In the past half century, Russia's top universities have trained nearly 25% of the world's Fields Prize winners. The combination of scientific research and teaching is a highlight of Russian education and one of the reasons why it can train a large number of very young top scientists. In addition, the atmosphere of Russian scientific research institutes is relaxed and free. The so-called leadership task is to create an environment and an atmosphere so that researchers can devote themselves to scientific research without interference from the external environment. In the 1950s, China basically copied the scientific research and education system of the Soviet Union, but we just copied the form, and didn't really learn the Russian essence of how to coordinate, cooperate and encourage innovation.
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Elite education in Russia originated in the era of Peter the Great. Well-known Moscow University and St. Petersburg University, including today's Repin Academy of Fine Arts and so on [1], have a clear goal from the first day of their establishment, that is, to cultivate western-style elite talents. This has enabled Russia to produce a large number of stars in almost all fields, such as science and technology, art and culture, and become the only superpower in the world that can win awards close to the United States. Its slogan "We want to learn from Europe, but we must surpass Europe" put forward in the imperial era inspired generations of Russian youth to strive to become elites in various fields.
The elite education in Russia is basically based on the French model, but it is larger, more systematic and has a clearer goal. Russians use this system in humanities, art, sports and even science. Although it is slightly adjusted because of different majors, the basic idea is the same.
Moscow State University, founded in 1755, is the largest university in Russia.
Image source: http://www.msu.ru/en/tour/.
Below, the author takes mathematics as an example to briefly describe this education system.
For the mathematical elite, the Russians roughly define it like this:
First of all, he will solve a big problem that many famous mathematicians can't solve at the age of 22 (that is, prove the last theorem) and publish the results publicly. How big this problem/theorem is, to what extent it determines his future achievements.
At the age of 30-35, he established his own theory on the basis of solving various practical problems and was accepted by his peers.
At the age of 40-45, he was unique in international academic circles and had quite a few followers.
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Cultivate mathematical elites, starting from junior high school.
Elite education in Russian middle schools and universities is basically designed for students to reach the first step. But at the same time, there are various cultural education and social education to lay the foundation for the latter two steps.
Elite education in Russia began in junior high school. Take mathematics as an example. When students are about to graduate from primary school, they can get a test question from a popular magazine of mathematics and physics, K Baht [2]. Students can send their answers to the test questions to the designated departments in their cities, and then experts will review the test papers. After the results come out, the designated department of the city will organize an oral test for the students who have passed the written test. There are middle school teachers, university professors and researchers in scientific research institutes who take part in the students' oral examination. The selected students will enter the so-called "professional middle school" (if it is mathematics, it is a mathematics middle school). Three years later, there will be an exam (elimination) in junior high school and high school, and the weak ones will be transferred to ordinary high schools.
In cities such as Moscow or St. Petersburg, there are generally four or five such middle schools focusing on mathematics. Here, students will receive ordinary middle school education (including quite a few courses of basic scientific knowledge such as culture and art) and complete the basic knowledge necessary for life, but about half of their time will be spent on math learning.
They also go to the Children's Palace for two afternoons every week, where there are top Russian mathematicians [3], such as André Andrey Kolmogorov (Colmo Golov,1903.4.25-1987.438+00.20) and IzCerale Gelfand (Gelfand,/kloc-0). Lecture notes of these courses are also published in Journal of Mathematical Physics, such as Quant. This magazine has a great influence and has many readers in Europe and America, including university professors, middle school teachers and students. This kind of children's palace curriculum is generally simple in design, which is closely related to the proposal of major problems in frontier mathematics research, the current development stage and even their solutions. In order to make students understand and master the content well, the Academy of Sciences and universities have equipped a large number of teaching assistants for such courses. These teaching assistants generally include students from the mathematics department above the third year of university, teachers and researchers at all levels, all of whom graduated from this kind of mathematics major middle school before. Basically, every three middle school students have a teaching assistant, which is very similar to the tutor in Paris, France.
In summer, students from math middle schools will also attend summer camps in holiday resorts such as the Black Sea seaside under the guidance of their teachers. There, they learn to improve while playing. At the same time, they will also get to know math middle school students from other cities in China and even some cities abroad, so that everyone can get to know each other better. After several years, they will gradually form a so-called circle [4]. There are many researchers, college students, middle school teachers and so on in the summer camp to give lectures. Many famous Russian mathematicians I know (some of whom immigrated to the West in the 1990s) will go to these summer camps to help students get to know them, and at the same time, they will look for talented and potential middle school students to attract them into the field of mathematics research. It is in this way that some talented middle school students establish contact with researchers from the Academy of Sciences or universities in high school, enter their discussion classes and start their research work.
Because of this system, many famous Russian mathematicians made important achievements when they entered the first year of university at 18 years old (or before), and published papers in top international mathematical magazines. This system stimulates the vitality of excellent "gifted" teenagers and makes them useful, which is extremely important! Russian-style education emphasizes the foundation and is excellent in science, sports, performance, art and many other aspects. This is well known to China people, but there is another aspect we don't understand, that is, it pays more attention to practice. In the field of mathematics (even in most scientific fields), it is to encourage research and innovation and solve practical big problems.
It is also worth pointing out that the education of math middle schools, children's palaces and math summer camps is also a systematic project. It skillfully combines middle school mathematics knowledge, Olympic mathematics competition skills, basic mathematical concepts and ideas of various mathematics courses in universities, frontier issues and so on. It enables a small number of students to enter the research state immediately after transferring from high school to university, and start substantive and meaningful research, that is, to overcome famous mathematical problems.
After entering the university from high school, only a few students of these mathematics departments can stay and continue to be trained as potential professional mathematicians. In some universities, such as Moscow University and St. Petersburg University, which we are familiar with, each school will have an "elite" math class composed of about 30 people to continue their math study and research. The author wants to point out that there are of course many other students in the mathematics departments of these universities, but their training direction and requirements are different [5], and even their diplomas in the future are different [6].
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