The Mercury News reports that four California Chinese American high school students competed in the ninth annual China Girls Mathematical Olympiad and earned top prizes for the United States. There are more details at Silicon Valley girls capture medals in China.
I congratulate these young women for their achievement. Actually, the Mercury News did not tally the entire victory for America’s public schools.
If you click to MSRI Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, you will discover that girls from the IMO (USA International Mathematical Olympiad) team won eight medals —six gold, one silver, one bronze and one honorable mention.
What these results show is that students from America’s public schools can be competitive with other countries.
I wrote about this topic in more detail in a five-part series, Education and Cultures Collide in the US, about how the problems in America’s public school are due more to cultural/socio-economic differences than the perceived cancer of teachers unions protecting bad teachers.
If a student (no matter what his or her ethnicity is) does the work, pays attention and reads daily, most teachers will not be expected to do the impossible and face political and media criticism when they can’t.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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