What can universities, colleges and primary and secondary schools do to help top mathematical talents “get out of the plateau” and make continuous leaps forward?
2024-08-10
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"When talking about top innovative talents, people pay more attention to the early identification of talents, especially the selection. In fact, what is more critical is the identification of talents during the training process. It is crucial to guide students with strong mathematical potential to continuously break through the period of confusion, get out of the plateau period, and continuously produce the leap period." Today (August 8), at a seminar on the integrated training of top innovative mathematical talents held by East China Normal University, the speech of Feng Zhigang, principal of Shanghai High School, attracted the attention of participants.
At the scene, principals and mathematics experts from universities and middle schools all talked about this: Schools are fertile ground for nurturing talents. They cannot simply pick the best students and put them together with students with mathematical potential to compete with the last one. Instead, they must provide matching courses and resources, and use a training method with no ceiling to allow more students who love mathematics to become successful faster.
The cultivation of top innovative talents has become a hot topic in the education sector. In recent years, various training programs launched by universities for top innovative talents in basic disciplines have become increasingly popular. In 2024, about 920,000 people signed up for the "Strengthening Basics Plan", which shows the enthusiasm. Liu Ruochuan, vice dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, said with emotion that when he was the head teacher of the Peking University undergraduate elite program class in 2012, there were only more than 20 students who chose basic mathematics as their major; now the number has doubled to nearly 50.
How to cultivate outstanding innovative talents in mathematics? Wang Changping, president of Fujian Normal University, is the editor-in-chief of the new edition of the compulsory mathematics textbook published by People's Education Press. In his opinion, the so-called outstanding talents can also be understood as the top 5% of students. For them, relying solely on the textbooks of the same grade is definitely not enough. The mathematics textbooks published by People's Education Press are aimed at most children. The same content is too shallow for this group of 5% of students! The cultivation of outstanding talents in mathematics should be based on textbooks, but also higher than textbooks, teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, and expanding and improving. "In the past few years, we have always emphasized the reduction of the burden of basic education, and have somewhat ignored the efficiency of facing students with strong potential." Wang Changping suggested that, especially for these 5% of students, the training plan cannot be carried out step by step, but must be expanded in advance. "From the perspective of time planning, the best training for outstanding talents in mathematics is a 9-year system." Wang Changping said that these students can complete the high school mathematics content in junior high school, and participate in the selection examinations of various summer camps, winter camps, junior classes, and elite classes held by universities during the first and second years of high school, and then concentrate on preparing for the college entrance examination in the third year of high school.
Shanghai High School was the first in the city to set up mathematics classes in 1990 and explore the model of cultivating students with mathematical potential. Feng Zhigang introduced that over the past 34 years, the school has trained more than 1,200 students in mathematics and formed a training system and experience for students with strong mathematical potential. In his view, in addition to giving top talents more challenging courses, it is equally important to form a curriculum connection, resource connection, system connection and evaluation connection mechanism for top students. "We especially call on experts from universities and research institutes to enter basic education, and famous teachers from high schools to enter compulsory education to serve as growth mentors for top students." It is reported that Shanghai High School has cooperated with universities including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tongji University, East China Normal University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics to develop specialized courses suitable for the growth of top mathematics students.
"Strengthening the connection between mathematics courses in universities, middle schools and primary schools is also an important task of the Center for the Training of Top Innovative Mathematical Talents in East China Normal University since its establishment." Lv Changhong, Dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences of East China Normal University, introduced that the center has been deeply involved in the construction of the national "101 Plan" curriculum, held summer camps and mathematics expansion camps for primary and secondary school students for integrated training of universities, middle schools and primary schools, and established a postdoctoral workstation for the training of top mathematical talents in middle schools. At present, the middle school-university mathematics connection course "Selected Lectures on Preparatory Knowledge for University Mathematics" produced by the center has been simultaneously launched on Zhihuishu.com, XuetangX.com, and the Public Mathematics Virtual Teaching and Research Office Network.
In addition to strengthening the curriculum connection between universities and primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities are also working hard to promote the integrated training of top talents. Taking Peking University as an example, Peking University has not only launched the "3+X" project for undergraduates to achieve mutual recognition of undergraduate and postgraduate credits, so that top talents can be trained faster, but also is working hard to promote the implementation of the doctoral top talent training plan. Liu Ruochuan introduced that Peking University currently has a total of 48 "Doctoral Top Talent Program" students in four batches from 2022 to 2025. These students have started their first-year doctoral research and projects in their senior year.
At the scene, experts also talked about the difficulties faced by top innovative talents. For example, how to replicate and promote the environment and atmosphere suitable for cultivating top innovative talents? How to achieve "combination of control and release, and appropriate degree of tightness and looseness" in the process of student training? "The construction of environment and atmosphere is relatively difficult." Liu Ruochuan found that in the past, many students who applied to study abroad for graduate school felt that it was not easy to get an offer from a prestigious university, and they worked very hard during their graduate studies; on the other hand, students who stayed in China for graduate school were less motivated to strive for the top. "Therefore, in recent years, Peking University has also been thinking about how to enable students to have lofty academic aspirations and academic ambitions. Let him feel that in the environment of Peking University, he can and can do world-class scientific research."
Author: Wu Jinjiao
Text: Wu Jinjiao Photo: Wenhui Daily Data Map Editor: Chu Shuting Responsible Editor: Fan Liping
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