Yes, America Just Doesn't Educate Kids Like They Used To
Diane Ravitch will report it (even if the mainstream media doesn't in any real way) via Daily Kos:
Team USA has won the 2016 International Mathematics Olympiad
Two Americans were among the six individuals to make perfect scores in the competition, along with three contestants from Korea and one from China. The individual results are here.
This is a repeat of last year’s winning performance, which was considered a true breakthrough after 20 years without a win.
Comments
Are their parents engineers or physics professors?
How about delinating how much outside coaching and tutoring each student had, since as the website notes, - advanced topics covered in the competition, is not generally covered in high school curriculum.
"The six members of this team have collectively taken nearly 40 classes from our online school and made more than 7000 posts on our message boards. We're proud to see AoPS students achieve so much!
Interested in participating in math competitions yourself? Learn more about our online school at aops.com/school/how-school-works, join the discussion on the community at aops.com/community, or check out our other resources at aops.com/resources."
Making it to the IMO let alone winning is a huge undertaking and requires 1000s of hours of additional study in the same way any elite activity would. The AOPS story is also fairly amazing.
You don't have a chance at being world-class weight-lifter without the discipline and genetics that allow it to happen. Same thing with these kinds of competitions. These kids are all phenoms with amazing natural abilities and dedication/training.
Also, do you really think it's cool to start digging into the kids' and their parents' backgrounds, and publish that out in public? Is that necessary in your mind for a kid to enter a mathematics competition?
Funny how academic achievements seemingly don't get the attention of musical and athlete achievements. These are kids who may change the world.
Half Full
But this meme of American public education as "failing" is just not true. And, I didn't say one thing about teachers.
And Half Full you have no way of knowing why these young men did well and to say it
"probably" has nothing to do with their teachers or schools?
Tell you what, I'll try to use my citizen-reporter chops to find those boys and see what THEY say.
Half Full, I think the name "Pick and Choose" might have been the right moniker.
Again, so interesting that one small thread on an academic accomplishment has all this suspicion.
You didn't say anything about teachers, but Diane Ravitch did (and I attributed that to her, not you).
It's not a surprise that these boys do a tremendous amount of math as extracurriculars. It doesn't take a lot of investigative chops to see that, but if you want to try to contact the boys and see what they say, that sounds like an interesting story. However, my point was that these kids won because they had a lot of additional support and instruction and training outside school. They participated in things like math circles, took independent study when they exhausted their school's curriculum, participated in the math olympiad summer boot camp, participated in lots of Art of Problem Solving classes, etc. They trained hard for these and other competitions, and that training was not school-based. I suppose I overstated things when I said their success had nothing to do with our schools and teachers--they probably took math at school growing up and found they were good at it and enjoyed it. But their participation on the American team, and the team's ultimate success, were the result of a whole different type of education and training. I'm not at all "suspicious" of it, just realistic.
Half Full
BK
Too often we attribute success to "talent" or " luck", when it is actually a matter of lots and lots of trial and error, and blood, sweat & tears.
This discourages many who think success comes quickly & easily.
HP
Math Olympiad is such a great program. Does anyone know how many Seattle schools participate? My impression is that the number is low, but I could be wrong. I know other local math competitions are mostly filled by teams from east side schools.
I agree with Half Full too. Schools are very lucky if they have parent volunteers to run math clubs and give the children a chance to work on challenging math problems. Thank you parent volunteers.
it would be a wonderful goal for SPS to have the math Olympiad program at every school.
-nh
Interesting interview with the Olympiad coach by Valerie Strauss
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/07/18/u-s-students-win-prestigious-international-math-olympiad-for-second-straight-year/
It's worth taking a look at his weekly math problems at "expii solve" and the "Spirit of Ramanujan" initiative which seeks to discover mathematical talent around the world (open till Sept 15).
-nh