American culture suppresses girls' math talent

[Mayabird]

Well, whattayaknow? Constantly saying that girls are bad at math...makes them bad at math.

American Culture Derails Girl Math Whizzes, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Oct. 13, 2008) — A culture of neglect and, at some age levels, outright social ostracism, is derailing a generation of students, especially girls, deemed the very best in mathematics, according to a new study.

In a report published Oct. 10 in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, a comprehensive analysis of decades of data on students identified as having profound ability in math describes a culturally constricted pipeline that puts American leadership in the mathematical sciences and related fields at risk.

According to the report, many girls with extremely high aptitude for math exist, but they are rarely identified in the U.S. because they veer from a career trajectory in the mathematical sciences due to the low respect American culture places on math, systemic flaws in the U.S. public school education system, and a lack of role models.

"The U.S. culture that is discouraging girls is also discouraging boys," says Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of oncology and the senior author of the study. "The situation is becoming urgent. The data show that a majority of the top young mathematicians in this country were not born here."

Joseph A. Gallian, a co-author of the report, a professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and current president of the Mathematical Association of America, says, "Just as there is concern about the U.S. relying on foreign countries for our oil and manufactured goods, we should also be concerned about relying on others to fill our needs for mathematicians, engineers and scientists."

Mertz and Gallian conducted the analysis with Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater involved with math competitions, and Titu Andreescu, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Texas at Dallas. Andreescu is a former leader of the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team and director of AwesomeMath, a summer program for mathematically gifted children.

The new study draws on decades of data from extremely difficult mathematics competitions aimed at the most elite student math performers, including the collegiate William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition and the pre-collegiate International and U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiads.

Mining the data, Mertz and her colleagues found:

* Contrary to the myth that females lack the intrinsic aptitude needed to excel in mathematics at the highest level, an idea proffered most famously by former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, many girls exist with truly exceptional talent for mathematics.
* Girls as well as boys with such talent are frequently identified and nurtured in some countries where this ability is highly valued; in the U.S., such talent is routinely overlooked or ignored, with many American boys and girls feeling they are actively discouraged from excelling in math.
* American children of immigrants from countries where math talent is highly valued — notably Eastern Europeans and Asians — are much more likely to be identified as possessing extraordinary mathematical ability.
* The pipeline for nurturing top math talent in the U.S. is badly broken beginning at the middle school level. Eighty percent of female and 60 percent of male faculty hired in recent years by the very top U.S. research university mathematics departments were born in other countries.

"We show," the group reports, "that many girls exist who possess extremely high aptitude for mathematical problem solving. The frequency with which they are identified is due, at least in part, to a variety of socio-cultural, educational or other environmental factors that differ significantly among countries and ethnic groups and can change over time."

When raised in some environments, girls were found to be 11-24 percent of the children identified as having profound mathematical ability; when raised in others, girls, including U.S.-born white ones, were 30-fold or more underrepresented. Andreescu believes that, "Innate math aptitude is probably fairly evenly distributed throughout the world, regardless of race or gender. The huge differences observed in achievement levels are most likely due to socio-cultural attributes specific to each country."

"We are wasting this valuable resource," says Mertz. "Girls can excel in math at the very highest level. There are some truly phenomenal women mathematicians out there."

In elementary school, girls do as well as or better in math than boys. In middle school, Mertz and her colleagues suggest, girls with an inclination for math begin to lose interest and fall behind, mostly due to peer pressure and societal expectations. Throughout middle and high school, social stigma and lack of appropriately challenging educational opportunities for the mathematically precocious becomes a hard reality in most American schools. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so than boys, often camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers.

In the future "flat world," the U.S. may no longer be able to depend upon hiring foreign workers to fill its jobs in the mathematical sciences and related fields. The report suggests that the economic well-being of the U.S. is at risk, and that it is crucial that steps be taken now to correct this problem. A good start, say Mertz and her colleagues, would include implementing the recommendations of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel and fully funding the America COMPETES, "10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds" and Sowing the Seeds through Science and Engineering Research Acts already passed by the U.S. Congress.

Journal reference:

1. Titu Andreescu, Joseph A. Gallian, Jonathan M. Kane, and Janet E. Mertz. Cross-Cultural Analysis of Students with Exceptional Talent in Mathematical Problem Solving. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, November 2008

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 081648.htm

[Winston Blake]

You know, contrary to the emphasis on girls in this article, I think all of the stuff it talks about may also apply to boys. In fact, the head of the study even says:

"The U.S. culture that is discouraging girls is also discouraging boys," says Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of oncology and the senior author of the study.

My impression of this article is that it's taking a conclusion about American cultural aversion to math in general, and turning it into a feminist issue. The message of 'Girls being oppressed by sexist society' is more trendy and sensational than 'Young people turn away from math, especially girls'. Further, an anti-intellectual culture is often cultivated by youths - I wouldn't be surprised if respect for intelligence in other cultures is imposed by adults. In other words, the existence of this cultural aversion doesn't mean youths are being 'suppressed' - insufficient suppression of youth culture may be the problem.

* Contrary to the myth that females lack the intrinsic aptitude needed to excel in mathematics at the highest level, an idea proffered most famously by former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, many girls exist with truly exceptional talent for mathematics.

My recollection of that incident is that he actually hypothesised that the intelligence curve for boys was simply wider, i.e. both very smart people and very dumb people are more likely to be boys. This gives an explanation for the male dominance in technical academia (and possibly in prison populations) without any difference in mean intelligence between the sexes. Every time I see it mentioned though, it's always 'Wah wah, stuffy chauvinist professor says girls are stupid'.

'Many girls exist who are good at math'? Honestly, how could anyone think otherwise? Hell, the higher math classes at my high school only had a few boys. What's the point of even including such an obvious fact, other than to throw in the 'Sexist Harvard president' anecdote? It actually seems bigoted to me to treat such a statement as 'news', like saying 'Contrary to common knowledge, many black people exist who are actually capable of excelling academically. Amazing, huh!'.

[chr335]

Interesting article but I would like to read the actually study and not have it filtered though any sort of political agenda. What I got from the article is American culture doesn't like anyone to be good at math they only have to look good or play sports.

[PeZook]

It's not inconceivable that a culture glorifying sports, business, consumptionism and self-gratification will discourage potential scientists and mathematicians. Maths is hard and nerdy and uniteresting to regular people, and Americans seem to be in love with the "common man". We've had countless threads complaining about that.

Though I wonder...if a country gets rid of its industries, doesn't have the natural resources it consumes and then outsources its intellectual pursuits...

What's left?

[sketerpot]

Though I wonder...if a country gets rid of its industries, doesn't have the natural resources it consumes and then outsources its intellectual pursuits...

What's left?

Our booming financial sector, of course! Our banks will prop us up!

My recollection of that incident is that he actually hypothesised that the intelligence curve for boys was simply wider, i.e. both very smart people and very dumb people are more likely to be boys. This gives an explanation for the male dominance in technical academia (and possibly in prison populations) without any difference in mean intelligence between the sexes. Every time I see it mentioned though, it's always 'Wah wah, stuffy chauvinist professor says girls are stupid'.

This always happens, and it always pisses me off. The vast majority of people don't know how to think statistically, and when someone makes a statistical statement they will confidently misinterpret it. The really disgraceful thing is that almost the entire news media got this one wrong. I know they're not infallible, but this is an error on the scale of saying that Iraq preemptively invaded the US. Any newspaper that said that would be the laughingstock of the world, but they get a free pass on the Larry Summers "scandal".

[Metatwaddle]

You know, contrary to the emphasis on girls in this article, I think all of the stuff it talks about may also apply to boys. In fact, the head of the study even says:

"The U.S. culture that is discouraging girls is also discouraging boys," says Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of oncology and the senior author of the study.

My impression of this article is that it's taking a conclusion about American cultural aversion to math in general, and turning it into a feminist issue. The message of 'Girls being oppressed by sexist society' is more trendy and sensational than 'Young people turn away from math, especially girls'.

Except that there were some statistics that showed that girls are vastly underrepresented in American math classes, but that's not the case everywhere in the world. While there are certainly problems in our culture that apply to boys too, the girls are much harder hit.

When raised in some environments, girls were found to be 11-24 percent of the children identified as having profound mathematical ability; when raised in others, girls, including U.S.-born white ones, were 30-fold or more underrepresented. Andreescu believes that, "Innate math aptitude is probably fairly evenly distributed throughout the world, regardless of race or gender. The huge differences observed in achievement levels are most likely due to socio-cultural attributes specific to each country."

I don't know if I share the conclusion, frankly; I think it is plausible that the intelligence bell curve for males is a bit wider. But isn't that 30-fold underrepresentation something to be concerned about when girls are 11-24% of gifted students in other countries?

As for the claim that youth culture is to blame for anti-intellectualism, the kids may be perpetuating the anti-intellectualism, but they're not the only ones perpetuating the sexism. I know anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much, but I know an 11-year-old girl who scores in the 99th percentile of all her standardized tests - a brilliant kid - and yet she hates math because she thinks she's bad at it. "All the boys," she said of her gifted class in an excellent charter middle school, "are better at math than me." When her father pointed out that she and a gaggle of female classmates do just as well as her male classmates by any measure (test scores, grades, etc.), she said, "Yeah, but Mr. C. always calls on the boys." I don't know how common that sort of thing is among male teachers, but it's definitely something to be concerned about, and yes, I'd say it is a "feminist issue".

[phongn]

Though I wonder...if a country gets rid of its industries, doesn't have the natural resources it consumes and then outsources its intellectual pursuits...

What's left?

Our booming financial sector, of course! Our banks will prop us up!

As an aside, the finance industry has been a major employer of mathematicians, especially for all the quantitative models that went so disastrously wrong.

[Exonerate]

As an aside, the finance industry has been a major employer of mathematicians, especially for all the quantitative models that went so disastrously wrong.

I had a professor who was almost recruited into doing such a thing. He remarked that what was important to his would-be employers wasn't the ability to actually model the future, but being able to convince investors that they could.

Anyways, if I may offer a personal anecdote: In America, math is treated by many as some sort of mystical art that only a minority of naturally talented people can ever hope to master. During my childhood in Taiwan, the general feeling that I got was that math was a basic skill (much like language), and that there was a minimum degree of proficiency that everybody was expected to have.

[Commander 598]

Actually, I would say that in America, the general opinion on "math" is that past a certain point "Why bother?" or "Just taking it for the credit, I won't even remember what the textbook looked like by next year."