I happen to be a regular viewer of
the “Judge Judy” TV show. The reason is simple enough. She looks (and acts)
just like my mother (who is long gone.) So it is nice to be reminded of her.
Judge Judy (who is phenomenally
successful by anyone’s standards) can’t add. She counts on her fingers to
figure how far April is from October and for anything more complicated she asks
her assistant (Byrd) to do the math for her.
Why am I writing about this, you
wonder? Because the news lately has been running segments extolling that the
Girl Scouts now offer STEM merit badges.
STEM is a nonsense idea being
touted by the educational establishment. STEM is so important that no one has
bothered to create high school engineering courses for it (That’s the E in
STEM.) Science is the same old memorizing formulas as it always was and, well,
then there is math.
I have written elsewhere and often
about why algebra is a waste of time and why the “math teaches you to think”
argument is totally unsupported by facts. I suppose there might be a worldwide
mathematician shortage but I missed it. Math is important because the testing
industry loves it. OECD and ETS thrive on math scores and panicking kids into
learning it.
But, and here is my main point:
math oppresses women. I don't normally concern myself with women’s issues,
particularly not now when that is all you hear about in the news. But, why
don't we ever about the number one oppressor of women? Really? How does math
oppress women? Let me explain.
Judge Judy can’t do math. Neither
could my mother.(She was pretty successful too.) Neither can my wife. Neither
can my daughter. Neither can my granddaughter. Surely this is just odd. Not
really. I just IM-ed the senior designer in my company (who was one of the
smartest PhD student I ever had):
me: how did you do in math in
HS?
me: how are you at math now?
Tammy: Are you kidding me? I'm
afraid of the word
Don't get all worked up. I'm not claiming no women can
do math or that women have an innate inability to do math. There are certainly
women who are accountants, scientists, etc. and many who just love math. That's
not my point. Let's focus on the point.
My daughter has a
major book coming out in June and also has a very successful career as a user
interface designer. Can she do math? She is also afraid of the word.
In 1986, when my
daughter was 14 and taking algebra I thought she was going to have a nervous
breakdown. Since I was a math whiz as a kid I couldn't understand what her
problem was. I still don’t. But I know she did just fine without knowing
algebra (as did my mother before her and Judge Judy.) In 1986 I began to
examine why we taught math at all. Being a math whiz as a kid didn’t mean I
would ever use algebra as an adult. I haven’t.
Back then I
learned about the Committee of Ten that created the modern day high school
curriculum (in 1892) and read about the math professor who was on that
committee who was trying to sell an algebra textbook at the time. So, I figured
the reason for algebra was just random and as usual, had to do with money.
I have since
changed my mind.
I now believe
that math is emphasized is school as a subtle way to oppress women. It is
commonly stated that woman are bad at math for any number of reasons having to
with their lack of confidence or male oppression or stereotyping. But how about
considering another idea? This is the right question:
So what?
The normal answer
to this is that then women can't be engineers or scientists.
And I say again:
So what?
Are these the
most important professions?
Many women are kept out of a great many professions because of the math
test score obsession. They are kept out of professions that do not require
mathematics but nevertheless require math scores to gain admission to the
schools that teach them (Medical
and law schools rare two good examples.)
My wife wanted to
go to medical school but couldn’t because of her math scores. How many women
want to get a PhD or a law degree or an MD but can’t because they had bad math
scores? Tammy got into graduate school to study with me because I don't care
about math GRE scores. Others are not so lucky.
So here is a good
idea: let’s make Girl Scouts learn math. I checked the Boy Scouts site and
found that Boy Scouts have STEM Merit badges as well. Here are two STEM merit
badges for boy scouts: archery and softball.
What?
Maybe I
misunderstood. Then I found out that a Girl Scout can get a cyber-security
merit badge. I got the idea. They are marketing to parents who are desperate
that their kids go to college and STEM is an obsession that parents have been
told to have. The kids are simply pretending. That is ok with me.
But what is not
ok with me is that we continue to make girls feel less than adequate because
they are bad at math. Instead of writing endless articles about how girls are
not really bad at math or how there are Girl Scout STEM merit badges, can we
simply get over the math thing?
Do I think all
girls are bad at math or all boys are good at it? Of course not. No one is watching out for how boys are
oppressed by math either. We just accept it.
My company
(Socratic Arts) has way more females than males. I asked some of them how they
felt about math. Here is what one them (Susan Ward — a senior designer) wrote:
In high
school, I particularly loved science. In fact, one of my best subjects was
biology. I found it very easy to understand and sailed through regular and
advanced biology, botany, and basic Chemistry. In fact, I had dreams of
becoming a marine biologist, or perhaps going into some aspect of veterinary
medicine. But, in the end, I was turned off by the emphasis on higher math that
is typically required to enter those fields. While I got As and Bs in math, when
it came to trigonometry and calculus, I was turned off. It didn't feel as applicable
to the world around me in the same way that science did. Fast forward many
years, to my chosen career as an Instructional Designer. In my role, I've
designed a number of CME programs for the medical field. I worked with doctors
and other medical experts on disease state training, as well as education for
pharmaceutical sales reps. The more I learned, the more I regretted not going
into some aspect of medicine. Being a horse and dog owner, I have also loved
learning from vets over the years about diagnosing and treating various issues
(when you own a horse, you often have to be your own vet tech!). In my
observations, while medical professionals do use math when writing
prescriptions, administering medications, and analyzing x-rays and CAT scans,
most aren't solving complex, abstract higher math problems in their day-to-day
practice. I wish schools would de-emphasize higher math as a requirement for
entering careers in the sciences, and instead give students the opportunity to
learn the math needed for their field in context with their specific areas of
interest.
Really? Do I
believe that math is there to oppress women? I was reading a book by the only
guy more radical than I am about education —John Taylor Gatto. He points out
that school was always meant to keep the lower classes in their place and that
we adopted much of what we do in
school from the Hindu education system which was specifically designed
to keep the Brahmins in charge. This is from Gatto’s book (paraphrased):
Hinduism had
created a mass schooling institution for children of the ordinary, one
inculcating a curriculum of self-abnegation and willing servility. In those
places, hundreds of children were gathered in a single gigantic room divided
into groups of ten under the direction of student leaders with the whole
ensemble directed by a Brahmin. In the Roman manner, paid pedagogues drilled
underlings in the memorization and imitation of desired attitudes and these
underlings drilled the rest.
A military
chaplain, newly arrived in India, named Andrew Bell decided to try the Hindu
system in an orphan asylum he was running. He found that it led students
quickly to docile cooperation, like parts of a machine. Furthermore they seemed
not to have to think, grateful to have their time reduced to rituals and
routines. He praised Hindu drill as an effective impediment to learning writing
and ciphering, an efficient control on reading development. Joseph Lancaster
concluded that this would be a cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes
ignoring Bell’s’ observation that it did just the opposite.
In 1798,
Lancaster opened a free school for poor children in London. Word spread and
children emerged from every alley, craving to learn. The Duke of Bedford provided
Lancaster with an enormous schoolroom and a few materials. Transforming dirty
ghetto children into an orderly army attracted many observers. Bell opened
competing schools based on the idea that schooled ignorance was better than
unschooled stupidity.
Harvard and Yale
were set up originally as the Brahmin schools. (Google “Boston Brahmin.”) I
assume that there was no required math score for admission in their first 100
or 200 years. Harvard and Yale were all about keeping the elites in power. The
SAT was created in order to enable the lower classes to get into places like
Harvard. But, not that many women were going to Harvard and Yale (did I say
none? -- because that was the number.)
Harvard and Yale
have stopped barring the lower classes
and women are no longer barred from admission. Yale kept Jews out, but when the SATs came into being, many Jews
scored very well and couldn't be rejected. (They were kept out of social clubs
of course.) Here is something from Commentary:
By the 1920’s, however, nearly 10 percent of Yale undergraduates were
Jewish, and the Jewish applicant pool was expanding every year. Worse yet, to
Yale administrators, most of these Jews were poor New Haven “townies,” who
concentrated on their studies and did not participate (whether voluntarily or
involuntarily) in extracurricular activities.
Faced with what it considered a crisis, Yale enacted an unwritten quota to keep the level of Jews at
or about the then-current 10 percent.
Here
is the problem. While they could easily keep women out of Yale, when they did
admit them they did too well. In Princeton’s first coeducational
class of 1973, women were 18 percent of the class but 32 percent of those
elected to Phi Beta Kappa. It is obvious what happened. The requirements for
women to gain entry were tougher. They admitted only ones whom they were sure
of and they were better on average than the men.
If
women were able by judgment of strict merit to be 90% of the entering class at
Yale, Yale would flip out. They were quite upset at Yale when Jews started taking
over the faculty. The last two presidents of Yale have been Jews and Yale has
lost its role as a Brahmin university. The make up of the student body and the faculty is a
constant issue at Yale, not that you will hear about it publicly. In the late
1970s, at a faculty meeting of the Computer Science department we were
discussing why Yale never did what we asked of them. One person suggested that
we hire a non-Jew to the senior faculty. Every senior faculty member in
Computer Science was Jewish and we all knew that the administration was not
amused.
We
let it drop, but we all knew it was there.
Harvard
and Yale have a long history of keeping people out. They were started for the
elites and are still controlled, but less so, by the elites. This attitude includes
keeping women out. But, how can they do that and get away with it? Math test
scores. Using the math SAT they can make sure that they only get the very best
women (those who will follow the rules and not ask why.) Why would Harvard and Yale care about
this? Ask yourself this simple question: if the entering class were 90% women
what do you think the reaction of those who rule these schools would be? The
math SAT ensures that this will never happen.
Am
I saying women are not good at math? No. Hardly. I am saying they tend to
dislike it more than men do. I don’t know what the reason is.
The
other day I was doing a TV show via Skype, shot from a colleague’s home in the
UK. We were discussing math and then the man’s 9 year-old daughter walked by. I
said to him “stop her and ask her how she likes math.” He did and she said “I
hate it.” (I know that not all females hate math. One of the smartest women in
my company has a master’s degree in math.)
If
women want to make their lot in life better they should start lobbying against
the math SAT. Instead of offering math merit badges in the Girl Scouts, they
should be making scouting fun, no?) (And the Boy Scouts should stop the BS.
Softball is a STEM activity. Really?)
I
will give the last word to Wendy Lehnert (the woman with the math degree whom I
mentioned earlier. She was my student at Yale and is a retired professor of
Computer Science):
I taught calculus to premeds
at Yeshiva University, to all-male classes of guys hell-bent on getting into
medical school. This was a long time ago.
Some of them really got it and some of them didn't -
but everyone was determined to get into medical school - that's all that
mattered. Calculus was a "do-or-die" hurdle. Nobody ever showed up in
my office to talk about how the course was making them rethink their life
goals. There was plenty of "point grubbing" - everyone wanted to make
sure they got the best possible test scores and therefore the best possible
grade and therefore the best possible chance of getting into med school. But
there was absolutely no evidence that anyone took the course as a serious
indication of self-worth. Calculus was just a hurdle. It was just part of a big
game called "succeeding in life" - or - "making it into the
club"
A few years later I was teaching undergraduate courses
in CS, and I was struck by how many bright students in my introductory
programming course seemed to really take programming to heart. Turns out these
were all female students, who had probably always gotten straight A's and were
thoroughly traumatized by the anything less than an A. Getting a B on a test
was enough to make them question their choice of major, their self-image, and
their self-worth. The female students were just not playing the same game as
the guys. They were actually internalizing all these test scores and then
reacting accordingly. I've never seen a guy do that.