In 1959, the first International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) was started in Romania with seven participant countries. The IMO is now an annual contest where over 100 countries are participating in the worldwide competition by sending a group of six high school students.
Annually, the IMO organizes the international mathematics competition where countries from around the world send students to compute internationally. IMO is among the oldest international scientific competitions.
Mathematics is the base for science and scientific knowledge. Countries give due attention to developing the knowledge of their generation in the mathematics field. If we look at the top students in mathematics, they are students of developed and technologically advanced countries. Countries like Russia, China, USA, Korea, Iran and related countries are at the forefront in displaying the best results at the IMO competition.
Today, as the world competes to own sophisticated technologies, each country gives due focus to the hard science field. Mathematics is the base in this regard. Hence, nurturing the passion of students early to love mathematics is crucial to create future mathematicians and scientists. Especially, developing countries still struggling to develop local research and technologies, have to give due attention to the development of mathematics knowledge during the early grades.
Despite mathematics being the seedbed of science, there is a negative attitude by most students about the subject. They assume that mathematics courses as tough to understand. Hence, upturning this misunderstanding or prejudice towards mathematics courses needs special interventions to make mathematics the favorite subject for students, especially during the early classes.
To change the negative attitude towards mathematics education by inspiring students and sensitizing the young generation that mathematics is not a monster, Kebede Atnafu founded My Soroban Ethiopia.
Established seven years ago, My Soroban Ethiopia organized an annual national mathematics competition for students from grade three to grade 12 and this year’s My Soroban contest was held at the Millennium Hall from 04 August to 07 August where 50 representatives of 50 cities participated in the national contest. The national competition, according to Kebede, is the final and sixth round competition where the top three students from each class (grade 3-12) during five-round competitions at their cities represent the city to win at the national level.
Speaking to EBC, Kebede said that he was a math teacher for over 13 years. After teaching for many years, he founded My Soroban Ethiopia to promote top students in mathematics. Its goal is to cultivate talents, to inspire students to love mathematics, and to create future mathematics specialists. As to him, so far, the competition is bringing meaningful outcomes as it develops a culture of positive competition to win the national contest. An 11 year old Nigus Dawit is a grade six student who attended the past two national math contests organized by My Soroban Ethiopia and is among the finalists for this year’s national competition. Mathematics is his favorite subject and attending in the national competition is helping him to develop his knowledge, as to him. He said that “Mathematics is not a difficult subject; students can make mathematics their favorite course and the students’ attitude towards the subject matters to make the subject their favorite or tough subject.”
In his third round participation in the annual national mathematics competition, Nigus is confident to win the grade six contests to become a winner from 50 students gathered from 50 cities.
The national mathematics competition is prepared annually with the motto of “Smartness leads one to the helm” and this year’s competition was attended by students gathered from 50 different cities from across Ethiopia. The 50 cities send three students from each grade, from grade 3 to 12. These students are selected through five-round competition processes starting from school at the city level. And finally, the top three students from each grade represent the participant city, Kebede stated. After the five-round city-level competitions, the students gathered in Addis Ababa to attend and win the national competition.
According to the founder and CEO of My Soroban Ethiopia, Kebede, in addition to cultivating the talents in mathematics, inspiring students and avoiding the negative attitude towards mathematics education among students, the competition aims to select top students to represent Ethiopia at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in the future. Despite Ethiopian students’ talents to compete at the international level; due to the absence of a mechanism to select and send Ethiopian students, Ethiopia never attends the IMO competition. Now, by strengthening My Soroban’s contest, he is hopeful and confident to send Ethiopian representatives to continental and international mathematical competitions.
As to Kebede, to nurture the talent of students in mathematics, it is vital to invest in them during their early ages and early classes. As to him, even scientifically, children naturally capture mathematics and other fields from the age of six to 13. “If children are supported during this age, they will become top students and scientifically there is no child lazy by nature,” he stated adding it is a matter of practice and study to become top students, especially in mathematics.
In addition, for him, it is also important to support children’s mathematics learning practically by allowing them to practice like abacus and the like. “Abacus and similar practical methods can help children to easily understand addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction during the early classes,” Kebede stated. Making the teaching-learning process easy and attractive to children, can help them to easily understand mathematics early and also change the negative attitude towards mathematics. For Kebede, mathematics is not a single subject; it is the base for other subjects.
My Soroban Ethiopia, the company behind the National Annual Mathematics Competition was started before the outbreak of COVID-19, almost seven years ago. The competition aims to improve the knowledge and talent of students in mathematics by inspiring top students. And during the past years’ contests, kebede sees significant improvements in students developing their knowledge as the students study further knowledge to win the competition. As to him, the National Mathematics Competition highly promotes students to further their mathematical knowledge and to become competitive.
During this year’s national math competition organized at Millennium Hall, over 4,000 students from 50 different cities had attended the competition. These top students from each city compete to win the national competition. As to the CEO, the top ten students from each grade, from grade three to grade 12, will be awarded. The top-ranking students from each grade will be awarded 50,000 birr.
The major goals of the competition as enumerated by Kebede are changing the negative attitude of students towards mathematics education by making math a favorite subject, recognizing top students to develop their math knowledge, cultivating top talents to represent Ethiopia at the IMO in the future, and to churning out future mathematicians by promoting them early. In the future, My Soroban dreams of seeing Ethiopian top students to represent Ethiopia at continental and international mathematical Olympiads.
BY DARGIE KAHSAY
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 9 AUGUST 2024
