Guest post: If we could knock down these ridiculous cultural preconceptions
Originally a comment by James Garnett on The “Men’s & motor” area.
David Evans@1:
I think some men as well as women are likely to be put off by the idea that intellectual brilliance is what is needed in science.
THIS.
Ophelian@2:
In Japan they teach that science and math take lots of hard work.
AND THIS.
The notion of the “brilliant scientist” infuriates me. I have long maintained that anyone of reasonable intelligence and drive can make useful and important advances in the sciences if they make the effort of learning the background well, and putting in the (large amount of) effort that is required. It takes years to pick up the background and years of toil to start making the advances, but almost anyone can do it. Sure, if you’re lazy, or unwilling to think, or prone towards intellectual dishonesty, or clinging to dogma, then you probably cannot do it.
The Brilliant Scientist Up On The Pedestal Of Veneration is one of the bricks in the wall that is used to keep women out. “Girls aren’t good at math”, “brilliance is beyond average people”, etc. etc. yada yada yada. It’s horseshit.
I am the very epitome of an average person. Average in talent and intelligence, that is. I’m privileged to be male and white, but I’m still average. And yet even I, through hard work (plus the cultural expectation that I’m somehow better at STEM cuz white and male) have made modest advances in my field.
People who are neither white, nor male, nor “brilliant” work just as hard, and could do just as well in their science careers, if we could knock down these ridiculous cultural preconceptions.
This actually goes together with the need to praise kids for putting in work, not for being smart. Because it turns out kids who are “brilliant” feel lost and disheartened when they get to the tough stuff. They were always praise for doing things that came easy to them easily, so they feel ashamed to seek help or keep working when they are beyond the point where aptitude alone helped them.
I used to think I wasn’t good at math. These days, I know I’m brilliant at it, actually, and wish I was independently wealthy so I could go after a doctorate and pursue creative mathematics instead of trying to find a job with just a Bachelors. But when I was a kid no one made me feel good about what I was doing nor invited me to think deeply.
The US is far too keen on the concept of innate ability, I think. The idea that one must possess specific talents to be good at math or science is one set of examples, but they are all over. Note that people rarely talk about a “skilled” musician or athlete, it’s almost always “talented”, and often enough they are either referring to innate ability or conflating innate and learned ability. People talk about making use of one’s talents, or honing one’s talents.
I’ve been making an effort to use “skilled” instead of “talented” (unless I actually do mean “talented”), and it is so ingrained I’m finding it a really difficult habit to break.
On the topic of attitudes toward learning math, a truly delightful book is John Allen Paulos’s “Innumeracy”. He points out that people, public figures, will bald-faced state that they are not any good at math, but can you imagine someone declaring that they can’t read? Why is the latter totally embarrassing but not the former?
I know my younger sister showed great promise in science and maths until part way through year 11 (? – Form 5 in our old terminology). She’d always been encouraged to enjoy science. I was a science geek, our mother taught her to go for what she wanted to do and her nearest friend until then was very academically minded. When her grades plunged part way through the year we did a bit of digging and found that after her friend moved away, she had fallen in with another group (of girls) who, the teacher told us, said science was ‘too hard for girls’. Absolutely gutting.
I knew it wasn’t too hard for me. I kept my grades up. I was near the top of my class in math, chemistry, and physics.
But I didn’t have a deep understanding of math, and I knew I didn’t have a deep understanding, whereas I had a deep understanding of English and had started to develop it in history, and I also seemed to have a strong aptitude for performing arts. Since our culture focuses on becoming the best there is in the field of your aptitude, that’s what I planned to do. Even though I loved science, and really understood chemistry (and probably got physics as well as anyone else that age). I was afraid my math wouldn’t be good enough for me to be the next Feynman or Curie.
What was wrong though, was our teaching methods. I didn’t understand math deeply, because our entire focus was on learning algorithms, not understanding relationships and building understanding. I fell in love with math *much* later in life once I got into things like multivariable calculus, discrete math, abstract algebra, and number theory. Common Core is *supposed* to be about building understanding, but since the end is still going to be “can the kids pass a standardized test” I’m not convinced that it will solve any problems.
Absolutely this. I’m a scientist and I’m definitely not a genius. Ironically, what I’m really good at is language, and I can leverage that both to treat math as a language (what is this equation actually saying about the thing whose behaviour it describes?) and to code. You work out what you want to happen, and then you tell the computer to do that, and the computer’s language only has a couple of hundred words in it.
I don’t really agree. The people I know who have made real contributions to science do all strike me as rather brilliant. Many of them women of course. I was talking to a professor of biochemistry recently, very high in her field, and struggled to keep up, not just because she knew more about the subject but because she thought very fast and with great agility. Of course, we need non-brilliant people too to fetch and carry so to speak, but the great discoveries do really seem to get made by exceptional minds.
See the “Human Completeness Theorem”
http://mindstalk.net/humancomplete.html
I tend to agree with Pinkeen. It seems to me that, in general, the ability to function at a high intellectual level does require some innate abilities which not everyone possesses. Certainly, it is nice to hear some modest scientific types expressing their view that they are not geniuses, and probably they are not. But that doesn’t mean that they do not have innate abilities which have provided them with the resources to achieve the level of success that thez have achieved.
What is true, however, I think, is that many people (very often women) are actually treated in such a way that they come to believe that they do not have abilities which, given encouragement and opportunity, they actually do have. And that is a great pity, and a loss to all of us, who might have benefitted from contributions that such able people might have made.
Think of that in relation to societies where women are officially relegated to second class status, and the opportunities for growth that these societies discourage in half or more than half of their populations. Moreover, in such societies men are obviously valued at more than their actual value, which further diminishes the opportunities for growth, properity and good life that such societies can provide. It worries me that we allow this kind of injustice and idiocy to be imported into our societies in the name of freedom, and that defenders of freedom actually actually try to justify it in the name of freedom.
Sorry, I’m using a German keyboard layout, so if there is a y where there should be a z and vice versa, that’s because they are reversed on a German keyboard.
Samantha Vimes @ #1
I’m quoting this again just to say: Exactly!
Samantha Vimes, I’m afraid few in my child’s generation will have a deep understanding of math, because they aren’t taught enough of the foundations of mathematical concepts – how some of the central formulas and theorems were (or could be) derived from first principles.
On the one hand children are introduced to algebraic problems early, before they have the tools of algebra. So they develop the habit of using numerical methods – guessing a solution and checking, then modifying the guess. So when they finally learn algebra, they still have these habits. So counterproductive.
Sorry for being late to this party (as so often happens) — blame silly work schedule.
@ #1 & #4 Samantha Vimes:
I think those are indeed deeply profound radical roots you draw from — the basic foundation one needs in order to grasp higher-order connections in the fabric of reality, if I may mangle a lot of words ;) , is all too often overlooked. For instance, your example of how language and human culture can help understanding mathematical principles — absolutely brilliant! And I say that as someone who has only really sniffed at the edges of both. (Or was that three? Told you so ;) )
Also, logic. Almost forgot about that part here, but it must be very much ingrained in whatever we call thinking. Right?