Is Mathematics taught better in others countries, such as Japan, than in the United States?

Answer 1

Sadly, the answer is yes. It seems that many of today's American teachers have a fundamental misunderstanding of many mathematical concepts...it's not anything they did wrong, they are just a product of their own math education (or lack thereof).
Americans tend to teach math as a series of steps, instead of teaching math through investigation and problem solving. As a result, students may be able to "do" math, but they will not understand what they are doing or why they are doing it.

There is an extremely interesting book written by Liping Ma about the differences between the ways American and Chinese teachers teach fundamental math concepts at the elementary school level. It's called Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States

here's the link to buy it on Amazon :
http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-Understanding/dp/0805829091/sr=8-1/qid=1169255044/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-9352590-2057259?ie=UTF8&s=books

Answer 2

You didn't say at which level(s) you meant:
elementary, high school or university
and whether you meant *average* or *top* results:

For elementary and high school, the US lags behind most of the rest of the developed world, especially since it doesn't do standardized testing. The best countries invariably come out as
Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Hungary, Russia, China, New Zealand, most of Europe.

For colleges, the best (tier-1 and -2) colleges in the US are among the best in the world.
And the so-so ones are so-so.

(As to why all this is, the US has been neglecting basic education for the sake of fluffy politically-correct rubbish for two generations, and it shows.
"Neglect" doesn't just mean underfund, it means not taking it seriously as a policy issue, competitiveness and national security issue - as a bipartisan Congressional panel found in 2005. There is a ~20-year lag between destroying the system and seeing the results, and even then the US ignores this by importing graduates)

Answer 3

I do not think it is specifically taught better but do believe that teachers there do not have to tolerate the behaviors that teachers in America do. In a typical classroom in America, teachers spend about 10 of the 55 minutes correcting behaviors, add that up over a year and that is over 35 hours of time wasted each year.

Answer 4

The education system in America is not stellar by any means, and especially when compared to other 'western' countries it falls far behind. Math is not taught very well in any of the grades and there's a lot the U.S. has to do to catch up. Our drop out and graduation rates are appaling considering we live in one of wealthiest places in the world.

Answer 5

it is taught better in the United States cause i live there

Example:4^3 = 4* 4*4*=64

Answer 6

Japan has math problems but in the USA we get word problems so it is your pick but Japanese math is tougher.

Answer 7

well there math is a lot simpler than ours is because all of the jobs that mainly include doing math