>>11940511It's not just millennial, but normies in general. I grew up in a post-Soviet educational system, but went to a US high school later in my life. Several things I noticed:
1. Nobody does proofs in US high schools. We start doing them in 6th-7th grade geometry classes, less so in algebra. Math is all about proofs, that's where creativity and critical thinking is.
2. Math is not taught rigidly. Rather it's a jumbled mess of "rules to follow". We are taught Euclid's axioms and algebraic rules and continue on from those. Americans seem to just pick whatever they see as "applicable". Probably has to do with the education system being bottom-up (parents complain that their children learn "useless" math => schools adapt) rather than top-down (government wants engineers => rigid math education) approach.
3. The US secondary education system is more of an extended kindergarten than a place to gain knowledge. That's why majors at US colleges literally start from the bottom, even though you were supposed to learn these things in school. I was taught what a function was in my Calculus I class in college (not the formal set-theoretical definition, but the children's one), even though I did this in 6th grade or something.
4. Modern technology makes it really easy not to know math. We were forbidden from using calculators in the former Soviet system, but encouraged to use them in the US one. 90% of the math class in the US your calculator does the job for you and you just have to learn what buttons to press.
5. There is very little Olympiad culture in the US, probably due to it's isolationism and abundance of good universities. In the former USSR participating in math competitions was encouraged as a way to get up the social ladder and go Moscow State University if you're truly talented but live in the middle of nowhere. Very little of that in the US, at least in my experience.
