Granted, an Olympiad for math may not be as exciting as Michael Phelps' quest for eight Olympic swimming medals or Marion Jones' attempt to win gold in the long jump. But the fact is, the ability of our youth to compete with the rest of the world in mathematics, or at least to be functionally literate in the subject, is infinitely more important for our economic and technological future than our nation's haul of Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals.

The reason is that mathematics is the language of science. And without math and science, our progress in science and technology – the economic engine of our nation and state – would be seriously compromised. The problem for the United States is that while our scientific and technological enterprise is the envy of the world, the performance of our middle and high school students in mathematics is not.

Although our educational system has produced some top flight students of mathematics – such as Alison Miller from Niskayuna, N.Y., the second female ever to qualify for a U.S. Math Olympiad team – our 12th-graders scored better in the last international examination that compared mathematical achievement among high school students in 21 countries than their peers in only two countries – Cyprus and South Africa. Austria, Slovenia, Russia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic were some of the countries that outperformed our students on that test.

Our eighth-graders did better in a more recent international comparison, in 1999, but theirs was hardly a gold medal performance, coming in 19th out of 38 countries. The countries that outscored us included Slovenia, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Bulgaria and Latvia. A separate comparison among eighth-graders from 40 states, conducted in 2000, ranked California 36th in mathematics performance and in last place, tied with Hawaii, in science performance.

These are worrisome trends for a state dependent on science and technology for its economic future.

The encouraging thing is our students are improving, especially closer to home. Earlier this month, results from the California Standards Test showed that 43 percent of San Diego County's students in grades two to eight met the state's definition of proficiency in mathematics, an increase from 38 percent two years ago. And 74 percent of the 10th-graders in San Diego city schools passed the mathematics portion of the California High School Exit Exam, the test that they will be required to pass to obtain their diplomas in 2006, an increase from the 61 percent who passed the last time it was administered in 2001.

We're headed in the right direction, but like Olympic development coaches, we need to do more to assure that our next generation is competitive with the rest of the world and at least minimally proficient in mathematics. Earlier this year, the state Board of Education granted waivers to school districts up and down California, including a number in San Diego County, from a state law requiring that their high school graduates complete a course in algebra. As a result, some 13,000 students, including 600 in San Diego County, received high school diplomas this spring without this basic mathematical skill. That's not the way to build a winning Team USA.

While the United States remains the undisputed leader in science and technology, we can't rest on our laurels. As is the case in many Olympic events in which U.S. athletes were once dominant, the rest of the world is quickly catching up. A study conducted this year by the National Science Foundation found that while U.S. scientists continue to publish the lion's share of scientific papers, the growth in the number of papers from other parts of the world from 1998 to 2001, particularly Western Europe and Asia, was three times as great as the growth from U.S. scientists.

If the same kind of attention and concern could be focused on boosting mathematics achievement as was focused on the U.S. Olympic basketball team following its losses to Puerto Rico and Lithuania, perhaps our economic future might be more secure.

If our country's greatest mathematicians and mathematical educators were regarded, like our Olympic athletes, as national heroes, perhaps we could rekindle the national pride that our country had for its mathematicians, scientists and engineers during the post-Sputnik era, when we raced the Soviet Union to put the first men on the moon.

Few San Diegans know that one of the world's greatest mathematicians – Efim Zelmanov, a professor of mathematics here at the University of California San Diego – lives within their midst. Or that he won the 1994 Fields Medal, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize for mathematicians, which, like Olympic gold medals, are awarded every four years in a different venue around the world.

Hungarian-born mathematician Paul Erdos, a genius who published more than 1,500 papers, is another mathematical giant with ties to San Diego. His work in probabilistic combinatorics pioneered the way for major advancements in computer science, coding theory and the development of communications networks. While Erdos, who died in 1996, spent most of his life traveling between universities and collaborating mathematicians, his only real home was a room in the house of mathematicians Ronald Graham and Fan Chung Graham, now faculty members in UCSD's mathematics and computer science departments.

These modest and introspective geniuses would never consider themselves – and probably would never want to be considered – national heroes. But their intellectual contributions will have far greater consequences to our society and our nation's economic progress than the number of Olympic medals that U.S. athletes will bring home from Athens this month.