TITLE: Looking for Arnol'd quote about Russian students vs western mathematicians
QUESTION [11 upvotes]: I think I once saw a sentence in an article by V.I. Arnol'd saying something like: here is a problem that every Russian schoolchild can solve, but no western mathematician can solve.  But I can't find it now. 

Does anyone know the quote and where it was written?

I ask because I'm preparing a talk on research by high school students, and I might include this quote if the actual wording isn't too inflammatory.

REPLY [15 votes]: You possibly mean this 'two volumes' problem from the book ``Problems for children from 5 to 15'':
Russian original:

На книжной полке рядом стоят два тома Пушкина: первый и второй. Страницы каждого тома имеют вместе толщину 2 см, а обложка –– каждая –– 2 мм. Червь прогрыз (перпендикулярно страницам) от первой страницы первого тома до
последней страницы второго тома. Какой путь он прогрыз?
[Эта топологическая задача с невероятным ответом ––
4 мм –– совершенно недоступна академикам, но некоторые
дошкольники легко справляются с ней.]

English translation:

Two volumes of Pushkin, the first and the second, are side-by-side on
a bookshelf. The pages of each volume are 2 cm thick, and the cover – front
and back each – is 2 mm. A bookworm has gnawed through (perpendicular to
the pages) from the first page of volume 1 to the last page of volume 2. How
long is the bookworm’s track?
[This topological problem with an incredible answer – 4 mm – is absolutely
impossible for academicians, but some preschoolers handle it with ease.]

REPLY [5 votes]: Here's Arnold's essay on teaching mathematics.
http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html
"For example, these students have never seen a paraboloid and a question on the form of the surface given by the equation $xy = z^2$ puts the mathematicians studying at ENS into a stupor. Drawing a curve given by parametric equations (like $x = t^3 - 3t$, $y = t^4 - 2t^2$) on a plane is a totally impossible problem for students (and, probably, even for most French professors of mathematics)."

REPLY [4 votes]: Maybe you are referring to his book with problems for schoolchildren? See problem 13 there, and also a remark in the preface.