Doing It By the Numbers

On the Jan 25, 2010 ABC Evening News program, I watched Diane Sawyer report that a new study indicated that elementary school female math teachers give girl students math anxiety. I traced the report to an article on line written by Emma Woolacott. Pay attention to the sample size in the article, by the way.

What annoys me is once again we conclude the problem lies with teachers. I believe that problem bigger and lies within our culture where females in swim suits are gloried more than females who demonstrate brain power. In time that view will surely change since more females are graduating college than males. [Just a thought: If males aren't graduating college, what are they doing?]

The problem of females having anxiety with math isn't as simple as the results of the study to be remedied simply with teacher training. One memory from college that haunts me is that of a girl, who I dated, being dissuaded from majoring in math--early 1970s--even though she was a solid "B" student in math. She weathered that treatment from the chair of the math department and went on to receive a MBA form the University of Pennsylvania.

Although anecdotal, as a woodcrafter I find it interesting that at craft stores, where many early educators shop, numbers are difficult to locate while products with the alphabet are abound on shelves. I tend to believe that if educators were requesting number products, those products would be on the shelves for purchase--"Just sayin'".

I also see hope in TV programs as Numb3rs, where actor Navi Rawat portrays a highly talented female math professor, who helps the FBI solve crimes. Moreover, note that business news shows on TV increasingly have more female commentators. All of this may seem casual on its face, but I believe an effect that females are capable of excelling in math and any other field and there is no cause to worry.

So, let us continue to beat up on teachers as the source of why students have all sorts of problems. Let us keep forgetting that the first and most significant educators in children's lives are parents. In my situation, my mother was forced to leave school in the eleventh grade to work just before the Depression Period. She had great math skills even at 75 years of age. All nine of her children didn't finish high school, but all could read, write, and do basic math at least. I mention this to highlight that teachers are only part of the puzzle in educating children.

Surely, more robust teacher education programs are fine, but much more support is needed from parents as well. High anxiety isn't with teachers only. Lastly, in 2008 I wrote about an NPR story that indicate that females are doing as well as males in math. Has something changed since then?

Girls Do as Well as Boys in Math

NPR on line has an article that indicates that girls are doing as well as boys on math assessment tests. That is fine to know. What is troubling is that the achievement of girls in math isn't translating into having them well-represented in math-intensive techology an science fields. I'm not surprised.

One reason I'm not surprised takes me back 37 years. I was dating a girl in college who was majoring in math. She informed me that she was having a problem with the math chairperson, who thought that females wasn't good enough to receive a degree in math. At the time I couldn't understand why the math chairperson, who was also one of her professors, had that view. I had no notion of that type of discrimination at the point in life.

Lately, however, I been thinking that females maybe turned away from math at very early levels. If few females are graduating with degrees in math and even fewer females with math degrees are teaching at the primary school level, then females don't have role models toward a career in math early on. There is also the point that fewer males, who may have degrees in math, are teaching at the early education level.

I might be stretching the point, but I think the question has never been whether girls can do math as much as them having the encouragement and role models in math.