The Science Math culture of the United States

[shortindiangirl]

www.verizonmath.com

And this is one reason why Americans outsource to India.
[Disclaimer: This is a tongue in cheek immigrant comment]

Being intimidated by Mathematics is (imo) a cultural difference. The United States encourages strong arts skills and allows poor Science-Math skills. Confirmed by the number of non American engineer & technical people

Comments

[shortindiangirl]

> lack of an adequate public school system and

Hmm. If it relates to the school system though you would think that India would be worse for lack of schools at all. But I would think that even the least educated child is less intimidated by math than his or her uneducated American peer (there are enough exceptions obviously, but still..), especially when it comes to money calculations. Perhaps the determinant would be the need to use money at one's own risk.

Still in this case, the concept of 2/1000's of 1 cent is not an everyday concept - but a learned one. So the quality of Math education in schools would be a factor. But also factors are the interest of the child, what the cultural systems deems as important (what needs to be done with and without a calculator), and what is considered useful for daily life. I find that these latter three are culturally different between the two countries and lead to different patterns of learning.

> the lack of good pay for teachers

That's probably the same world over, but either way I'd say that this too is a cultural phenomenon.