

Why do teachers value Olympiad-level mathematical insight so much in high school? - amichail

I can understand the high school wanting students to rank very highly in national math contests and competing internationally in the math olympiad.<p>But for the vast majority of students, this behavior is simply destructive.  There is more to life than math olympiad-level insights.<p>Why criticize students for something that only a handful in the entire country can really do for reasons no one really understands anyway?<p>Perhaps some of these math teachers are disappointed with their own achievements in life and want to succeed via their students' success?
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jibiki
My teachers never directly prepared me for olympiad style events. We did have
a math team, but that was more focused on a local competition with short time
limits (very similar to ARML, if you are familiar with that.) In terms of real
math, there are limits on what high school teachers can teach. Olympiad style
problems require the same sort of thinking as real math does, but without
requiring as much knowledge. That seems like a good compromise to me.

Personally, I wish I'd had more preparation of that sort (I took USAMO and
achieved a very average performance.)

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amichail
Olympiad-level is a bit of an exaggeration, but it was certainly the case that
there was enormous pressure to do well in math contests in my junior high and
high school. Why?

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lacker
I did pretty well on Olympiad stuff but never had a teacher before college who
really cared about it at all. So, your mileage may vary.

What country are you from? These behaviors are very different in different
places - if you are from Romania then culturally people will care a lot more
than in the US.

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noodle
sounds like a localized problem, to me.

i was good at math, went to a the best HS in the area, and didn't experience
anything like this.

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amichail
Your HS didn't care much about math contest performance?

Even if your marks are in no way affected by math contest results, teachers
can still make you feel awful for not meeting their expectations.

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noodle
no, my HS didn't care at all about the performance. the only pressure was on
the inside of the team to do better for ourselves.

yes, thats true, but thats a property of the individual teacher, really. i've
had teachers all across the spectrum.

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amichail
Team? In my case, there was no team. In junior high, I believe everyone (at
least at my level of instruction) was expected to write these contests. In
high school, it was optional, but teachers looked down on you if you were
generally a good math student but didn't go for it.

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noodle
in my school, it was voluntary via a group of people, i.e. team.

again, this sounds like its insular to your school, or maybe your school
district via some sort of inter-school rivalry.

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amichail
Maybe it is also a Canadian thing. While the US routinely has a strong math
olympiad team every year, this is not the case in Canada.

