The Western/Asian Literacy vs. Numeracy Discussion

A few months ago, there was a discussion on our family blog regarding education in America, which led to me putting words to some of my thoughts about teaching math across three continents.  Today, during a math committee meeting, a similar discussion ensued, which has me thinking about it all over again. 

Why does the stereotype exist that Asians are good at math, and is there any truth to it?  If it is true, why?

For starters, I will say that I have seen a trend in my Asian students in Michigan, Argentina, and Thailand- they're overall stronger in math.  For example, in Michigan, our math department was constantly under pressure because of our low math scores (granted, all our scores were low, but our math scores were exceptionally low).  In Argentina, my highest math students were often my Korean kids.  Here, I teach the 'lower track' of 8th grade math and have a disproportionate number of Western kids in my classes.  My 6th graders (who haven't been tracked yet) are far beyond where my 6th graders were in the US, and even further than they were in Argentina where roughly a third were Korean.  As one teacher said today, "If one of my kids is low in math, they're probably blonde." 

The gap exists.  But why?  This is my theory.  Math has a higher value placed on it in Asian culture than in Western culture (or at least, American culture).  Evidence #1 for this is that many of my Asian students work with special math tutors outside of the classroom, not being they are doing poorly, but to get ahead and do well in math. In the US, the only kids with math tutors were kids that already struggled.  And even then many of them didn't have tutors.  The second thing is this.  In the first critical years of life, in the US, we put a huge emphasis on reading. Think about it. What is every parent concerned about in their Kinder or 1st grade conference?  How's my child doing in reading?  From the very first things we start teaching our toddlers, we focus on literacy.  Recognizing letters and their sounds. Being able to read and write.  The ability to communicate.  What is it that "good parents" do?  Read to their kids!  If a 4 year old can read, but barely count past 10, we think little of it.  When we play car games on long trips, we identify letters in the world around us, later on we play word games.  We, in American culture, place a smaller value on numeracy.  I would be curious to know what percent of the minutes of a Kindergarten or First grader's day is related to literacy vs. numeracy.

Now, hear this: the focus on literacy is not a bad thing (remember I am a language arts major and math minor, and that this is the first school where I have not taught both subjects).  I don't blast the time spent on literacy as a waste, I just wonder if maybe the Asian system is a bit more balanced.  What if we taught our two year olds not just how to count, but how to skip count, assign numbers to objects to count the cheerios, put them together and take them away to see how many there are now?  What if we talked about the hands on the clock more or did mental math as a game in the car or played with a ruler at a  hockey game (as I did with my first grade cousin over break) making up games of measuring things around us?  What if we sat down at the conference and yes, asked how their reading was, but was equally concerned about their numerical sense?  What if we kept tallies and made graphs of the number of minutes we spent reading each day?  What if we talked aloud with our kids about how we calculated the amount of tip we're going to leave after dinner or about the sale price of a sweater that is 20% off? 

I don't believe that Asians are genetically more gifted in mathematics. It's possible, yes, but I just don't see it.  I have plenty of Asian kids that struggle (especially in a school with such a high percent of Asians) and I have plenty of Western kids that excel (not to mention my cousins who would knock the socks off any Asian math test).  But I do see trends here; trends that we would be wise not to ignore, not to brush off as cartoons and jokes.  The future is in technology, and so much of technology, like the rest of the world, is mathematically based.  And if all my students could grow up in homes where they are given a strong base in both literacy and numeracy, and attend schools where they are given time and strategies to develop both in literacy and numeracy, then well, other than being out of a job, I'd be pretty happy :)