America’s high school math team just won the International Mathematical Olympiad!
Our kids are the best in the world!
And most of the kids on the winning team are children of immigrants (attention, D.J. Trump and Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s point person on keeping immigrants out).
Last month, the United States made an extraordinary achievement: For the third time in four years, it won the International Mathematical Olympiad.
This is staggeringly impressive. The Math Olympiad is the hardest and most prestigious math competition for high school students in the world. University professors often cannot solve more than one or two of the six problems on the exam. Since 1978, Math Olympiad gold medalists have made up more than a third of the winners of the Fields Medal, the Nobel Prize equivalent for mathematics.
Yet from the U.S. team, James Lin from Phillips Exeter Academy received one of two perfect scores at the competition. (The other went to Britain’s Agnijo Banerjee.) Also from the U.S. team, Andrew Gu, Vincent Huang, Michael Ren and Mihir Anand Singhal all won gold medals, and Adam Ardeishar received a silver medal.
The team, led by mathematics professor Po-Shen Loh of Carnegie Mellon University, is about as American as you can get. After all, its members celebrated their victory by going to McDonald’s. But in this time of charged debates about immigration, it is worth noting that many of the team members are second- or third-generation immigrants. Loh, in fact, is the son of immigrant parents from Singapore. The team’s deputy leader, Sasha Rudenko, is the son of Ukrainian immigrants.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good work, USA! As a high school mathematics teacher and dept chair, it was my job to administer the local American Mathematics Competition test to high school students. even this test was not an easy one for students; going all the way to the Intetnational competition is truly an extraordinary occurance. Reading the entire article linked to the post, the professor who worked with these students has the right idea about teaching problem solving and it is one all mathematics teachers could use and apply in classrooms…teach to specific problems, but how to think and analyze.
Thank you for posting this bit of Good News!
Correction…..NOT teach specific problems, but teach thinking……(that darn spell/grammar check gets me all the time).
Absolutely, Susan!
There is no doubt that immigrants contribute a great deal to American life, particularly in the areas of math and science and other fields as well. PBS is currently running a very different type of cultural exchange in its series, “No Passport Required.” Each week host Marcus Samuelsson, international chef and immigrant, visits a different American city to focus on the foods, culture and traditions of different immigrant groups. Samuelsson is a welcome antidote to Trumpism. I am always impressed by the drive and resourcefulness of immigrant communities.
What about the 12th generation immigrants ?
I eagerly await some coverage in my local paper, or anybody’s local paper for that matter.
posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/American-High-School-Stude-in-General_News-American-Education_Children_Diane-Ravitch_Education-180804-506.html#comment709690
with this comment:
Sooo proud! We need to ensure that ALL our children get the opportunity to LEARN!
That is what has always made us great —providing the opportunities for everyone to be the best they can be!
Kidnapping immigrant kids at our border, and traumatizing them, is the way of an insane charlatan-dictator, and a bevy of Congressional sycophants who kiss his huge butt.
I didn’t know Trump was inveighing against legal immigrants from China, India, and Ukraine! What a foolish man! Legal immigrants, and their descendants, from China, India, Russia, Ukraine are setting examples for all of us, in mathematics, and in spelling contests. And Trump actually wants to stop them??? Glad I read this blog, you learn something every day.
Yesterday The US deported a woman who came to the US twenty years ago. She leaves behind two daughters born here and her husband, who served four tours in Afghanistan. She was not a “rapist” or a “murderer.”
Wowzer! Congratulations America. Mathematics is power.
The best, most uplifting television I’ve seen in quite some time is the PBS program “No Passport Required” with chef Marcus Samuelsson. He visits six cities to learn how the cuisine of differing cultures have contributed to each, creating both cultures of pride for their countries of origin and their American identities.
Samuelsson, an Ethiopian native who was adopted by a Swedish family and now lives and operates restaurants in New York represents everything great about this nation and its potential. So far he has visited Detroit (Middle Eastern influence), New Orleans (Vietnamese), Chicago (Mexican), and Queens (Guyanese). The final two episodes will feature Miami (Haitian) and Washington, DC (Ethiopian). The entire series is a joyful celebration of how immigrants add their own influences to keep redefining and strengthening what it means to be American. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with discriminating against non-white populations. Instead it is a celebration of what it really means to be an American. Set your dvrs, watch them all if you have streaming tv, but most of all, take pride in the program’s message.
I hope the series is renewed. I can envision programs in St. Louis (Bosnian), Minneapolis (Somali), Akron (Nepali/Bhutanese), Boston (Azorean), and other places of which I am not yet aware.
Samuelson could film a series in NYC of dozens or scores of world cultures and never leave the city
I like the concept of going out into the country for these real stories. Even the selection of Guyanese food and culture (with its Indian, African, and Caribbean influence) in Queens is something about which I would bet few New Yorkers know about.
response to BA:
If you ever drop the sarcasm and hostility, you are welcome back. Not before.
Whom do you hate more? Teachers or schools?
How many of them go to public school?
I don’t know but I do know one is enrolled in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. None from a charter school.
One goes to Pittsburgh public schools.
Another one of the math champions goes to Jasper High School in Plano, Texas.
A third goes to a apecialized public school for math and science.
One goes to Andover.
Another goes to Exeter.
Andover and Exeter are super elite private schools. Very expensive.
I have not tracked down the others.