We Need More of This!

Congratulations are due to the Lehigh Valley Math Team and their coach Don Davis a retiring math faculty member. I don't know him, but he obviously deserves the positive attention he has received in my opinion and it's a pity more faculty don't get involved like this in the math education of our youth.

https://6abc.com/post/50-year-teacher-lehigh-valley-math-team-score/14950230/

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/29/2890049/0/en/Lehigh-Valley-Looks-to-Send-Off-Legendary-Coach-with-Victory-in-American-Regions-Mathematics-League.html#:~:text=The%20Lehigh%20Valley%20ARML%20program%20was%20founded%20by%20Don%20Davis,performing%20teams%20in%20the%20country.

I was on the Chicago area ARML B team when I was in high school and it was a serious but fun competition. Not quite IMO level but still fairly elite. I like to compare it to being an Army Ranger vs being called up to join  "delta force" aka 1st SFOD-D aka CAG depicted in many movies and TV shows, most recently "Lioness" by Taylor Sheridan. No disrespect to the Rangers, not people you want to mess with, and in fact, I have a cousin who is a Ranger.

There is only one problem, and my many readers (currently the null set) know where I am going with this: the team looks largely like it always looks, predominantly white and Asian American.

Just to be clear, I would be a big fat hypocrite if I didn't admit that I myself have happily coached math teams that looked very similar to this one. Nor am I advocating for the forced diversification of such teams any more than the SEAL teams should be forcibly diversified. Nor am I supporter of "Well if we can't have diversity, we just need to get rid of gifted programs, math teams, and SEAL teams." That's just crazy talk.

What we do need is to create the educational conditions so that when ARML and IMO teams are formed there is at least a remote chance that we don't already know what it is more or less going to look like ahead of time.