race and math

[Leslilake1 at aol.com]

Not sure if you're buying this or not, but you shouldn't, I think, because 
this pattern for the is found in (I'd hazard a guess) all language families, 
e.g. Spanish "31, 32..." "treinta y uno, treinta y dos...", including African 
and American Indian languages 
(my linguistics books are in storage or I'd come up with some better 
examples, for 11 and 12 as well...).  It doesn't explain why countries or 
groups speaking similar languages don't excell at math, nor why there is a 
difference in the level of excellence in a linguistic group at different 
times in history (e.g. why the Arab world produced a lot of world-class 
mathematicians during a certain historical period, but no longer does, 
apparently.)

In a message dated 00-12-01 21:53:44 EST, you write:

<< Interesting study in the Journal of Ed psych a few years

 back, don't have the reference handy: from an early age,

 Chinese kids outperform U. S. kids in math, even after

 controlling for obvious confounds like SES and parents'

 math skills.  The researchers speculated that the

 difference in math skills was due to language--

 apparently the Chinese words for numbers like eleven

 and twelve translate into English as "ten and one",

 "ten and two", and so on.  Thus learning how to say

 numbers in Chinese encourages kids to think in terms

 of addition.  The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis strikes again!

 

 Miles

  >>