Comment by NalNezumi

>What differences in teaching made Saturday school so much more effective?

I do think the smaller class and feeling more "close" to the teacher helped a lot. But also that the teachers were passionate. It's a community so I still (20 years later) do meet some of the teachers, through community events.

I can't recall all the details, to be honest, but I do think a lot repetition of math exercises and actually going through them step by step helped a lot to solidify how to think. I feel like the Japanese math books also went straight to the point, but still made the book colorful in a way. Swedish math books felt bland. (something I noticed in college too, but understandable in college ofc)

In the Swedish school, it felt like repetition was up to homework. You go through a concept, maybe one example, on the whiteboard and then move on. Unless you have active parents, it's hard to get timely feedback on homeworks (crucial for learning) so people fell behind.

Also probably that curriculum was handed to the student early. You knew what chapters you were going through at what week, and what exercises were important. I can't recall getting that (or that teachers followed it properly) early in the term at Swedish school.

They also focused on different thing. For example the multiplication table, in Japan you're explicitly taught to memorize it and are tested on recall speed. (7 * 8? You have 2 seconds) in Swedish schools, they despised memorization so told us not to. The result is "how to think about this problem" is answered with a "mental model" in Japanese education and "figure it out yourself" in the Swedish one. Some figured it out in a suboptimal way.

But later in the curriculum it obviously help to be able to calculate fast to keep up, so those small things compounded, i think.