The Siemens Awards

By Roy Exum (Archive) · Wednesday, February 24, 2010

In the front section of USA Today's Monday editions there appeared a full-page ad entitled, "Advanced Placement today advances our hope for tomorrow." The ad was obviously sponsored by the huge Siemens Corporation and saluted the state winners in this year's College Boards' Advanced Placement program.

Ordinarily I wouldn't have offered it much more than a glance but, as is my habit, I looked at the Tennessee and Georgia winners to see if we had any local kids who were among the "best and brightest" in America. As I did, something far greater caught my eye.

The awards are given each year to the top science and math winners from each state. Because I would never be among those applauded for my math and science skills, a hasty count of this year's winners showed two national winners and 97 state winners. But what caught my attention was the fact that as I speed-read the names of the students, a good two-thirds of them sure did seem to be Asian-Americans.

Please, I'm not into racial profiling. All that matters to me is that every child is an American but doesn't it trigger some kind of bell in your brain when, in a state-by-state list, the Asian-American names leap off the page as clearly the smartest among our high school seniors in science and math?

Granted, I don't know precisely that Kui Tang of West High School in Iowa City, Iowa, or that Mengxi Shi of Westview High in Portland, Ore., is of Asian descent, neither am I certain that Xinran Liu of Oak Ridge High up near Knoxville is an Asian-American but even I sense something may be going on when I study the list of the AP standouts.

Listen, there are seven different seniors on the list whose last name is the same: "Chen." Yes, each one is from a different state, as is Diana Chin, who is from Barrington (RI) High School. I don't know if Diana has Asian ancestry or not but that is not the point I want to make. What I am saying is our other kids are getting dusted by obvious Asian brilliance in today's classrooms.

Using barn-yard logic, do you think these kids might become "the pick of the litter" when the huge world-wide conglomerates start seeking the leaders of tomorrow? And does it cause at least one nerve to tingle when you study the political aspirations of China, North Korea, Iran and other world powers who are dabbling around with nuclear warheads?

The size of people's hands has little to do with the fact that virtually all of the high-technological gadgets we use today are manufactured in Asia. My flat-screen TV is a Toshiba. My computer screen is a Samsung. Yes, my cell phone is a Motorola but it's a little suspect -- I think some of its parts came from somewhere across the Pacific or else I'd be able to operate it by now.

So what is it that other American children must do to catch up with their Asian classmates? Should we restrict nightly television in order to master an abacus? Should we make it a prerequisite that every kid who applies for a job at the Volkswagen plant know how to do math on a slide-ruler?

I don't know the answer but I do know what happens to the kid who finishes in second place. Aside from being know as "first loser," that young man or woman doesn't get the job. Somebody told me last week that for every job that's available in the country right now, there are six applicants. Translated, that one winner and five losers.

It doesn't bother me a bit that Mimi Chen and Sherwin Wu, both of Detroit Country Day School, won the Siemens awards in Michigan while Qian Long and Jieming Liu, both of Eden Prairie High, won the competition in Minnesota. Let me repeat; each is an American.

What breaks my heart is that when we repeatedly lower the bar in state graduation requirements, I worry about the others who won't get the college scholarships and brilliant futures due to a lack of education. What happens to them? Are they the next generation that will ask, "Hey, are ya'll gonna' want fries with that?"

I'm for paying teachers a lot more money but I'm also for taking kids off the playground and into the chemistry lab or a new math book. Elsewhere in USA Today it gave the medal count as of Sunday in the 2010 Olympics. The USA had 24 to lead, followed by Germany (18), Norway (12), Canada (9) and South Korea (9).

More barn-yard logic tells me that if we have the huge amounts of money it takes to dominate the Olympics, money should be available for all of our kids to dominate world-wide education the same way. Like it said at the top of the Siemens ad, "Advanced placement today advances our hope for tomorrow." It's as simple as that -- our children are our hope.

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