Math Taught the ‘Russian Way,’ an Equation for US Schoolkids’ Success
SPRINGFIELD, New Hampshire, August 19 (by Karin Zeitvogel for RIA Novosti) – In a woodland setting on the banks of a New Hampshire lake, the sounds of summer camp waft through the air as counselors sing songs and put on skits, lake water splashes during a morning dip, and – there’s one more added extra – kids take math lessons. But not just any old math instruction, this is math taught the Russian way.
Run by the US-based Russian School of Mathematics, the camp offers the usual activities like arts and crafts, theater, archery, making s’mores and singing around a campfire, but also 90 minutes of math every day.
The camp was started in 1998 by Russian immigrants Inessa Rifkin and Irina Khavinson, who four years earlier had set up the Russian School of Mathematics (RSM) in Rifkin’s home in Newton, Massachusetts, an upscale suburb of Boston.
Rifkin was prompted to start the after-school mathematics program by what she calls her “terrifying realization” that her teenaged son Ilya’s level in math was not where she thought it should be as he was about to start high school.
“He couldn’t grasp simple equations with fractions. He didn’t understand the beauty of math, the beauty of learning,” Rifkin, who trained as an engineer in the former Soviet Union before emigrating in 1988, told RIA Novosti.
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From those small beginnings, RSM has grown exponentially, giving after-school lessons to more than 8,000 children in six states – California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Washington – hosting hundreds of children at summer camp in New Hampshire; and offering online courses.
The school’s phenomenal growth is driven by word of mouth and its success in taking kids who are average in math and moving them to the front of the class.
According to the RSM website, the average score on the math SAT exam among 11th-graders enrolled in an RSM program is 774 out of 800. In 2011, the US average on the test, which aims to assess how well a student will do in college, was 514.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20130819/182853921/Math-Taught-the-Russian-Way-an-Equation-for-US-Schoolkids.html
