Americans and Mathematics

Every couple of years, I always look at PISA's* rankings of math around the world. When I first saw the rankings a few years ago, I was so surprised that America's ranking was around 26th. I wondered how this was even possible with globally leading universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford being here in the US. What didn't surprise me was Asian nations topped the charts for each subject. I had heard of cram schools, as well as the very stressful life of being a student in countries such as Korea, Japan, or Singapore. Also the higher rankings of countries such as Finland weren't surprising to me either since their methods of working very hard in school instead of bringing home thick stacks of homework seemed to work among the student population. Flash forward to 2015, the most recent pool of data from PISA, and the United States had dropped from 27th in 2012 to 41st in 2015. The question has to be asked, "Why does the US rank so poorly when it comes to mathematics?"

*PISA stands for the "Programme for International Student Assessment"

http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/3/urlt/pisa.pdf

PISA Mathematics Rankings from 2015

https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights_5.asp

I believe that there are many possible theories and a variety of ways to look at how we struggle in math compared to other countries around the world. My theory takes a turn off in a different direction, but still is very interesting to consider and think about how it could have effects. 

This theory of mine actually comes from a potential flaw in the English language... Now I know you're probably thinking, "What does English have to do with math and Americans scoring so low with mathematical topics?" Well, to understand, we must look at how you say or interpret numbers in English compared to Chinese or Japanese. 

In English, take the number eleven. What does eleven mean? I mean we can write "eleven" out as "11", but is it just a word that we came up with to signify the number "11"? 

In Japanese, the word for 11 is "Jyu-ichi" or "Ten-one" 

Similarly in Chinese, the word for 11 is "Shi-yi", also meaning "Ten-one"

*Note, both languages follow this same pattern of writing all numbers this way

Another example:

The English translation for the word fifteen is "Ten-five" and the word for fifty is "Five-Ten"

In English, there's nothing about the words “thirty” and “thirteen” to help you see what they mean, but in Japanese or Chinese, 30 is Three-Ten and 13 is Ten-Three. Both languages make the meanings quite obvious and transparent. My theory is that at the very beginning levels, when kids are learning the fundamentals of math in first, second, or even third grade, American kids find math to be a jumble of information, while kids in Japan or countries that speak Chinese such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or even Singapore (Countries who top the lists) see it to be as logical system.

Finally, when kids actually go to take tests, here in America we usually say "Good Luck!" In Japan instead of "Good Luck!", you say "Ganbatte!" or "Do your best!" This almost shows that Japanese children are encouraged more than American kids since "luck" can almost be seen like no effort was even put in, and it's all based on "luck" to do well, or to get a good grade. Just thought this was an interesting cultural difference in the two languages or countries.