not rigorous. While I was in elementary & middle school, my parents made me study my mathematics from Indian text books of the same grade level, and it gave me a pretty good founding. I think thats one of America's greatest downfalls, they produce students who know a LOT of material -- but they don't produce people who have a firm grounding in the basics and can from there, think on their own. I mean just take a look at a few good Russian or Indian text books for algebra, and you'll see Algebra 2 level math that you can't solve without a great deal of effort -- theres no new material in those books, its just that its tougher to solve and requires more creativity to solve.
My parents also refused to let me use a calculator until 6th grade which also helped a lot, in India they pretty much don't use calculators at all until high school -- and even then they don't use graphing calcs.
even canada has much higher standards when it comes to math than the usa does
university-wise you guys start being a year, up to two behind for someone taking a math degree