During the past two weeks, the world has watched 206 countries of the world showcase the athletic skills of their greatest amateur athletes. In these hotly contested competitions there are no participation trophies, no consolation prizes, and no excuses. All the contestants have worked endlessly for years to reach the highest echelons of achievement in their particular sport. While hard work, commitment, and coaching are key factors contributing to the success of these athletes, few people would argue that the order in which the contestants ranked was in direct proportion to the number of hours dedicated to practice. At some point, additional practice brings no further benefits and differences in athletic performance result from differences in natural talent–whether physical or cognitive. Most people accept the idea that athletic ability is not evenly distributed across our population, spanning the spectrum from low competence to giftedness. Producing athletes who can attain the highest levels of performance requires the early identification of those who are gifted, followed by a nurturing of their talents through the guidance of a highly capable mentor or coach.
Ironically, in the realm of cognitive talent, there is a refusal among many in America to acknowledge the existence of intellectual giftedness. Subscribing to the belief that special programs for the mathematically gifted are elitist and/or racist, the California Department of Education, has drafted the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools, K-12. The first chapter of that document asserts:
We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents…an important goal of this framework is to replace ideas of innate mathematics ‘talent’ and ‘giftedness’ with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway…There is no cutoff determining when one child is ‘gifted’ and another is not.
The subtext of this statement reads, “No special programs will be provided for the mathematically gifted, because we don’t recognize the concept of giftedness in the area of intellectual performance.”
The consequences of this philosophy and a general lack of awareness of the importance of intellectual competence in its citizenry have gradually undermined America’s performance in the STEM subjects, as evidenced in the PISA Studies. The domination of China in mathematics and science is also evident in the results of the International Mathematics Competitions (IMO) where the “mathletes” from a wide representation of nations compete. These results shed light on the global distribution of mathematically fertile cultures. The graph below (from Intelligence: Where we Were, Where we Are and Where we’re Going) displays the nation whose team stood first in the IMO Competition each year between 1985 and 2018.
We see that in this 34-year period, the Chinese team came first 18 times, Russia (including the USSR) 5 times, the USA 5 times, Romania 3 times, South Korea twice, and Bulgaria and Iran once each. (The total number of wins is 35, because the USA and USSR tied for first in 1986.) In 2018, more than 100 countries entered teams into the IMO, yet we see that China has dominated, while Russia, and the United States are a distant second, and Romania and South Korea follow. The Chinese dominance might be explained by sheer population numbers, i.e., a royal flush of cognitive capabilities is more likely to occur at least once in a population of 1 billion than in a population of 1 million. However, it might also be explained by the existence of a culture that values and nurtures mathematical achievement. For example, on the 2018 US team, James Lin scored a perfect paper, while Andrew Gu, Vincent Huang, Michael Ren and Mihir Anand Singhal all won gold medals and Adam Ardeishar won a silver–most of the team composed of second or third-generation immigrants from cultures that value mathematics. The coach of the US team was Professor Po-Shen Loh who is the son of immigrant parents from Singapore.
In 2019 China won the gold, the US the silver and the Republic of Korea the bronze. In 2020, China won the gold, Russia the silver, and the US the bronze. During the week of July 14 to July 21, 2021 many of the world’s most mathematically gifted from 107 countries gathered in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation for the 2021 Mathematics Olympiad. When the scores were compiled, China won gold, the Russian Federation won silver and the Republic of Korea won bronze. Meanwhile, as the athletic olympics come to a conclusion, it appears that the United States will win the most medals, while China will win the most gold medals. While athletic performance is an important measure of a society’s capacity to encourage human physical achievement, the consequences of ignoring human intellectual gifts has extremely serious consequences for a nation.
