Below is a photo published on the front page of Vietnamese media.
The photo was taken at the 63rd International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 2022. The Vietnamese team won the 4th place in the overall team score.
Vietnam is very excited from top to bottom, because this ranking is second only to the three established strong teams of China, South Korea and the United States.
On Vietnam’s social platforms, this matter has been discussed very hotly. Most Vietnamese people believe that this is the result of Vietnam’s continuous strengthening of basic Mathematical Olympiad training.
1. Vietnam’s Mathematical Olympiad education started by imitating us and continues to exert efforts
This is a very interesting phenomenon: when our country is still discussing “whether Mathematical Olympiad is worth learning”, and the discussion is becoming more and more intense, like Vietnam Such small countries are continuously increasing their financial investment and human support for Mathematical Olympiad education.
In their view, Mathematical Olympiad education is something that can help improve national strength and national strength.
Vietnam has been developing primary and secondary school training and education for the International Mathematical Olympiad since the late 1980s.
And their reference object, or imitation object, is none other than their northern neighbor - our country.
The Vietnamese Ministry of Education at that time followed the practices of our country and established a training and selection system from the municipal level to the provincial level and then to the national level.
After Vietnam sent people to inspect our country, it began to set up special Mathematical Olympiad classes in many primary and secondary schools to discover talents in Mathematical Olympiad, especially students with different talents.
is the same as our Mathematical Olympiad training system. In Vietnam, if a student wants to enter the national training team from the most basic school, he must go through various levels of examinations to be selected, just like in sports competitions.
Vietnam's most famous Mathematical Olympiad genius Ngo Bo Chu once recalled: In Vietnam, the Mathematical Olympiad selection competitions will set up a large number of challenging projects, and many test contents and patterns are based on neighboring countries.
It can be said that in order to achieve today's results, Vietnam Mathematical Olympiad has persisted for 30 years.
It is precisely because of this persistence that as a small country in Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese team achieved the best results in their history at the 2022 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO): all 6 students won awards, 2 gold medals and silver medals 2 and 2 bronze medals.
Among the 104 participating teams, this result is second only to China, the United States and South Korea, the veteran teams in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
2. When Vietnam accelerated its run, our Mathematical Olympiad education unexpectedly fell into controversy.
A topic worthy of attention is: when Vietnam started to accelerate the International Mathematical Olympiad by referring to our country, our domestic education circle was Let’s start the discussion on “Whether Basic Mathematical Olympiad and International Mathematical Olympiad are valuable?”
An obvious detail is that many middle school student Mathematical Olympiad competitions for the International Mathematical Olympiad have been suspended.
Here, is it necessary to learn Mathematical Olympiad? Will Mathematical Olympiad increase students' burden? Does Mathematical Olympiad conform to the general direction of national education policy in the future? have become the subject of heated debate.
Some people think that China’s Mathematical Olympiad education is completely out of touch with reality and is about getting gold medals just for the sake of winning gold medals.
"I have won more than 100 gold medals, but I have not shown the strength to match them at the forefront of international mathematics."
But on the other hand, some people believe that winning the Mathematical Olympiad gold medal is a reflection of a country's Mathematical Olympiad strength, which is different from cutting-edge science. The research is not contradictory.
"The United States can be considered a big country in cutting-edge scientific research in mathematics, but Americans are not polite when they pick up the Mathematical Olympiad gold medal."
Of course, despite such debates in the country, in this International Mathematics Olympiad , we will continue Defending the honor of a well-established and strong team: all six participating players received full marks, ranking first in the team's total score.
You must know that the phenomenon of all participating teams receiving perfect scores has only occurred twice. The last time was 28 years ago in 1994.
was the first time in the history of the IMO that the U.S. Mathematical Olympiad team set a record of perfect scores for all members of the team.
Of course, in China, how valuable is Mathematical Olympiad education? In what direction should our Mathematical Olympiad training go? Discussions will continue.
Of course, you are also welcome to express your opinions in the comment area.
