Americans tend to care very much about nurturing well-roundedness in children, and over the last several decades Americans have become more and more child-centered (which means that Americans often try hard to "let children be children" when they're little). Something else of which American parents tend to be "guilty" is working hard to make their children aware of other people in this world. Children are taught early to care about people who have fewer advantages, to watch out for younger siblings, to do something to help elderly relatives, and to generally "think about others". They're also taught how to be a good friend, how to play well with others, and how not to ever think that any one person is better than any other person for any reason.

Children's ability to learn is heavily influenced by the nurturing they receive. (We've all heard of foreign orphanages where a normal child is left in a crib so long he/she develops retardation.)

In general, the way Americans nurture their babies and preschoolers results in a child who is more than capable of understanding and excelling in any academic area. Parents don't need to have had impressive academic achievement in order to raise a bright child. Nature has designed children in a way that results in their developing quite well as long as they're made to feel secure and are offered a range of activities that help promote skills development. For the most part, and in the absence of any disabilities, most American children who show up at those school doors on the first day of kindergarten are plenty bright, plenty capable, and full of potential.

Why, then, do American children lag in math proficiency? The problem may be that children who have well developed "emotional maturity" (which comes when a child is nurtured well and when being well balanced and caring has been emphasized) can actually be at a disadvantage in school. Since schools don't seem to understand the bright child who is also emotionally well developed (not mature, like adults, but more emotionally mature than many people realize) they often underestimate the need of bright students to have more challenging work. At the same time, they also underestimate the emotional maturity of those bright children. This leads to having an environment that makes the bright child feel like he doesn't belong, and it leads to any number of bright children feeling as if nobody knows they exist (because if the schools knew they existed they would have a more suitable environment).

Schools' not understanding the real make-up of bright, well adjusted, children is the first problem. Children may begin school with enthusiasm. When they discover how disappointing school is they may resign themselves to continue to do their best. They may come to enjoy the social aspects of school more than the work itself, but they may even enjoy getting high grades (or high-enough grades) that come easily. During this time when all those plenty-bright kids could really use a little more challenge American schools continue to hang onto the idea that enough children with A's and B's means the school is doing its job. While schools and parents who are satisfied with all those A's and B's, the students who get them may be longing for more challenging work, and the longer they go without having their needs met, the farther their motivation slips away. In general, the child who gets C's or below in the first few years of elementary school is likely to have his own set of problems not necessarily associated with the school's approach to teaching; but there are those children who don't do well in elementary school who have been - for one reason or another - lost as a result of the way the school does things.

Over the course of the first six years of school the failure of schools to truly understand children's needs isn't all that obvious. Children who are somewhat disappointed with school can keep themselves motivated for the first three years of so, and even after that they may be able to remain somewhat motivated as they believe things will get more challenging once they enter secondary school.

With the gradual decline of motivation in (possibly) the majority of American students comes the gradual increase in level of math being taught. As students enter seventh grade, and as the math can no longer just be absorbed without more concentration than other subjects require, students are in adolescence and early teen years. These are the years where children can become preoccupied with all that is associated with the inner and outer world of adolescence. These are also the years when children feel more stressed out as a result of social issues or any inability they may have to get the grades they know they should be getting. Stress leads to stress hormones, and stress hormones can lead to difficulty concentrating - just when the math has gotten more and more complex.

Some kids manage to keep up their English, history, or other grades because its easier to bluff their way through or even take in the information without the need for excellent concentration.

This is an age when a student who is mature and bright but stressed out and unhappy with the whole school environment may sit in class, dream about the future or the boy two rows over or even stew over the starving children in the world. This is when some students view what is going on in math class as "make-believe" and view those few eager students who are known as "math wizzes" as immature, insecure, people who don't realize that there is more to worry about than math.

At this point, the slow decline in interest that began much earlier begins to pick up speed. As the student loses ground when it comes to taking in the information in math class he or she will not have much of a foundation on which to build further, yet more advanced, math knowledge.

This is where many American students who started out as very bright, very capable, little people realize that they must choose a profession that doesn't rely heavily on math knowledge. This is when many students decide to pursue teaching, social work, psychology, writing or even law school. These students may have high IQ's, and they may get SAT scores ranging from average to well above average. They are the students who are often seen as less intelligent than those math and science wiz-kids (often known for lacking "common sense", which is essentially the very type of intelligence that creates problems for those more well adjusted kids).

The very values that American parents most often try to share with their children, and that so often make American children more balanced than children of some cultures may be, may actually be the thing that hinders the overall math proficiency of American students. By the time a student, who has lost academic ground and motivation over the course of the elementary-school years, enters secondary school there is generally no regaining the lost academic ground or the motivation.

Schools tend to judge students' abilities on their grades and fail to recognize that even high-honors students may be underachieving and unmotivated and that most above-average and average students, as well as poor students, suffer from that combination of lost motivation and lost academic ground.

American parents generally send pretty bright children into those kindergarten classes. So many of those little students have the potential to excel in advanced math and science. American schools often form policies based on statistics and existing information and averages, rather than on an understanding of human potential.

Since American elementary schools are so oblivious to what they don't understand about children's needs they tend to assume all less than perfect grades are the result of a problem with the child or even the parents.

The sad thing is that when those well balanced children, with strong abilities in understanding themselves, others, and the world, are lost by the schools those professions in the field of math and science aren't just missing out on more professionals. They're missing out on having some of the most well balanced, common-sense, intelligent people contribute.

When American primary schools recognize that the double-edged sword of being a well rounded, emotionally mature, bright, student is having more trouble concentrating in a environment that clearly does not acknowledge their existence America will start to gain ground when it comes to producing individuals with solid knowledge of the most advanced math.