Parents pay THOUSANDS to have their children take private Russian math lessons

The latest extra step wealthy parents are taking to give their kids a head start when applying to Ivy League schools is to learn Russian-style math.

Developed during the Cold War to give the Soviet Union an advantage over the West, the style seeks to “priority to reason, critical thinking, and abstract principles over raw memorization.”

According to the New York Post, children as young as five are enrolled in various companies, including the Russian School of Mathematics, to learn algebra and the principles of multiplication.

The school was founded in 1997 by two Soviet immigrants, Irina Khavinson and Inessa Rifkin, to the United States and now has 60,000 students nationwide, charging an average of $3,000 a year.

Irina Khavinson (left) and Inessa Rifkin, founders of the Russian School of Mathematics

The New York headquarters of the Russian School of Mathematics on the affluent Upper East Side

“If she wants to be a doctor or an engineer – math will never hurt. Your mathematics will increase understanding of the world. The sky is the limit,” said one parent, Anna Latuskiewicz, whose seven-year-old daughter attends Russian math classes two hours a week.

Latuskiewicz said that after her daughter’s successes in the program, she enrolled her son, whose development was so rapid that he was able to skip third grade.

There are over 70 Russian School of Mathematics campuses in the United States, including four in New York City alone.

The school’s public relations director, Masha Gershman, told the Post that students can enroll from the age of five.

“Math is a stool to shape how a kid thinks,” Gershman said. She described the school’s growth as “steady”. In 2019, Gershman championed the Russian style at a TED Talk in Boston.

In 2016, founder Inessa Rifkin told The Atlantic in a feature titled The Math Revolution that she was inspired to start the school after seeing her own children being taught math in American schools.

“I would tell my kids, ‘Forget the rules! Just think!” And they would say, “That’s not how they teach it here. That’s not what the teacher wants us to do,” Rifkin said in an interview with the magazine shortly after she started school.

According to this function, Rifkin worked as a mechanical engineer in the Soviet Union while Khavinson was a mathematics teacher.

Rifkin also said many of the students who took her classes are now working in fields that require advanced math skills, such as chemistry, meteorology and engineering.

President Joe Biden meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday. One of the founders of the Russian School of Mathematics blamed Zelensky for the death toll in the ongoing war

A statement on the Russian School of Mathematics’ website denounces the Russian invasion of Ukraine and says the school is “clearly” opposed to Putin.

The statements stress that the name of the school has nothing to do with the current Russian regime.

However, in March 2022, shortly after the invasion began, Inessa Rifkin wrote on one of the Russian School of Mathematics’ Facebook pages that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared responsibility with Putin for the mounting death toll.

“Ukraine was given a choice to surrender peacefully to Putin with minimal human casualties and minimal property damage. President Zelenskyy made the decision to fight back. Not only is he risking his own life, but he has already lost the lives of thousands of civilians, including many children,” wrote Rifkin, who is from Belarus, according to the WGBH.

Rifkin later tried to rebut her comments by saying that politics was never discussed in classrooms, but at school-run summer camps, students are asked thought-provoking questions about “the Holocaust, Israel, and many other subjects.” placed.

Around 60,000 students are enrolled at the Russian School of Mathematics nationwide

Parents pay around $3,000 a year for the school’s tutoring

A parent told WGBH that Rifkin “is open to having deeply conservative views.” The parent said her opinion is no different than Tucker Carlson’s.

The official declaration of war on the RSM website welcomes the children of Ukrainian refugees for free. Since the war began, over 100 Ukrainian children have joined their program.

The New York Post reports that another major player in the Russian math tutoring game, Russian Math Tutors, was considering changing its name to BYOM, an acronym meaning “Build Your Own Math.”

The founder of the company, Alexander Kolchinsky, immigrated to the United States from the USSR as a child.

Kolchinsky told the Post that in his classes, kids start by learning difficult problems, as opposed to the more common ways of starting with easier ones.

Another prominent Russian math school, Russian Math Tutors, has toyed with changing its name to Build Your Own Math, also known as BYOM, the company’s founder said

His classes aren’t run with a “one participation trophy, everyone’s a winner” philosophy, but with a more competitive mindset,” Kolchinsky said in a separate interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reports that Russian Math Tutors has around 400 students nationwide taking virtual lessons for $20 an hour.

“Of course we don’t hit the kids with a ruler because it’s online. But it’s a serious class,” Kolchinsky told the newspaper.

While an anonymous, more conventional teacher told the Post that the Russian style can have negative consequences, as students are taught to solve complex problems in their heads instead of writing them. This can lead them to make simple mistakes.

This educator also said that some students with such superior math skills can make other kids feel bad about themselves.

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk