How Underminers reroute our most talented girls

Parent Cafe
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<p>I had a number of people tell my older son that they thought MIT undergrads weren’t that happy and it was better for grad school. (They didn’t say this about Harvard or Carnegie Mellon Computer Science interestingly enough.) Since he was dying to finally be challenged he shrugged them off. Part of the problem may that we have also programmed too many girls not to stick to their guns. (Or maybe it’s innate - I’m channeling my inner Larry Summers. :wink: )</p>

<p>BTW, I get really annoyed by all this talk of difficult and challenging majors. My comp sci guy would have been very challenged if he’d been forced to be an English major and my International Relations kid appears to be working as hard in school as his older brother did in CS.</p>

<p>Speaking for myself I think I was lucky to have new math in 4th and 5th grade in a one room schoolhouse where I could really have fun learning set theory being taught by someone (my mother) who thought math was fun. She got taught rudimentary algebra by her grandfather when she was in elementary school.</p>

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<p>Were the kids in question black or Latino?</p>

<p>[?Acting</a> White? : Education Next](<a href=“http://educationnext.org/actingwhite/]?Acting”>http://educationnext.org/actingwhite/)</p>

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<p>You use broad generalizations to hold up your premise . Of course stats show that women are underrepresented in many fields, but where’s the evidence to show that this is due to people discouraging them from taking certain high school classes?</p>

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<p>Mathmom - Point taken on the challenging/non-challenging majors. My oldest D has the brains to do whatever she sets her mind to do but she is not a great student and she’s fine with that. Because of that, she does the bare minimum to get through college. She could not have pursued a STEM degree doing the bare minimum and she started out in science. She can get a degree in communications doing that though. Will she be a standout student or even get a job in that field? Most likely not. </p>

<p>It about killed me when she switched to that major but then I decided I just wanted her to graduate and do it in four years and she is on schedule to graduate in June and she really likes her communications classes. Who knows, maybe she’ll surprise me and have a job by the time she graduates. She is definitely a go getter when it comes to working and getting internships so I’m keeping my figures crossed she’ll be able to support herself by this time next year.</p>

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<p>ucb, the stereotype is usually in those cultures, but you’ll see plenty of it in white culture if you go to the right areas.</p>

<p>My cousins are from a branch of my family where the Confederate flag is still flown. Their father was the black sheep of the family because he sent all of his kids (including his daughter!) to college.</p>

<p>Heck, even in my public school district, one of the top ones in the state, there was still a significant amount of bullying towards students that were more academically inclined. I was lucky enough to avoid most of it in elementary school since I was sporty enough to play quarterback during recess, but that luck ran out once I got to the hellhole known as middle school.</p>

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<p>Why are you using the term “lean in”, is this recent best-seller marketing speak? Mom of a CS PhD student-female here, not really seeing your scenario, but she was in a private HS. Although I must say she did once wonder why no one had promoted a tech school to her in HS like they did her friends (boys.) It’s not like she really expressed interest, but seems she felt like she should have been told she could have been a contender, lol. I did go to a Caltech admissions talk. I think she ended up in a better place for her anyway.</p>

<p>She did tell the president of her college that they didn’t do enough to encourage women in CS. The tiny handful in her dept were a pathetic representation, although they are well treated and encouraged by the faculty. She was invited to send in a proposal but didn’t. Anyway, women in CS is an entire special topic and there is awareness and interest in exploring changing that up.</p>

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<p>My experience with this in early elementary/middle school and those of many college friends at their more mainstream US high schools was like the above and also that really smart and intellectually engaged students were viewed either as snobs…whether justifiable or not who needed to be taken down a notch or “easy targets” because smart intellectual kids were often stereotyped as physically weak and/or easily intimidated.</p>

<p>Didn’t help that teachers/admins would sometimes join in on this type of bullying against “brainy” intellectually engaged kids. </p>

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<p>There’s also this stereotype among some tiny subcultures within some East-Asian communities. However, as those subcultures are gangs associated with low-class/low-brow folks and criminality, the stereotype doesn’t have much appeal/travel very far. </p>

<p>This applies even among some East-Asian gangbangers as shown by the fact it has been well-known that some Chinatown gang members in the NYC area attended the NYC Specialized High Schools. </p>

<p>Recalled sometime in the '90s reading in a local NYC paper how in a bust, the NYPD found several Chinese gang members were students in good academic standing at Bronx Science & Stuyvesant and they had an unspoken rule to never bring up any gang business…including conflicts to those HS campuses to avoid drawing attention to themselves and bringing embarrassment on their respective schools. Incidentally, the bust took place far from those campuses.</p>

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<p>I’m one who believes that women and girls still have a long way to go to achieve equality in this country. So many women are killed, raped, trafficked, beaten, sexualized, overlooked, and otherwise harmed and disregarded. I get it.</p>

<p>However, I can with all honesty say that I have never seen this kind of academic undermining of girls in my children’s school system (NC public). The teachers are just as affirming of boys and girls in math, science, English, languages, music – whatever the subject. The better educated and most of the less well educated parents are generally very supportive of their children in whatever courses they choose to take. Of the less well educated parents, the types who would scoff at their girls taking higher math and science are just as likely to scoff at their boys doing so as well.</p>

<p>I’m not going to make any conclusions for the whole nation based on the attitudes of people in my neck of the woods, but I just haven’t seen it here.</p>

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<p>I remember being a little girl and being praised for being smart and people saying - you’re smart enough to become a doctor! (Implying that that was unusual for a girl, since men were smart doctors and women were helpful but less smart nurses, according to those times)</p>

<p>But that was the late 60s/early 70s. Those days are long long gone. No one blinks twice at a girl going to a tough college or becoming a doctor or lawyer or whatever. I. Don’t buy the OP’s premise at all. I’m with the post above.</p>

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<p>Add the silly way classes are taught to the mix. DD2 is an aspiring STEM major in 10th grade and is in AP Comp Sci at her HS. The class has 28 boys and 2 girls. The boys seem to all have had programming experience in the past on their own. The girls do not. The way the class is taught is outright lousy. And I don’t mean, bad, I mean lousy. I’m a software developer with 3 decades experience and so is my wife, and I can see that they’re simply not taught well. I realize you won’t be a Java whiz in a year but when you teach the class to cater to those who are already self-taught, use an 8 year old book and useless software (no debugger - really?) and class policies (do the assignment IN-CLASS and waste valuable class time instead of letting the kids explore at home)…</p>

<p>The class is dual credit listed with our community college and the teacher teaches there, so she’s not clueless. Just far worse than any Intro CS class I’ve ever taken or seen in several universities.</p>

<p>Likewise, DD1’s math teachers in HS were as a group LOUSY teachers. She had far less trouble with college math (advanced Algebra, just to refresh her math, and Baby Calculus I, II) than she had in HS. Again, lousy teachers and lousy grading (in college using online homework of Kumon magnitude helped tremendously and counted for 30-40% of your grade, in HS, a puny 10%).</p>

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<p>One of my most vivid memories was of my K or 1st grade teacher asking our future career plans. ( this was early 60’s)
I responded that I wanted to be a Dr, not because I did so, but because I was curious to see if the teacher would repeat the misogyny that I had already observed.
Unfortunately she did, and responded that " I could be a nurse, but not a dr". :stuck_out_tongue:
This pattern held true throughout my school years, however I worked hard to ensure that was not my kids experience and we know just as many women in science like Mary- Claire King & Sally Jewell as men.
:D</p>

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<p>Funny, PG, but my expression is “smart enough to be a Supreme Court justice,” that level of info seeking and analysis (hmm, in theory, critical thinking.)</p>

<p>I think any insistence gals have it harder finding encouragement in math-sci only works with random anecdotes- you know someone who was discouraged from a class, major or a college. Someone tells you a teacher wasn’t as supportive. Sometimes, the filtering is responsible for the difference in interpretation between the “really?” and the “really!” </p>

<p>HS is too soon to discourage kids from trying a field of interest. However, what about those kids who are just thinking pie-in-the-sky? Who watch Grey’s Anatomy and decide they want to be a doctor- I don’t think I have any issue with an occasional frank convo about the rigors and the focus required. Guys and gals. If my girl had come home and said she was discouraged from calculus, my first reactions would be rational questions (about her skill level and dedication,) not to immediately assume gender bias.</p>

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<p>My kid who majored in econ certainly did not care what people in tech majors thought about her major. But then, she never thought of herself as a tech person.</p>

<p>Tech people may think of econ as a good second-choice major for themselves because it is one of the most quantitative non-STEM majors and therefore might be a comfortable place for them. But those who choose to be econ majors because it’s the subject they actually want to study do not see it that way.</p>

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<p>turbo93, that’s interesting. D is mentoring the JV robotics teams. There is one all-girls team (new this year - D hates the concept). The girls were all programmers on their middle school robotics teams, except for maybe one or two. What D is finding is much more subtle than outright discouraging girls in class or steering them into non-STEM areas (then again, she’s in a STEM program…) </p>

<p>The varsity robotics team has very very few girls (2,3) on the build subteams; some on the programming subteams and then the vast majority on the business side of the team (fundraising, community outreach, budgeting, pretty much all the non-robotics part of the team)</p>

<p>Does D care? Nah, she’s like the daughters of the other posters. She likes what she likes and she knows what she wants. She has the respect of the boys on her team, both JV and varsity because it is obvious that she knows her stuff - often better than them. Ninth grade was a hoot because the boys thought she would be an ornament then she showed them that she actually knew how to use all the power tools in the shop when they didn’t. She was the only one who was allowed by the parent mentors to use the metal saw.</p>

<p>Marian, Econ is one of the most math-intensive majors, especially if you do any econometrics. </p>

<p>I believe the undermining is much more subtle. It’s telling a girl she’s beautiful instead of bright (who tells a boy he’s beautiful?), shifting the emphasis from what she is capable of doing to her appearance. Danica McKellar is a great example. This woman writes three or four math books aimed at girls (but are really good back-to-the-basic books for everyone) and most people comment about her looks when she is out on a book tour. </p>

<p>I didn’t run into any misdirection throughout my studies but I did have obstacles that eventually derailed me. In my PhD program (not STEM, urban planning), there was only one tenured female professor and one female assistant professor among 30. Five years before I got there, there was only one female doctoral student. Then the faculty made a conscious decision to admit more women; so they did. Ah, then they didn’t quite know what to do with them. They didn’t know quite how to mentor them (if I weren’t one, I would have found it funny) - my own advisor apologized for being a lousy mentor. One day, the doctoral students were sitting around and we realized that almost all the male graduate students were married, some with kids while only one female graduate student was married; the rest were single. We were all of the same age group. Many teaching assistantships went to the men (they needed it more than the women). I’m not making excuses for me not finishing my degree - that’s on me - but I would say despite their best efforts, the male faculty didn’t ease the way as much for the women students as they did for the men students.</p>

<p>Luckily, many of the women who did finish have done much in their career and some are now department chairs - so things are slowly improving.</p>

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<p>That might make logical sense, but once again it was not our experience. Our girls’ high school was hardly one where most students were aiming for highly selective colleges. It’s a large, mediocre suburban school. It offers IB and AP as well as vocational courses. And the majority of its graduates come from a middle to lower-middle class back ground and do not go to a 4-year college. If they go to any college at all it’s most often for a year or two at the local community college.</p>

<p>Yet, in spite of this socioeconomic makeup of the school, I haven’t seen any of the so-called Underminers at work. As far as I can tell the counselors and teachers there push the girls to excel just as much as they do the boys. And they are thrilled when one of their girl graduates gets into say MIT or one of the other top schools.</p>

<p>Like I said, this Underminers theory is a complaint in search of a problem.</p>

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<p>Sorry, didn’t read the entire thread but…is this from the 60’s? I don’t know of anyone who discourages girls from pursuing math at a high level. The brains of males and females are wired differently so it is silly to expect them to " be the same". I’m not implying girls/ women cannot do math at high levels (I think there are plenty of examples out there that show they do) but that certain fields are just not as interesting to them as a whole.</p>

<p>I was one of those “math girls” who was actually pushed into STEM (in the 80’s) because I “could do it.” I was sent to the local college to take calculus based physics while in high school and usually received the highest score on all exams. I enjoyed being “smart” but never enjoyed the material.</p>

<p>I eventually dropped my physics and engineering major during senior year of college because I had no passion for the subject and felt I would be unfulfilled in a job ( everyone actually tried to make me finish). I pursued a social science instead (with a heavy dose of statistics)…yikes…and finally found the passion I was missing. I have a job I really enjoy and one that would be considered female dominated. </p>

<p>Based on my own experience, I think we do a disservice to girls if we do not allow them to be who they are, wether that is a rocket scientist or a pre school teacher.</p>

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<p>I disagree with the OP’s premise as well. I just don’t see it in the lives of my own girls. If anything, they’re being encouraged to pursue STEM fields.</p>

<p>A 60’s aside. As a child I owned a 45 containing a song titled “When I Grow Up”. The lyrics were:</p>

<p>“When I grow up I’m going to be a fireman and put out all the fires in the town.
When I grow up I’m going to be a fireman and keep those buildings from burning down.
When I grow up I’m going to be a mailman and deliver all the mail to my friends.
When I grow up I’m going to be a mailman, a mailman does a service that never ends.
I want to be so many things as quickly as I can.
But woe is me it’s plain to see it just can’t be ‘cause I’m not a man.
When I grow up I’m going to be a mother and try to be a mother just like mine.
I’ll have a son just like my baby brother and he can be a fireman, he can be a mailman and that will be just fine!”</p>

<p>Clearly my mother never listened to the record. She would have been appalled.</p>

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<p>I think that undermining can happen in more subtle ways. I’m not speaking to the STEM discussion specifically here, but just commenting in general. </p>

<p>I’ve never had a male student come to me and tell me that his family thinks he should drop out of college to have a family, to provide financial support, or to take part in a marriage that his parents have arranged for him. I don’t have this happen as frequently anymore with my women students now that I work at a private institution, but when I worked at a public, I had to have those conversations all the time.</p>

<p>Furthermore, don’t underestimate the role that the culture of a discipline–or part of it–plays in re-routing women. I originally wanted to study in a different sub-discipline in History but when I started going to conferences I often found myself as the only woman (or one of just a few) on panels with men who were socially maladjusted, misogynistic, nasty creatures and I honestly couldn’t bear the thought of doing scholarship in an area that would bring me into contact with them frequently so I switched–to an area that is considered less “prestigious” than my first area. My female colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines have reported similar experiences. It’s all about using the gossip network to track down that department, that advisor, that lab, that working group, those collaborators who are known to actually work with women and to avoid those that everyone in the discipline knows are hostile to women.</p>

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<p>OP is full of horsesh##. What does the original premise of the post have to do with being a “right wing conservative?” or reality, for that matter?</p>

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<p>Hmm, I’ve never really thought about this before. I’m a girl who is a senior in high school, and one of the only girls at my school in bc calc or with a high sat score. I’ve always been encouraged not to stress myself out, not to take the hard class, etc, by some people at least, but I’ve never considered that it might be for this reason. I’ve never really been confident in my decisions to challenge myself or apply to the hard schools… Reading this rings a little bit true, not because of what my teachers or gc encourage me to do but because of what I read in magazines, what I’m encouraged to worry about as a girl, etc.</p>

<p>But yeah, the right wing conservative thing, not sure what that really has to do with it…</p>