Ch 9 - XX and XY Learning Styles

I remember my grandmother often saying "It's a man's world." Now I'm sure her statement had more to do with the cultural norms her generation lived through and less to do with the shortcomings often assumed of the female gender in their education ability. But nevertheless, the notion was there and perhaps it's still there in so many ways we've yet to uncover. But if we take her simple sentence and dissect it, when who made it a 'man's world." Of course - men did! For centuries my gender has corrupted and abused the system of humanity to gain a firm grip on the upper hand, to keep our partner gender just a little (ok, a lot) more below us. Event hough it has no mathematical relevance here, check out the poem "A Work of Artifice" by Marge Piercy and surely you'll find a much more refined and interesting look at how the woman's lot in life is decided.

Thankfully, we're moving beyond this dreadful period in our existence now. However, have our classrooms? Are they still set up for male succession over the female. Are the lessons we teach, the activities we develop, the awards we present all geared more toward the male than the female student? Throughout Rosemary's presentation we learned that indeed female underachievement should never be considered a "collary of being female". From Jo Boaler's work to numerous other researchers it is clear that the teaching environment itself is what drives the majority of the confidence, beliefs, and mathematical acheievement in many of our female students. The system seems completely ignorant to the effect its structure is having on the potential for women to reach their potential.

When I recall my school days I remember there being just 1 girl ina class of 13 for advanced math in a school where there was just about 50 graduates. Then it seemed so odd, and I remember our teacher encouraging other girls in our class to move up from the academic level but they declined. Surely some of them were at comparable levels in their math to many of the boys in our advanced class. Today, looking back perhaps those girls realized they were working against a system that was setting them behind no matter how hard they worked, perhaps they were clever in their understanding of the inequities that were unknowingly being placed out in the school system. They knew the "game" they were playing int hat the time and opportunity for understanding would not be granted in a manner they preferred in math class. Whatever the reason the motivation was not there for many to participate in the top level math course available to them. Interestingly enough though, the one girl who was in the class ranked overall second in the 13 students. In some ways, apart from her brillance in academics, she was able to rise above the cloud of confusion and disillusionment many of her female colleagues were victims of.

Today, I see such a difference in the presence of female showing up in higher level math courses and in their attitudes towards their ability and beliefs. Confidence spews from math of them, and now upon revisiting my high school the advanced math class has gone compeltely the other way, with just one male student registered compared to the seven females. It was very interesting to me in that 1) girls seem to be cogniziant that they need to work that much harder to maintain an equal footing with their male counterparts and 2) the system has changed in ways that now foster the learning styles of female students in ways that encourage their participation. Whatever the case I have noticed an increase in the number of women comign to the forefront to become reputable learners and teachers in our mathematics class. All I have to do is look around our class every Thrusday night. Need I say more? :)

With respect to the females beliefs and attitudes toward math classed Boaler sums it up best when she says that "it is important not to lay blame for their disaffection on mathematics per se because the fault lies not with the instrinsic nature of mathematics, but with school mathematics as it is commonly constructed" (p. 153). Girls can achieve. Girls want to achieve. And now girls are seeing their appetite and desire for success comign true. Girls are achieving. They are not incapable but were inherently crippled in many ways because of the nature of the school mathematics they were forced to comply with. Through a more open-ended style of teaching and learning math the creativity, intuition, and experience of our bright young female students will be enhanced, will be acknowledged, and will be most importantly sustained.