I can see a lot of sides to this story.
Probably the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes.
Yes, I agree completely. Here's an example of the two two extremes. But based on what I read, I wonder if the study was oversimplified.
The American students "worked on it less than 30 seconds on average and then they basically looked at us and said, 'We haven't had this,'" he says.
But the Japanese students worked for the entire hour on the impossible problem. "And finally we had to stop the session because the hour was up. And then we had to debrief them and say, 'Oh, that was not a possible problem, that was an impossible problem!'
I'm not sure what they mean by "impossible." Impossible as in, "division by zero is impossible?" Or "it was a tensor calculus problem, which is effectively impossible for six-year-old kids?" Also, did anyone ask for help or look in classroom math books? Was this allowed? The article doesn't say.
If the American kids gave up just because they "hadn't had this," then maybe they gave up too easily. If the Japanese kids kept plugging away just because it's what you're supposed to do, then maybe they didn't know when to quit. But the article doesn't show the problem, so it's impossible to know if it was over their heads by just a bit, over their heads a lot, or was actually unsolvable. Giving up would be the correct strategy for a bunch of first graders presented with tensor calculus, whereas plugging away would have been appropriate if it had been a basic multiplication problem.
Example: I have a question that needs to be studied via statistical analysis. I think I know the overall answer, but I can't be sure, so I'm going to pay some statisticians at a local university to help me. I'm not giving up; I'm recognizing that sometimes it's better to consult people who have expertise that I don't. People do this all the time. So when do kids learn when to ask for help?
Alternatively, I once worked with a guy who would fold when he was presented with something outside his narrow comfort zone. This was
very frustrating for the people around him.
Err. I seem to have my reviewer cap on today.
