For the first time in 21 years, the United States has won the International Mathematical Olympiad held in Chiang Mai, Thailand.?The competition pits?teenaged students from 100 countries against one another?over a two day period where each student works independently on three math?problems. This was the 56th annual Olympiad.
“IMO scores are based on the number of points scored by individual team members on six problems. The problems are taken in sets of three in 4.5 hour sessions over two days. The U.S. team’s combined score of 185 edged out the Chinese team’s score of 181 and the Republic of Korea’s third-place score of 161.”
“Members of the U.S. team included Ryan Alweiss, Allen Liu, Yang Liu, Shyam Narayanan, and David Stoner, all of whom were awarded gold medals, and Michael Kural, who earned a silver medal, just one point away from the gold. The last time the U.S. team took first place was in 1994.”
Commenting on the competition, Po-Shen Loh, head coach for Team USA and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said,
“I will say that it’s not really a super-great spectator sport, in the sense that if you are watching them, it will look like they are thinking. Although I will assure you that inside their heads, if you could spectate, that would be quite a sport.”
Whether you like math or not, these teens deserve a moment in the spotlight. They have done an amazing thing. These six teenagers have excelled in an area that most of us take for granted – education.
Our public education districts have been receiving?constant cuts for at least 30 years under the guise of “education reform.” When you take something that isn’t broken and proceed to break it, how is that good for our students? Simple answer – it isn’t.
The degradation of our educational systems is evident daily in the misspelled signs at protests, billboards along our highways, online, and pretty much everywhere we look. The deliberate dumbing down of America is a real problem.
The photo below is a screen shot from a news program on TV that misspelled the word “meth.” This is a professional journalistic news show. The banner makes it seem like “math” has been deemed illegal, causing the arrest of 5 people.
The headline of this article is derived from a video that has been making the rounds the last several days. I saw the video on social media?and researched it, discovering it to be a parody spoof. But it caused me to seriously ask the question – Should math be taught in schools? What other subjects have been disappearing from our schools because of the budget cuts made in the name of “reform?”
Do your children have art classes? Shop classes? Home economics? Foreign languages? Physical education? Choir? Band? Typing (which is now called keyboarding, or computer sciences)? Are there Life Science classes that teach things like changing a diaper, balancing a checkbook, paying bills, organizing a budget?
American Government was cut too. It used to be required in high school.?First they changed it to Civics, then they just stopped teaching it. Our kids don’t learn about how our government is supposed to work anymore. They get churned out of schools and left to fend for themselves in a sea that has become corrupt with big money. We haven’t taught them how to fix it. We need to change that. We need to let them know that they are the answer. That their vote can change the country.
In answer to the headline question… Yes, we need math. And History. And American Government. And Life Sciences. And electives that keep our children growing creatively. We need to stop robbing our children of the public education they deserve.
In 2011, a videographer named MacKenzie Fegan created a spoof video titled “Miss USA 2011 ? Should Math Be Taught In Schools?” The video portrays Miss USA contestants answering the question of whether or not math should be taught in our schools.?It is absolutely?is hilarious, and a little scary?(I’ve posted it below so you can have a laugh too).
Although this was a spoof, it was based on an actual video from the Miss USA pageant titled “Miss USA 2011 – 51 Delegates Interview (Q2 – Evolution taught in school).”?Some of the answers are painful to watch, as the contestants squirm, uncertain of just HOW to answer the question. Some answer straight-forward and matter-of-factly, as if rehearsed.
