Poles don't have a heart for math... says The New York Times

I could do that...but I wonder if it would do any good. People have complained to the paper before. I wonder if they have made the suggestion about a bigger "your views" section? Then again, their journalists wouldn't be too happy with yielding some space so who knows if they would agree?

You never know until you try.

Newspapers have always been biased. The majority of news around the world is presented as "infotainment".

Regarding the talk back bit, in addition to letters to the editor, online newspapers have a huge community providing reader feedback for every story.

u mean made by the users? mostly sarcastic trash comments...

Who exactly do you want to have express their opinions if not the readers themselves? Someone representing your views? Not quite sure what exactly you're looking for.

wtf? I think we Poles are great in maths >___< we are better than Germans and others from west' coutries who don't even know the roman numerals...it's weird. I think we are not treasured- especially when it's going about maths ant TI.

Views but not idiotic sarcastic mocking...

here's your answer:

fabpedigree.com/james/mathmen.htm

Well, there's no Polish School of Mathematics there, reasons unclear, although possibly not really suspicious, as it is really hard to get squeezed into the first 30 of al times.

The article is bollocks, though. Either those Polish professors were misquoted, or they just don't really know Polish history.

During the 19th century there were two main efforts of retaining Polish identity, the 'romantic' one, resulting in insurrections, and the 'positivist' one, which meant 'retaining the Polish substance' by education, social advance, growing influence. After the last insurrection in 1863, the positivist attitude took the upper hand, and it resulted in patriotic Poles both seeking and spreading education. The result was that Poland was exporting engineers to the vastness of the Russian Empire and the world in general.

After 1918 those migrants flocked back to Poland, to rebuild it after the WW1 fronts had levelled it down, and together with the locals they performed the miracle of raising from the ashes.

The Polish School of Mathematics is not something one can suddenly conjure out of thin air, it needs at least one generation of popular, sound education in mathematics, in order to create the pool from which to choose those most talented. And this 'at least one' generation needed the teachers to educate them. This generation created the 'Enigma trio', and allowed the Polish intelligence to read German Enigma codes long before the war. Turing was basing his developments on Polish achievements. This was not a handful of mavericks, it was a result of a long lasting effort.

And the commies didn't suppress the technical education neither, they needed engineers to develop the industry. There was nothing much to improve on the technical and scientific education after the fall of communism, actually the impression is that the post-commie 'improvements' were a step back in this area. Only as late as 2001 maths ceased to be obligatory as matura subject. A huge mistake in opinion of plenty of Poles.

So, my conclusion is, that either the NYT is (understandably) ignorant about the development of Polish education during the last 2 centuries, or it is just another, this time nicely veiled, attempt to present Poles as a bunch of simpletons. It doesn't matter at all that they use quotations from renowned Polish scientist to promote the idea. 'Creative quoting'' is one of the basic tools of dedicated journalism.

And now go compare the Polish education in maths, however damaged it may be in the recent decade or two, with the country once being in the avant garde of technical development, where stating 'my maths is miserable' is considered a fashionable attitude of a successful individual. And by 'maths' they mean the four basic arithmetic operations... For a Pole, it's a shock. I could tell stories about it, Poles in Poland would not believe.

So, this article is bollocks.

Sorry for the long post, but I've been cut off the Internet for 5 days...

Considering the source I'm gonna go with this.

As would I, in fact. The event itself somehow doesn't seem to me important enough to report it over the ocean, so it rather looks like they're just taking the opportunity to say what they want to say. But, this is what they call 'teoria spiskowa', innit.

Not true. We've never been more united. It's the government that the people hate.

Pay no attention to the ny times, they are just another large media outlet blowing smoke up everyones arse. They can jump off a cliff with the rest of the lamestream media azzholes.

The article should have read, 'New York City Public School System in Shambles'.

Being that the journalists at the NYT are often products of that system... you can guess the rest.

heehaw.

The NY Times should look at its own back yard.

Haha thats crap marie curie was a pole so of course thats not true=)

it does amaze me though, that the editors at the NYT even allowed the article. I would have expected that even they would know that math is a function of the brain not the heart.

just goes to show ya I guess, what sitting on your brain can accomplish.

Well leave it to the New York Times to write slanted new pieces on Poland.

Everyone knows that if you're a journalist you can SELECTIVELY pick your sources in a nation to make that nation look according to your own positive or negative bias for that country.

We see it here in the US all the time.

Basically if you read the old Left-wing media all the time they will interview sources that make America look like an arrogant or flawed country. Many times our US military doesn't look the greatest because the New York Times type media will put a MICROSCOPE on the flaws or mistakes of the US military or people. I'm not saying America doesn't make mistakes but I don't think the Left-wing media puts the US in the best light.

But if you read conservative American media, or listen to most radio talk shows (mostly conservative) you get the opposite opinion of American because their journalism or reports are from Pro-America sources who aren't ashamed of America and are optimistic about America despite its problems.

You can make a news story look any which way you want based on your Cherry Picked sources of information.

This New York Times story wasn't too bad since it gave some differing points of view but you can see they didn't want to talk to too many sources that puts Poland in the best light for education.

No doubt Poland has its problems, but why couldn't they reference these positive sources on the intellectual ability of Poles?

Like when Polish students from Warsaw WON the 2007 World IBM Battle of the Brains software contest in Tokyo in March 2007? Polish students beat out students from Japan, Germany, India, China and even MIT students from the US

ddj.com/linux-open-source/201807194
marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=769147&sourceType=1

If you ask me Poles can't be too bad at math if they're winning difficult WORLD IBM software programming contests.

Gee, I wonder why the New York Times didn't talk to these Polish students or their professors?

So what in the article did you take issue with? I'm still under the opinion that the majority of people commenting here didn't bother to actually read the article.

Truth and reality has never been part of the agenda. Not like they don't ever report it, they do, but they'll bury it in section B somewhere since most people only read the headlines.

NYT, ABC, a number of companies, they prefer employees of certain races or mixed-genders. I have been told so directly by people that work for them. Matter of fact, concerning ABC, I was told that right within their offices when I applied for a job there after college.

I agree. Maybe just close this thread... it's going into back trace of anti-polish media treaty or something like that...

Funny that most argue with a simple fact that kids don't know maths while for me the ridiculous claim was that it's because of the tragic history. The article seemed to me to be absurd in a funny way not in a mean way.... Just close that thread.

How about the simple classic reason for this non-story:

"Slow news day" ?

Papers never refuse ink, no matter how high or low brow they are.

Doesn't look like it at all.

I'm still wondering how people can complain about a positive article.

I'll do my best :)