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.

I wanna be a sponge when I grow up.

I’m madly studying for prelim #2.  I learned that I was not a very good sponge on prelim #1.  The professor included many questions that we did in class that I had not fulling absorbed.  A friend later commented it was not an exam on intelligence, but an exam on “how good of a sponge you were.”  I learned I was not a great sponge.  I was okay, but not truly great.

So, when I grow up, I want to be a good sponge.  I’m practicing my sponge skills now as I study for algebra.  The professor who writes this exam is fairly axiomatic about his topics.  Thus, I’m dutifully studying and trying to understand all the concepts.  But it feels like memorization.  Perhaps that is step one to understanding? Perhaps not?  Regardless, I am here memorizing tactic after tactic and proof after proof, hoping that they will appear on the prelim as I expect them too.   Below I have included an image of the sponge I hope to become.  You can almost see the layers of proofs and theorems hidden in the little holes!