Learning Gap

So the Press ran an editorial today (Sonata Gap) about the Chinese investing in music education. Somehow, they also magically connected this effort to Asian math performance. Let me tell you a little more about math performance in some Asian countries.
In 2004, I had the opportunity to attend ICME 10 (International Conference of Math Educators) where I scrambled around to every session offered by Asian presenters. I learned some interesting things. One Korean presenter started the session by stating that he does not attribute the "math miracle" to school mathematics. He then explained that Korean children attend many hours of tutoring in addition to school math. He also shared that competition for teaching positions in Korea is very great. The comment that stuck in my memory? He said Korea does not have an abundance of natural resources, so human capital is very important. In his view, it was the duty of every citizen to develop human capital.
Chinese presenter, Liu, described how his team never "taught" the quadratic equation. Rather, they had designed a carefully sequenced set of problems that started simply then progressed in difficulty. By the end of the sequence, the students had already solved the quadratic equation.
So beside just citing the Asian math miracle, let's also talk about valuing learning, teacher selection, academic learning time, instructional design, and more....