Welcome to My Taxi Diaries—Commentary on My Mathematical Adventures in Asia

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Background on Taxi Diaries:

I originally set up my Taxi Diaries blog to accompany my talk for the California Math Council’s 2007 Conference in Asilomar, Reflections on Math Education in Asia: a Math Travelogue.  I have revised it for my talk at the 2008 meeting of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics in Salt Lake City.  I will maintain it and add to it from time to time for friends and colleagues interested in Asia and my reflections on mathematics education there.  This is not written as a public, published blog.  From time to time I will excerpt material and develop it for publication.

I have been lucky to have had opportunities for over 20 years to work with extraordinary educators and mathematics education projects all over Asia.  My work has taken me to Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, and India.  I have visited schools in these countries, offered workshops on the use of technology in teaching mathematics, helped develop curriculum in many places, and met with government officials ranging from ministers of education to school principals.  Over the course of numerous workshops at the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) Regional Centre for Mathematics and Science (RECSAM), in Penang, Malaysia, I have worked with hundreds of mathematics teachers and university professors from all ten Southeast Asian countries, including the five above and Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.

What I love about my work are the opportunities it has afforded me to develop insight into the issues of mathematics education around the globe.  We have so much in common with our colleagues in Asia and the rest of the world and so much to learn from each other.  The purpose of this blog site is to share some of what I have seen and learned with you.

For most of my career, my work in Asia has been "quiet."  My family and friends and close business colleagues know that I disappear for a month or two every year, but I haven't spoken publicly about what I do there.  The stories, as well as the rewards, have been personal.  But in the last few years, as I have seen the rhetoric about competing with Asia ramp up, and as I have seen the threat of being economically challenged by Asia used as a bat to swing at efforts of our own national mathematics teaching community, I have decided to share some of what I know about mathematics education in Asia.  I have chosen to do in in the form of a travelogue.  The thoughts, although edited, are somewhat "stream of consciousness." excerpted from the diaries that I've kept on my recent trips.  My purpose is to put a human face on math teaching in two Asian countries—Vietnam and India—so that you won't be fooled into thinking of Asian teachers and students as enemies blessed with a "math gene" out to take our jobs.

Education in Asia is in tremendous flux, and as U.S. educators, we have a lot to learn and a lot to offer.  In my view, three things distinguish education in Asia generally from education in the U.S., and these account for the disparate success we often hear about in contrasts between education there and here.

1. Asian nations give more material support to education relative to their national economies than does our nation.
2. The university examination system, maintained to regulate access to a very limited resource (i.e., university admission), drives students to study in their K-12 years.
3. Mathematics is viewed as the gatekeeper subject for admission into all scientific disciplines in school and at the university, and scientific careers are  seen as the way to achieve economic success and employment after school.

Of course, Asian countries vary as much as any group of countries on earth.  The two countries I feature on this site are great because they are so different.  While in Vietnam, the socialist system has leveled the economic and educational playing field, India is a country of unimagineable social contrasts.  the poor are poorer than anywhere I have ever been.  The rich are richer.  And of course most people exist between these extremes.

Steve Rasmussen

 

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The purpose of this blog site is to share some of what I have seen and learned with you.