I heard this talk at Microsoft about outlier success, and while somewhat of a throwaway comment, the speaker mentioned that the vast majority of the low American standing in those international math score comparison is due to motivation. Summarized, he said when taking the PISA math exam used to benchmark countries on their academic rankings, we always hear how the US is nearly last among developed countries, but if you compare how far different county’s students get on the 120 question end-of-assessment question (with nothing to do with math), THAT ranking almost perfectly lined up with the math assessment ranking.
Overall, if true, the weak showing of the US seems to be in large part a matter of motivation and persistence than what we’d traditionally call math ability (so maybe we need to change our thinking to include grit to stick it out as part of the math curriculum).
Overall, if true, the weak showing of the US seems to be in large part a matter of motivation and persistence than what we’d traditionally call math ability (so maybe we need to change our thinking to include grit to stick it out as part of the math curriculum).
Paper on the topic: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24004/w240...