Only their top students are represented in competitions. Usually It's USA against Shanghai, not all of China.

When I was teaching math in middle schools, they introduced an educational game called "24." Four students sat at a bridge table. One turned over a card from a deck which displayed four numbers. The object was to order the numbers and add operators such that the expression would evaluate to 24. The first student to figure it out slapped the card with a hand, and recited the expression. Point scored. (Example: For numbers 1,1,3,7 an expression would be: (1+7) x 3 x 1. )

The kids liked the game. So the schools formed teams. At the first "meet" the kids from Chinatown blew everybody away. All their kids had memorized every card so they could "slap down" on every play, and then look at the numbers afterward. They (or their coaches) had discovered a flaw in the game, as there were finite cards. Most of the kids lost the taste for tournament play, but for those who memorized the cards, it became a game of Slap Jack where every card was a Jack. In short, a contact sport. Interest in tournament play languished. The kids who memorized the cards also memorized the answers. They may or may not have had the chance to build the expressions, which was the point of the exercise, not Spoon!.

Some of the reasons should be obvious. From pre-natal nutrition to home libraries, some kids are prepped to do better. You know that reading scores correlate most with property values. I have taught students that, if they could get to sleep at all, would surely have been awakened by gunfire in the hallways some time during the night. School was a bit of sanctuary for them, but they weren't focused on learning.

I had a student who was very smart and went on to a prestigious high school. He came back to visit and said he wasn't being challenged. For this, I was ready. "Jack, (not his name) you are one of the smartest people to come through here. And teachers represent a variety of people. At some point you are going to be with a teacher that you perceive is not as smart as you. How do you handle it?"

Another student was a kind of misfit that I got interested in astrophysics. She was a terrific kid and classic "ugly duckling." She hated high school and didn't return her junior year. A year later, I was in a summer workshop at a city college and she was there. She had talked herself into an early admission and was thriving. Last message after that, she told me about how thrilled she was to meet Freeman Dyson(!!) in person at a lecture. How do kids like this affect our numbers?

Fact is, the graded classroom system we use everywhere, does not serve the best interests of the students. Most of what I learned was outside the classroom. I had better than average support systems. There was a lot of peer education. We "hung out" at the library. There are lots of methods that are intrinsically motivational. Sitting for exams ain't the best.


--imm