What about the boys?

I recently gave a talk about teaching to boys and I want to tell you about it.  Because we have a problem.  Our problem is that girls are succeeding.  For years we women spent time arguing that women were failing in schools.  The statistics are strong, fewer women were attending college, fewer women were completing college, and fewer women were holding jobs in the workplace (and held those jobs with a lower salary).  But when we look at the past couple years in lower educational settings a different picture emerges.  I read a interesting report published by AAUW (American Association of University Women).  In this report they gave lots of information gathered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress which lives under the “National Center for Educational Statistics” who are a subset of U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.  So the data ought to be trusted.  Here is one such graph from their report comparing High School grade point averages. 

The girls are now outperforming the boys.  More importantly you need to know that girls earn more credits than boys in high school science and math AND they have a higher combined GPA in these courses.  The girls are definitely succeeding in the academic world we have created with clear objectives and transparent teaching.  In all the articles I read about gender segregation in classrooms, the authors spent >65% talking about girls and how girls learn.  Pretty much the only thing we can say about how boys learn is that it is “not” like the girls. Can’t we learn more about boys to get away from the negation statements?  What’s more, the articles all agreed on one item.  Gender segregation is great for the girls, but doesn’t effect boys learning at all.   I think this just means that we know how to cater to girls, but we can’t cater to the boys.

I’m a liberal woman, I grew up in strong female influences and attended an undergraduate woman’s college.  I really believe in single sex education; I think it is a great environment to teach women because women learn more in all women classes.  I would love for it to also be true that men learn more in all-male classrooms.  Wouldn’t it be awful if men really needed women to succeed?  I’m a feminist, but I just can’t believe that men can’t succeed on their own.   I’m starting to think we are doing our men a great disservice by not knowing more about how they learn.  And so I naively ask, “What about the boys?”  When are we going to show them some educational love?

Doing something hard

When on the journey to becoming someone I have never been, I have to do hard things I’ve never done.  I consider earning a PhD to be in this catagory.  In the iconic words of my father:

“A PhD proves that you can do something really hard for a really long time.”

So, as I work 12+ hours days everyday of the week I’d like to say, “I’ve never worked this hard before!”  But I can’t honestly say this. In my previous career I was frequently working more hours and sleeping less.  However, after a year and a half of graduate school, I claim sitting on your butt and thinking can be just as difficult as the most hectic job.

Mathematics is a lesson in frustration.  For you see, mathematicians live for those little (and big) “ah ha!” moments.  This is the proverbial red pill of mathematics.  If you struggle through the confusion, then you can see beautiful logic unfold before you.   Then, the higher up in mathematics you get- the longer the periods of confusion are.  Then you start to relish the challenge more than the completed problem, then you are on your way to becoming a mathematician.  We repeatedly throw ourselves against the things we don’t understand.  We actually feel angry when the professor sets problems which are too easy.  Can you believe that?  We are angry that the problems aren’t complicated enough!  This is how dedicated we are to the idea of hard work.  Later in our careers we go looking for really awful problems and we develop beautiful sayings like:

The problems worthy of attack are the ones that fight you back.

So the next time you are disapointed with your job, just imagine throwing yourself repeatedly agianst a blackboard all day.  And if that image strikes your fancy- you are (or ought to be) a mathematician.

Not on my side

Earlier last week I took an exam which does not meet my expectations of an exam.  The exam went far beyond the material covered in class while also having a wild variety of questions ranging from infantile to impossible.   We also had a trick question in the exam.  really?  Was that necessary?

I felt very betrayed mostly because one of the beliefs I held as a student was completely shattered in that moment.

I used to believe the professor was on my side.

However, the professor is not looking out for my learning like I would want him too.  In educational psychology I learned that if you wanted students to achieve, you needed to be transparent with your teaching.  That is: teach what you want them to learn and then test them on what you taught.  Don’t test them on extrapolating to broader contexts.   Doing this will not grade their abilities on the subject, but rather on their abilities as a critical thinker.  Which is fine.  If you want them to critically think- then train them to do so.  But, for example (Oh, imaginary teacher for whom I’ll never have the guts to tell this to in real life) do not give students computational problems all year long and also expect them to take abstract derivatives on the exam.  Students will not be able to do it with the training you gave them.

Anyways, I have mostly recovered from this incident, but I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.  I’m glad I’m almost done with the timed exam taking part of my life.  I’ll be glad to have that behind me.