<p>Sorry, but this just reads as whiny and an excuse to drop out of xx subject. At lot of the liberal arts have little relevance to high school kids. World History had little relevance to today. Euro Lit has little relevance to today – many Lit classes, are female-centric, btw, but guys still have to take 'em. </p>
<p>My D hates math, and has since middle school. But “hating” was ok, but not doing well in math was not an option on my watch. Finished AP Calc and did well, but still didn’t like it – had mostly female math teachers in HS, btw. D is now taking a math class in college for a distribution requirement and the prof writes on her first test: “your proof is extremely well done, and at much higher level that I would have expected for a Frosh. Have you considered being a math major?”</p>
<p>D still dislikes math, but bcos I refused to allow her to take the easier math track she now has EVERY college major open to her, those that require math and those that don’t. </p>
<p>btw: math is not necessarily a guy-girl thing, but a brain processing thing. It requires spatial-temporal reasoning (as does the SAT) which can be learned with “brain” practice.</p>
<p>call it a…a premonition - i just KNEW somebody would “remind” that math IS a “liberal art”. and the issue that many of the topics available for a liberal arts degree are irrelevant to contemporary work/life has been worked to death here. it all adds up to the same conclusion, in my book. the mental gymnastics of math, as with the perspective of history, are certainly worthy of exposure to everyone. and kids need their options open when they first enter college because they’ll likely change their major during the first year or two. but don’t expect everyone to get excited about a subject by forcefeeding. and PLEASE can we give it up on this issue that girls aren’t treated equally when it comes to studying the subject of math. boys generally hate eng/lit/history courses, but to get a diploma requires everyone take the stuff almost every year of high school. just make it the same for math - who knows, someday instead of saying “whazzup dude” our kids will think it’s cool to say things like “y ~ (9Qx*/e! < = > {a - ^Z}?” - that’ll make it hot for 'em.</p>
<p>I was an english major who switched to Chem E back in the 70’s, when the economy was even worse than today’s, because I wanted to get a job. It wasn’t easy, I had never gotten over a C in math, but I made it.<br>
My first job was editor of a technical journal based in Europe- I loved it, and was the envy of all my english major friends.
One thing I learned was that engineering majors were much better at english than english majors were at math.</p>
<p>bluebayou- Good point. My kids liked math but there have been plenty of subjects one or both of them hated (science and history come to mind), but that was not an excuse to do poorly in those classes.</p>
<p>Well, thanks for the ad hominem, bluebayou. I thought I made it clear my D has not “dropped out” of math and in fact has done well on it. Well enough to make her competitive at the top colleges in the country. Not doing well, or quitting, were never options for us, either. I thought I also made it clear that it was only when she got to Statistics and could see some useful applications beyond the internal, self-referential “puzzle” aspect that her interest picked up again. And this suggests we’re just not fully connecting with some very capable kids; I submit it’s because of the way math is taught, by people who do like the “puzzle” aspect, for people with a similar orientation.</p>
<p>World History does have relevance to today, though many students may not see it and many teachers may not teach it that way. So does European Lit. If those subjects are not being taught in ways that allow kids to see the relevance of the material to contemporary life, as in what it means to be part of a world community comprised of multiple cultures shaped in part by their own unique histories, and in which literature and the other arts and humanities, however remote in time and place from the here and now their origins, are efforts to grapple with fundamental and universal questions about what it means to be human, then I’d have the same criticism of the teaching of those subjects in HS that I have of math.</p>
<p>I apologize. Your knowledge is highly valued and I did not intend to offend. Indeed, I didn’t even know that was your quote since I picked it up from #93, which had no attribution. (I just get extremely frustrated with threads on cc about girls and math…)</p>
<p>And, btw, I would submit that ALL subjects are not being taught in ways that enable kids to see relevance; thus, my particular frustration with those that single out math, and use it as an excuse to only take < 4 years in HS.</p>
<p>Everytime I read about girls and math I’m reminded by a UC study (done back in the dark ages) about women and science. The question was then, ‘Why are so few girls majoring in STEM fields?’ (altho STEM is a new acronym). The short answer was that girls entering UC at that time tended not to have the math background to take many of the science courses, at least in comparison to the guys. Thus, kids who entered UC with a lack of math were essentially precluded from 40% of the college’s offerings…</p>
<p>To encourage girls interests in math, The Advantage Testing Foundation will sponsor its first annual math competition for high-school girls throughout the United States this weekend in New York City. There are about 250 female students invited based on their Feb. 2009 AMC10 and AMC12 scores. Most of the invitees are current high school students. Slightly shy of 10 middle school students are also among the invitees (based on the same selection criteria). This competition carries total cash prize of 43K. The top 10 finishers will win cash prizes with the winner share of $20K. The organization intends to continue to sponsor this competition in the future.</p>
<p>If you have daughters currently in junior year or under, who are interested/ talented in math, you may want to encourage them taking AMC10/12 next Feb in their high schools.</p>
<p>I’m not going to wade into the question of girls and math–I have only boys. One who is a math whizz and one who is not.
I just want to ask whether “teaching well” means showing how xyz is “relevant” or “useful.”
Some posters seem to argue it does. My math whizz would disagree.</p>
<p>Certainly for someone who finds inherent value in the subject, showing its relevance to other things is not necessary. But I’d say anytime a teacher loses students who are perfectly capable of excelling in a subject because the students don’t see the point in studying it, then that’s a failure of the pedagogy. And that’s no more and no less true of math than any other subject.</p>
<p>But the point in studying a subject is different for different students. My math whizz could not care less about the “usefulness” or “relevance” of math to real life. As a sixth grader, he was captivated by string theory–a useless branch of math/physics if ever there was one.
For him, the beauty of math was the reason for learning it.
I thought I would not wade into math & gender, but if math is badly taught, should the ill effects apply equally to boys and girls?</p>
<p>Just to add more anecdotal fuel to the fire…
The two finest, most outstanding math teachers my daughters had (one in middle school, the other is the high school AP Calculus teacher) were both undergraduate math majors in college, both went on to masters, one in math, the other an MBA and went into the business world. Teaching was a second profession for each.
Oh yeah, by the way, they are both females…</p>
<p>^^Not really. If having a critical mass of math lovers of the same gender provides much needed support, then boys are advantaged–which is why the top male math students can be found at 200 schools vs. 20 for females.
My S is in a cohort of 20, among which there is only one female student. They spend a lot of time together working on psets;I expect that there is also quite a bit of(masculine) bantering. I have been wondering about the social experience of this lone woman. The numbers were not that much better at the undergraduate level.</p>
<p>If there is evidence that environment is the key factor in explaining discrepancies between male math performance and female, then it stands to reason that the learning environment or societal environment in general favors the males. I am of the opinion that the same problem is present in the humanities subjects and leads to a higher success rate for the girls.</p>