Math abilities learned at home and in the classroom are treated differently in Indian schools: Oscar winner Esther Duflo

Findings of a new study published in Nature journal show that working children excel at market calculations but struggle with textbook problems in Indian schools, while children in schools work well with academic math problems, but don’t do as well in practical calculations. One of the co-authors of the study Nobel Laureate Esther Duflo spoke to The Indian Express on the findings.

A team from The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which included Nobel Prize-winning economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, discovered in a study published in the journal Nature that while schoolchildren perform well on academic math problems but struggle on practical calculations, children working in markets are able to perform complex transactions as part of their job but struggle with textbook math taught in schools.The study, which was published in Nature, looked at kids in Delhi and Kolkata to see how math abilities translate from the classroom to the real world. Duflo talks about the findings and how they affect curriculum and instruction in an interview with The Indian Express.