Who''s Afraid of
Math and Why? by Sheila Tobias
Some people who experienced learning “word
problems” in sixth grade, coping with equations in high
school, or first confronting calculus and statistics in college, failure came suddenly and in a very frightening way felt like it was a sudden death. Instead of asking question or take the lesson slowly, most people remember having the feeling that they would never go any further in
mathematics. A common myth is that those who have the abilities in math have a mathematical mind. In the face of difficulty, people
tend to wait for their nonmathematical minds to be exposed. They believe that if they have survived fractions, word problems, or geometry, the moment of failure is only temporarily postponed. Parent, who are either poor in math or also experienced ‘sudden-death’ in the subject or, if they have survived math, they don’t know how it feels to be slow, often expect their children to be nonmathematical thus believing that mathematical mind is something that one either has or does no have.
Although it is not necessarily a girl-thing, females tend to drop out of math sooner than boys. A 1972 survey reveal that 57% of the boys have taken four years of high school mathematics compared to only 8% of the
girls. Due to this, the remaining 92% will be limited to the career choices considered to be feminine (humanities, guidance and counseling, elementary school teaching etc.). Certain sex differences in
performance emerge early and remain through adulthood according to several respected study:
1. Girls compute better than boys (elementary school and on)
2. Boys solve word problems better than girls (from age 13 and on)
3. Boys take more math than girls (from age 16 and on)
4. Girls learn to have math sooner and possibly for different reasons
The falling off of girl’s math performance between ages 10 and 15 may be because:
1. Math gets harder in each successive year and requires more work and commitment.
2. Both boys and girls are pressured, beginning at age 10, not to excel in areas designated by society to be outside their sex-role domains.
3. Thus girls have a good excuse to avoid the painful struggle with math; boys don’t.
Girls are not willing to take risk or to think for themselves, two behaviors that are necessary in solving math problems. Still if, if girls are to be asked, they will not agree with the assumption. Girls feel that there is something is missing with them that other people have. Although women believe that they are not mentally inferior to boys, they fear that in terms of math they are.
Since not all underachievers in math are girls and not all women are mathematics-avoidant, poor performance in math is likely to be due to some hormonal difference between sexes. Since intensified hormonal activity happens during adolescence, during which the girls seem to loose interest in mathematics, Biological researches tend to link estrogen (female hormone) with “simple repetitive tasks,” and androgen (male hormone) with “complex restructuring tasks.”
Parents, peers, and teachers forgive girls when she does badly with math but not in other subjects. On the other had, some parents prevent their daughter in participating in math programs for the fear that it will make them different. The association of math with masculinity is found in contrasting mathematics with being a writer. Mathematics is related with being rational, cautious, wise and responsible while being a writer, on the other hand, was described as warm, interested in people, and altogether more compatible with feminine ideal.
Skills in mathematics are not always learned in school. Boys often have the advantage with the activities that they do. Boys often play with objects and often take apart in a number of household works. Building something that stays up requires working with structures. In all of this, he is learning things that will be useful in physics and math. Sports can also be another source of math-related concepts. Feminists on the other hand play with their Barbie dolls which may not develop their mathematical skills.
To conclude everything that has been said about math anxiety and sex, girls must be required to take as much math as they can possibly master. If a girl is afraid of social ostracism they must be provided with psychological counseling and support. Since ability in mathematics is considered by many to be unfeminine, perhaps fear of success, more than any bodily or mental dysfunction, may interfere with girls’ ability to learn math.
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