Math master performance not the end of the world

THE CHINESE DELEGATION ranked sixth in the Romanian Master of Mathematics competition, which finished in Bucharest on Feb 25. None of the six Chinese contestants got a gold medal. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:

True, this is the worst result for a Chinese delegation in the annual international mathematics competition for pre-university level students.

Although it is necessary for the Chinese delegation to draw lessons from this year's competition, it is far-fetched, as some have done, to arrive at the conclusion that China lags behind in mathematics, just because of the performance of the six teenagers.

France is a country that is strong in mathematics, and dozens of its mathematicians have been awarded the Fields Medal, known as Nobel prize in mathematics, awarded by the International Mathematical Union once every four years, even though the mathematical Olympiad is not popular among its middle school students.

Also, all of the six members of the Chinese delegation this time were from Shanghai.

Interestingly, some people blame the Ministry of Education for its regulation of the extracurricular Olympiad mathematics training market in February last year－a measure taken to prevent the training from stifling children's interests in mathematics at an early age, as most of them were spurred by their parents to attend the difficult training that is supposed to be tailor-made for contestants of the Olympiad.

Almost all national team members are gifted children, who receive training arranged by the education authority. Few of them are products of the training agencies in the market, which is essentially a business tapping into parents' anxiety that their kids may be left behind in the competition at school.

Some parents even claim that if their children do not take part in the Olympiad, their intelligence can be further developed through attending the Olympiad mathematics training. Which only proves their wishful thinking, as most children are not interested in it at all.

Thus it does not make sense to blame the authority for the regulation.

And it is wrong to suggest that the Chinese team's performances in Bucharest reflects the whole country's mathematics level.