In 1997, Rifkin, who once worked as a mechanical engineer in the Soviet
Union, saw this firsthand.
Her children, who attended public school in affluent Newton, Massachusetts,
were being taught to solve problems by memorizing rules and then following
them like steps in a recipe, without understanding the bigger picture.
“I’d look over their homework, and what I was seeing, it didn’t look like
they were being taught math,” recalls Rifkin, who speaks emphatically,
with a heavy Russian accent. “I’d say to my children, ‘Forget the rules!
Just think!’
And they’d say, ‘That’s not how they teach it here. That’s not what the
teacher wants us to do.’”
:The Math Revolution
:The number of American teens who excel at advanced math has surged. Why?