To be clear, this is not about whether we should encourage very young kids to study math. Learning math, and competing in the IMO selection cycle, are very different. I sincerely think everyone, regardless of age, should learn mathematics to the best of their ability; mathematics is a great way to learn how to think critically, and identifying flaws in one’s thinking.
This is about what do we do if we identify a brilliant kid that can do math at a level way above their peers. More than that, do we design a system that allows kids at these very young ages to enter the selection?
I am here to argue that perhaps we should not. That we should let kids at these age to learn math freely, without the stress of competing in the IMO selection.
How much do we really lose?
From the perspective of a trainer that is tasked to essentially maximise the country’s IMO scores given a population of 0 to 20 years old students, every year counts. We do see a trend where the longer a student is trained in the IMO camps, the better their scores are in IMO or mock IMO. Just imagine if we could take in these very young, talented kids; maybe kids at 7 years old; and give them the best mathematics education possible in the IMO camps, with the help of the best mathematicians and math educators a country can provide. Just imagine the possibilities.
In fact, this can even be stretch to the extreme: select a population of students that showed talents at a young age and take them into a gifted program that directly or indirectly feed into the ISO selections. What could go wrong?
Well, for the second part, there are people that worked in gifted programs all over the world that can speak better to the subject than I could. However, I have some thoughts about the first part.
Looking at the public records, there are virtually no students that entered a country’s IMO selection cycle before 10, and went on to the IMO and performing brilliantly; apart from very few outliers of course. In fact even Terrence Tao, the golden example of very young student at the IMO, only joined AMC at 10.
As such, I would make the (very unsubstantiated) claim that even if we allow very young kids into the selection, we would not gain more than 1 or 2 points at the IMO. Of course 2 out of 42 points is more than a 4% increase, but do we put kids into a high stress environment at such a young age for a 4% to 5% increase in score?
How much does the kid loses?
Suppose we do allow kids to enter the selection at 9 or younger. Typically a kid would require a few years of preparation before reaching the level to actually qualify for the selection. In that case, the kid will have to start preparing at 7 or younger. Worse yet, if the first year they can join the selection is 7 years old, they might have to start at 5 years old or younger. That is basically a toddler.
Of course, one might argue that a truly brilliant kid might be able to qualify with less than one year of preparation. But for those kid, again referring to the last part, how much do we even lose by having them wait a few years?
Can we really say a kid is “interested in math” at an age before 10? Again, I implore the readers to forget about the outliers and think about the general population. As the official entity that handles the IMO selection process, our decision affects the general population, which mostly consists of normal people, and normal students. Designing a system that allows entrance at 7 makes parents want to start training their kids at 5, even younger. After all, the advantage is most probably real, if the kid survives the process.
Yet, how many kids can even survive that? This is of course impossible to quantify. But judging from the number of people that gave up on math from school level math, I think the proportion that survives is no more than 10%.
Are we willing to sacrifice 9 out of 10 kids just for the 5% increase at the IMO? Especially considering some of these kids might actually survive the process if they started at, say 9 years old instead. Some of them might be actually talented, but destroyed early because they are not yet ready mentally.
As the official entity for IMO selection, could we perhaps grant a kid a decade of childhood before putting them into the gauntlet?
What I think we could do instead
I sincerely, fully support public facing classes or training programs, backed by the IMO selection entity, that are detached from the IMO selection. These programs, in my opinion, should focus on exploration, perhaps using project-based assignments, or other well-studied education methods.
The key I think is the detachment from IMO selection. It should be made clear that joining the class do not help in terms of qualifying for the selection, other than starting to learn math at a young age hence providing the students an advantage in terms of experience.
Also, these programs should probably employ different people from the IMO training, with a focus towards young children education. Preparing for the IMO is very different from just exploring math, and the target audience’s age is also very different.
Acknowledgement
This piece of text is a result from a conversation with Chin Peng, otherwise known as CP007.