Okay, first off, I will say that right now, I am writing this while sick at work (nausea + headache) so bear that in mind if my reasoning seems a bit unclear.
I'm going to take a teensy bit of devil's advocate stance. Male and Female brains are different. It's quantifiable. And, while the difference between the male & female scores on standardized tests when it comes to verbal versus spatial skills may have something to do with socialization, I really do think that evolution played a huge role in that and the differences all tie back to the quantifyable differences in the brains.
That said, I know of very few other women who grasped geometry (the only math I ever found "easy") as naturally as I did, and I know no other woman in my social circle with the same intrinsic sense of direction, distance, and landmarks. I'm often asked how do I know where north is? How did I know how to get from point A to B? How did I know how far it was and how long it would take? Where did I learn to tell these things? I don't know. I've always just known them. I'm not shitting you when I say that if you came up to me right now and asked which direction Mecca was, I would not have to think about it to point you the right way.
When I took those batteries of standardized tests in High School, I was the only woman clustered in with the top scoring men when it comes to shapes and spatial orientations. I accept the fact that I am an anomaly in terms of this skill.
However, we live in a world that in many ways does NOT resemble that which gave rise to the differences in our brains. It is no longer essential to the survival of the species that the men range far afield to hunt while the women stay closer to the camp and talk to each other a lot while they forage and rear the children.
At this stage of the game, I say it is vital for the further evolution of the species that both sexes be equally encouraged to explore every opportunity open to them.
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Incidentally, I had two technically trained parents (RN w/OB-GYN specialty) and Electrical Engineer who always encouraged me in math and science. Other than geometry I've never found math in the least interesting, but I subscribe to Discover Magazine because I find a lot of the sciences very fascinating.
What I'm getting at, is, while I chose a career that takes advantage of my verbal/communication aptitude, I was encouraged as a little girl to discover what my real skills and interests were.
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Oooh, and finally, we're good friends with a hispanic family. Two of the daughters in the family have a real aptitude for math, and in fact one of them wants to change her major to mathematics.
Her parents, bless them, have not placed any undue pressure on either daughter to pursue a "real" career, other than the frank question of "well, what do you do with a BS in Math?"
Ralph and I keep reminding both of them that in many cases the job you end up doing isn't often directly related to what you majored in, but often uses the skills you learned.
Hopefully we can get both of them to understand that a math major/minor is a GREAT idea if Math is what they love. Minor/Major in something practical (like accounting, finance, or MIS if you think you have to).
no subject
I'm going to take a teensy bit of devil's advocate stance. Male and Female brains are different. It's quantifiable. And, while the difference between the male & female scores on standardized tests when it comes to verbal versus spatial skills may have something to do with socialization, I really do think that evolution played a huge role in that and the differences all tie back to the quantifyable differences in the brains.
That said, I know of very few other women who grasped geometry (the only math I ever found "easy") as naturally as I did, and I know no other woman in my social circle with the same intrinsic sense of direction, distance, and landmarks. I'm often asked how do I know where north is? How did I know how to get from point A to B? How did I know how far it was and how long it would take? Where did I learn to tell these things? I don't know. I've always just known them. I'm not shitting you when I say that if you came up to me right now and asked which direction Mecca was, I would not have to think about it to point you the right way.
When I took those batteries of standardized tests in High School, I was the only woman clustered in with the top scoring men when it comes to shapes and spatial orientations. I accept the fact that I am an anomaly in terms of this skill.
However, we live in a world that in many ways does NOT resemble that which gave rise to the differences in our brains. It is no longer essential to the survival of the species that the men range far afield to hunt while the women stay closer to the camp and talk to each other a lot while they forage and rear the children.
At this stage of the game, I say it is vital for the further evolution of the species that both sexes be equally encouraged to explore every opportunity open to them.
---
Incidentally, I had two technically trained parents (RN w/OB-GYN specialty) and Electrical Engineer who always encouraged me in math and science. Other than geometry I've never found math in the least interesting, but I subscribe to Discover Magazine because I find a lot of the sciences very fascinating.
What I'm getting at, is, while I chose a career that takes advantage of my verbal/communication aptitude, I was encouraged as a little girl to discover what my real skills and interests were.
---
Oooh, and finally, we're good friends with a hispanic family. Two of the daughters in the family have a real aptitude for math, and in fact one of them wants to change her major to mathematics.
Her parents, bless them, have not placed any undue pressure on either daughter to pursue a "real" career, other than the frank question of "well, what do you do with a BS in Math?"
Ralph and I keep reminding both of them that in many cases the job you end up doing isn't often directly related to what you majored in, but often uses the skills you learned.
Hopefully we can get both of them to understand that a math major/minor is a GREAT idea if Math is what they love. Minor/Major in something practical (like accounting, finance, or MIS if you think you have to).