In our post titled, What do the Trustees of the Gates Foundation Understand that Most People Don’t? https://www.intelligence-and-iq.com/the-gates-foundation/ we provided data showing how the mathematical literacy of the young generation in America has fallen significantly below the average of most industrial nations. We further explained the significance of this deficiency in its implications for America’s future economic strength and its military defence. This looming threat to America’s position as the world’s top economic engine and military power is a gathering storm on the horizon as Putin escalates his war in Ukraine and China conducts military maneuvers near Taiwan. No one knows how President Xi Jinping’s plans to surpass America as the world‘s strongest economic power will play out, but it is apparent that China has made great strides in the past few decades. In 1976 when Mao Zedong died, China was an impoverished Third World country. Two years later, Deng Xiaoping ushered in a new progressive era in China’s governmental policies that embraced the principles of capitalism, and by 2011 it had surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy. China, under the leadership of President Xi, is, indeed, on a mission.
Sixty years ago, the newly inaugurated US President, John F. Kennedy, recognized a growing threat from the Soviet Union as it escalated its investment in space technology and military capability. In his speech to Congress on Education, delivered February, 20, 1961, just two years before the Soviet Union moved nuclear missiles into Cuba, Kennedy warned:
Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American’s capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource… We cannot obtain more and better teachers unless steps are taken to increase teachers’ salaries. At present salary levels, the classroom cannot compete in financial rewards with other professional work that requires similar academic background.
Such a deficiency in the quantity and quality of American teachers is conspicuously evident today at all levels of education. As a result, America is falling behind the other nations in mathematics and science as seen in the PISA and TIMSS studies as well in the US performance in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).
Comparing the US Performance in Sports Olympics with its Performance in Mathematical Olympiads
If we compare how America has performed in the sports olympics with its performance in the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), we observe a remarkable difference. In the Summer Olympic Games, the United States is clearly dominant, having placed first eighteen times, followed by Russian and the USSR combined with six overall victories and China placing first only once. However, the table below reveals that China now dominates the Mathematical Olympiads. In the first 23 years of the 21st century, China has won first place 16 times and the US 4 times. Even South Korea with a population of about one-sixth of the US, has placed first on 2 occasions.
During the twenty-year period spanning 1995 through 2014, the US Mathematical Olympiad team was shut out of first place. Why has the US been so dominant in the Summer Olympics and yet, so lacking in the math olympics. This was not the fault of the US coaches or the brilliant team members, but rather a defect in what hockey organizations call the “farm team,” or “farm system”– the infrastructure of minor teams that grow and nurture the players who will ultimately populate the top level team. What is wrong with the “farm system” that grows mathematicians in the US?
How did America fail to meet the needs of its most mathematically capable individuals?
During the 1960’s and through the 1980’s, while the Soviet Union and later, China, were building their “farm-system” to nurture and generate world-class mathematicians, America was engaged in a long overdue struggle for racial and gender equality. The well-intentioned attempts to provide equal opportunity for all was healthy for America by helping minorities gain access to better education, top universities, and better jobs. In many ways America in the 21st century is far more equitable than it was previously and many of these vital improvements may be attributable to affirmative action and equal opportunity initiatives.
An unfortunate unintended consequence of the quest for equality was a frequent crossing of the ideological line from promoting equality to promoting equity, i.e., transitioning from offering equal opportunity to legislating equal outcomes. At the elementary school level, gifted programs were gradually discouraged because they were deemed to be “elitist,” by providing special programs for children who learn easily. Children, gifted in mathematical ability were placed in classrooms where instruction moved at the pace of the slowest learners, and were denied the opportunity to receive the instruction commensurate with their potential. Even as recently as 2021, the pervasive denial of giftedness was evident in the California Department of Education’s draft of the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve, that arrogantly asserted:
An important goal of the 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.
Providing special education programs for struggling students while denying the existence of students with exceptional abilities, was tantamount to reverse discrimination. Compounding this discrimination against the most capable students was the gradual degradation of the teaching profession by reducing standards to accommodate racial and gender quotas.
On March 13, 2017, the New York State Board of Regents eliminated the Academic Literacy Skills Test as a requirement for teacher certification. It was argued that the test discriminated against minorities entering the teaching profession, because 64% of the white candidates passed the test on first try, while only 46% of the Hispanic, and 41% of the Black candidates did so.This action ignored the 2015 ruling by federal judge Kimba M. Wood that the literacy test was not biased, because it measured skills that were necessary for teaching. The test has been replaced by softer requirements, designed to allow a greater number of people to enter the teaching profession.
On August 1, 2018, The Charlotte Observer blazed the headline: Hundreds of NC teachers are flunking math exams. It may not be their fault. The article revealed that in the 2016-17 school year only 54.5% of elementary school teachers in North Carolina passed the “foundations of mathematics” portion of the licensing exams. The article quoted teachers who charged that the examinations, set by Pearson Publishing Company, were unreasonably difficult. In response to primary teachers’ complaints that they should not be required to know mathematics taught in higher grades, Janet Mason, Superintendent of Rutherford County Schools, cogently argued that elementary teachers need to understand higher math well enough to teach the concepts that will build the foundation for success in the later grades.
Those of us who have been immersed in mathematics education during the most recent decades are aware that elementary school teaching is an extremely demanding profession, and many if not most teachers are dedicated and hard-working. However, we are also aware that a very high percentage of them are woefully lacking in their understanding of mathematics. When teachers fail the mathematics portion of licensing exams in great numbers, the examinations are deemed to be discriminatory or unrealistic in their content. This state of denial is a serious impediment to the improvement of American education.
The California Commission on Teacher Credentializing (https://www.ctc.ca.gov) provided data showing that nearly half of California’s potential teachers struggle to pass the four standardized tests of basic skills required to earn a teaching certificate. To address the teacher shortage in 2021, California changed certification requirements so that teacher candidates no longer have to take the California Basic Skills Test (CBEST) or the California Subject Matter Exams for Teachers (CSET) to earn a credential.
In sports olympics the farm system has coaches that nurture those of highest ability, while in mathematical olympics the farm system has few qualified coaches at the elementary level and in many secondary schools few teachers who are able to provide the coaching needed by those of highest ability. This sharp contrast between a merit-based selection in athletics and a race-and-gender based selection in academics has a dramatic effect on the “farm system” that is manifest in the olympics in both domains. (See: https://biggeekdad.com/2021/10/confused-students/)
What does a Proper Farm System for top Math Students Look Like?
An insight into what constitutes a good “farm system” can be seen by looking at the performance of the Soviet Union in the Mathematical Olympiads before its dissolution in 1989. Between 1974 and 1991 the USSR placed first in the IMO 7 times compared to a 3-time first place for the US. A glimpse into the process by which the Soviet Union nurtured its best and brightest is provided by Masha Gessen in her biography of the brilliant Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, She reported how thousands of talented young people across the Soviet Union during the 1974–1991 period, entered an apprenticeship in the service of the Soviet Union as future mathematicians. The after-school math club would meet twice a week for two hours of immersion in mathematical problem solving. In each session, the coach Sergei Rukshin, who was later celebrated for his prolific output of mathematical superstars, would assign students the types of problems they would encounter in competitions. When a student found a solution to a problem he or she would go to Rukshin’s desk and explain their solution. At the end of the session, students would be given a problem set that was to be completed at home. Three days later, the students would return to the math club and explain their solutions to the teaching assistant in the first hour. In the second hour, the solutions would be presented on the blackboard by the instructor. As the students moved into the senior grades, the after-school sessions often extended into the evening hours. This was the special instruction and pedagogical skill that enabled Rukshin to foster the development of a host of mathematical superstars. By the time Grigory Perelman and his fellow students entered the All-Soviet Olympiads, and the International Mathematical Olympiads, they were well on the road to becoming world-class mathematicians.
Implicit in China’s plans to overtake America as the world’s economic superpower, is the understanding that a mathematically literate population combined with a strong mathematical elite is of vital importance. Just as the gifted athletes, nurtured and trained by the most capable coaches win the gold medals, so also it’s the intellectual superstars, nurtured and trained by highly knowledgeable teachers, who bring home the gold–not just gold medals, but new breakthrough technologies.
Upgrading the Teaching Profession in America
In his speech to Congress in 1961, Kennedy observed that there was an urgent need to upgrade the teaching profession by recruiting the best and brightest. As employers in business and industry offer graduates in the STEM subjects lucrative positions, the availability of mathematically competent teachers continues to plummet.
Researcher Stephen Sawchuk reported:1
Massive changes to the profession, coupled with budget woes, appear to be shaking the image of teaching as a stable, engaging career. Some large states, like California, appear to have been particularly hard hit. It lost some 22,000 teacher-prep enrollments, or 53%, between 2008-09 and 2012-13.
The graph below published in 2014 by ETS, the organization responsible for the SATs, shows the average math and verbal SAT scores of students by college major from which corresponding IQ’s can be inferred.
The graph reveals that those who major in the mathematical sciences are at the top with an average SAT score of 574 while those who major in education are near the bottom with an average SAT score of 482. The approximate IQs corresponding to these SAT scores are respectively, 130 and 110. This means that our best and brightest students are taught by people of slightly higher than average intelligence in classrooms where most of the teacher’s time is spent with students who have difficulty learning the material. This is tantamount to using a ski instructor at the intermediate skill level to coach the olympic ski team on the beginners’ hill.
Why are the “best-and-brightest” students not entering the teaching profession? This is one of the questions that will be addressed by those who plan how to invest and implement the Gates Foundation endowment. It’s a difficult challenge, but one that can pay huge dividends in the effective nurturing of America’s human capital. Acknowledging the important role of teachers in the learning of mathematics, Bill Gates once observed:2
Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
References
1. Sawchuk, Stephen. 2015. “Steep Drops Seen in Teacher-Prep Enrollment Numbers.” The Education digest, Vol.80 (7), p.9;
2. Wallace, James and Jim Erickson. 1992. Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. New York: HarperBusiness. pp. 259-60.
