Response to Comment

Superdestroyer wrote...

Your logic reminds me of the military logic of when they are short of good special ops troops, they always come up with the idea of making training harder. I do not see how making high school math harder is going to encourage more upper middle class white kids to go into it.

Your lack of logic (or lack of reading comprehension or interest in arguing for argument's sake -- I'm not really sure what's going on here) boggles my mind. You are completely missing my point; I can not believe that my words are that unclear. I will attempt to elaborate one more time, but I grow seriously weary of this.

1. I am NOT saying that we are short of native students who complete mathematics courses. I AM saying that students who complete the pre-calculus curriculum in US high schools are not able to compete in college math courses with students who complete the pre-calculus curriculum in foreign high schools. Further, students who complete an undergraduate math major in US colleges are not able to compete in graduate math courses with students who complete an undergraduate math major in foreign colleges. To extend your special ops analogy, if we had plenty of special ops troops but when we put them against the special ops troops of other countries, they got slaughtered, surely the proper response absolutely would be more training. Do you disagree?
2. I DON'T have the slightest interest in encouraging more upper middle class white kids to go into mathematics. I DO have an interest in getting (a) more students who complete US high school mathematics to have the tools to compete in an undergraduate math major and (b) more students who complete an undergraduate math major to have the tools to compete in a graduate math program. How you continue to translate this into "upper middle class white" is something I can not even begin to comprehend. Why upper-middle class? Presumably, mathematical ability is distributed normally with respect to income? I would assume that lower-middle class, upper class and lower class students can be as successful as upper-middle class students in math, science and engineering, so I don't understand your focus on that single group.
3. The addition of term "white" just confuses me. I have repeatedly attempted to make clear that my point is NOT a racial or ethnic or cultural one. My point IS about U.S. versus foreign training. U.S. doesn't mean "white"; it could just as well mean black, Asian, Native American, or Latino (not that this last one is actually a race, but I will bow to the common mis-use of the word). How anything that I've said can be construed as referring to "white" only is unclear to me. When I point to a list of names as an example, my point is NOT that the names are not "white", but rather that (based on my experience - more on this below) they are not U.S. citizens. Yes, I understand that the United States are very much a melting pot, but in my fairly extensive observation of this matter, a Lu or Kim or Nguyen or Yagamuchi in a graduate mathematics program is overwhelmingly more likely to be from a foreign academic background than a U.S. academic background.

It will just encourage more of them to go into law so that they can spend their time second guessing and nitpicking people who can do math.

The difference between your special ops analogy and the mathematics situation is that there is not a well defined special ops curriculum. Regardless of how much training you've inflicted on special ops troops, you can always choose to train more. With mathematics, there is a well-defined standard to complete (geometry covers topics A, B, C and algebra covers topics X, Y, Z ) and you're done. The curriculum needs to be exactly this hard and no harder (and no easier either). If the curriculum is at this appropriate level and students are "encouraged" to bail and go into law instead, then so be it. Watering down the curriculum to keep them doesn't do anybody any good -- not the students themselves or society at large. If this is truly the situation we're in, then we can train the few who are willing and able to complete this curriculum and continue to fill in the gaps with those trained in foreign institutions. That's not ideal, but it's hardly the end of the world. And it would give those few who are interested the tools to compete against the best that other countries have to offer on an equal footing. Can you imagine if we adjusted the difficulty of the medical curriculum to adjust to the supply of medical candidates? I'd be afraid to go to the doctor! Same thing that's true in medicine is true in mathematics -- there's a specified body of knowledge that needs to be covered, and our schools aren't covering it properly. That's the only point I've ever been trying to make.

PS, in my experience at a large, state university, most of the kids with Asian names are from America. Just look at the enrollment of Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County Virginia (one of the three best public high school in the US). The school is 40% Asian. Also, I doubt that all of the Asian at UCLA or Cal-Berkley are fresh off the boat.

Well, that's not MY experience, or the experience of any number of fellow students who did graduate work in numerous types of programs (math, physics, astronomy, engineering) and types of institutions all across the country. Since you don't actually have any facts to contradict this fairly broad experience -- TJHSST may well be a counter-example but I couldn't actually find any numbers to confirm this (not that one example would constitute disproof of my general observation in any case) and your speculation regarding UCLA and Berkley isn't actually proof of anything -- I don't see how we can productively continue this particular line of discussion.