Tue 5 Jun 2007
The Other Interesting Thing About My High School. And My Math Brain.
Posted by Liza under Personal, Training and Development, Opinion, Are you bored yet?
Don’t you hate it when writers say “First, XYZ” and then never get around to making a second point?
Me too.
The second point that I meant to make, before getting on a long and navel-gazingly interesting discussion about social class, is that my high school was an International Baccalaureate school.
At the time, not only were there not very many in the US, but there were really few IB programs in central city public schools. There are more now, but I think it’s still a program mostly geared towards elite international schools.
For freshmen there were “regular” and “honors” classes. But as you began selecting sophmore classes, the selection involved also deciding whether or not you were “pre-IB.” Then as a junior and senior, you could be “full-IB,” take some IB classes, or take regular and maybe also some honors classes. I don’t actually remember whether or not there were honors classes for juniors and seniors that weren’t IB.
To my 14 year old geek self, there were 2 primary benefits of being full-IB, meaning that you took at least 3 IB classes per semester. First, you didn’t have to take gym physical education, and second, you didn’t have to take the notoriously uninspiring class “College Skills 2.” No boredom AND no gym PE??? Sign me up!
As it turned out, there were other benefits too. We had great intellectually engaging classes, and terrific teachers.
I was well prepared for college. In fact, I think it was law school before I had another set of exams that were as long as the IB exams. But if you learn to take 3 or 4 hour exams at 17, they aren’t as intimidating.
Personally, I wienied out on the IB diploma. I was intimidated by the math, and also the idea of having to write a 4000 word paper. But I still took a bunch of rigorous, creative, surprisingly fun classes.
LONG DIGRESSION:
I figured out a couple of years ago where my fear of math came from. Would that I could go back and explain to my 8 year old self what was actually happening.
I was an unbelievably dorky 8 year old. We’re talking thick glasses, poorly washed hair in a gender-ambiguous cut, nose picking, if not reading then acting out scenes from books, afraid of the ball, thought a Fiddler on the Roof birthday party was a great idea, in other words, a top quality outcast.
To make matters worse, I was in 5th grade at the time, not 3rd or 4th. My classmates were on the verge of puberty. They were picking new crushes and I was picking my nose. And they were also picking on me. I was pretty cotton-picking miserable.
That’s the context in 1978 in which I was pulled out of class to do “math programs” on something called a computer.
The math programs were basic arithmatic and incredibly boring. Plus the UI had the numbers going across the screen and I could only do math vertically. And the teacher watched over the shoulders of the 2 or 3 of us being subjected to this torture.
I drew the obvious conclusion — I was being punished for being so horrible at math.
It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and telling someone this story that I Got It.
No one was putting the kid who sucked at math in front of a computer in 1978.
I was good at math, and unlucky in that the programmers and teachers picked a math program that wasn’t a good fit for me.
Sadly, I can’t go slap my 16 year old self upside the head and make her stay in Advanced Math II or enroll in IB Pre-Calc.
June 5th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
I really wimped out on that front. The only IB classes I took were English one and two. Oddly enough, I did not take the American or British lit classes that usually precede them, so I had no idea how to write an essay the way they wanted me to.
The way I saw things then (and to some extent now) the IB classes were for people going to “Big Colleges” like Northwestern or where ever. I knew early on I was going to state college so why put myself through the hassle?
The truth is I only got myself into IB English because King’s non-honors English classes were mind numbingly boring.
Then I had to read Jane Austin…which was mind numbingly boring.
I think I came close to convincing Dr Stark into letting me skip Jane on the grounds that if a man had written the same book it would have been called sexist and never considered for a school curriculum. She didn’t go for it, but I remember thinking I had a pretty good argument.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:22 am
i think a lot of girls had similar experiences with deciding that they are bad at math, and then it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
i was put in a special algebra class in 6th grade and loved it. obviously i was good at math in 6th grade for them to put me in the class. in 7th grade (first year of junior high) i started getting Ds in 7th grade math, which was mostly algebra. why? i should have had a head start since it was the first time most other 7th graders had seen algebra. i deduced that i am bad at math. once i’d decided that i’m bad at math, no one tried to convince me otherwise and i avoided as much as possible. (i haven’t had any math classes since junior year in high school. i avoided it in college by taking symbolic logic, which i aced.) in retrospect i realized that i had a terrible math teacher in 7th grade. one bad math teacher and from then on i’m “bad at math.”
EXCEPT, senior year of high school i took AP/honors physics, which is pretty much all calculus (after getting C’s in trig and avoiding taking calc altogether). this was pretty much the hardest class offered at my high school, and there were only two other students in the class. i wasn’t a star in AP physics but i got through it. we proved einstein’s theory of relativity. time is relative. how does someone who is bad at math prove einstein’s theory?
i still say i’m bad at math at least once a week or so.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I am fascinated by this “bad at math” thing. Because I still believe I am bad at math too… But I am in a job where math makes a daily appearence in the form of fit measurements, fabric weight and determining design feasabilty based on overall garment manufacturing costs. And I am very good at my job. (???)
Liza and I were never on the same school track as kids. Our parents never wanted me to have to be known as “Liza’s little sister” by all of my teachers and then feel I had to live up to their preconceived expectations. So instead of the magnet schools Liza went to, I went to the public elementary school taught entirely in German. My first math skills were all taught to me in German and I did OK. Not fantastic, but not bad. BUT when I entered Middle School and went to “super schwanky private prep school”, where I was taught math in English, I dropped behind drastically! I stayed that way until I had fulfilled my minimum math requirements to graduate and get into my chosen college.
My 2 excuses were always that I was bad at it due to the German sentence structure in which I initially learned math, and that I was a more “visual” person. Since math, especially Algebra, follows very particular order in solving the different elements of a problem, I would get the order mixed up because the German sentence structure in which I had learned it was inverted to the English sentence structure which I was now learning it. (none of my teachers ever believed me, but I did do almost all of 7th grade Algerba in my head in German before writing it down). And I was always a little better at Geometry than I was at Algerba. Having the visual element of the math and measurements made it feel less tedious to me. Plus at that point I was also taking Mechanical Drawing and Architectural Drawing classes and was able to cross reference the elements in a more relateable way. Still, I never opted to take an advanced Geometry class. As soon as I passed it I was DONE! …because I was bad at math!
Knowing what I know now, I wonder where I REALLY bought that bill of goods??
June 6th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I am more convinced than ever that we are twins seperated at birth. Your description of yourself in elementary school? Me me me. And I was also picked to be part of the new computer sciences classes in my elementary school. I learned programming in basic and was supposed to do math on the computer, too. And, I became absolutely convinced that I was terrible at math. The thing is, looking back now I can see that it was bad teachers and bad pedagogy that was my problem, not an inherent inability to do math. When I was in 11th grade and taking analytic trig/pre-calculus I was continually behind the rest of the class in terms of skills UNTIL we hit the section of the class where we were using formulae to figure out the half lives of various radioactive particles. I caught that immediately and was tutoring other students in the class on how to work those problems. The girl at the bottom of the class shot immediately to the top. Why? Because those formulae were related to carbon and potassium-argon dating of archaeological materials — so, for the first time in all my advanced math classes, I could see how the (in my eyes) esoteric functions of math related to something that I was passionately interested in.
Of course, I chose not to go on and take the AP calculus class my senior year despite the strong objections of my math teacher, because I was convinced that I was terrible at math.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:48 am
oh, and the funny thing? I was convinced I was bad at math, so I didn’t take the AP calculus class even though my teacher STRONGLY encouraged me to. But I stubbornly insisted on taking the AP English class even though THAT teacher did everything but flat-out REFUSE to take me on as a student. And that teacher did go on to tell me not to waste my parents’ money by taking an exam there was no way I’d pass. I got a 4 out of 5 on the AP English exam whereas the rest of the people in the class who passed (and a great many did not) passed only with a 3…
I wonder, if I’d had the same amount of stubborn determination to do well at math, what would I have been able to accomplish with that math teacher who, though mostly unable to engage me, was at least encouraging and eager to have me as a student, as opposed to that english teacher who resented and discouraged me at every turn?
June 6th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Bad pedagogy can play such a huge role in these kinds of things.
In spite of my “bad at math” self-image, I was in a fabulous advanced math program in 7th & 8th grade. What made it fabulous? Small class with a great creative teacher.
In 9th grade, creative staffing needs because of a maternity leave in the math department meant that I had Teacher A at the beginning of the year, then 2 months of Teacher B, then back to Teacher A.
With Teacher A, I was a B student with occasional low As. With Teacher B, I was a C student with occasional low Bs. Fortunately I pulled of Bs for my final grades, but it was a solid reinforcement of my “bad at math” thing.
(For the core group of readers who might care, Teacher A was Ms. Bussey. I’ve blocked out Teacher B’s name, and although I could probably track it down, why? I don’t think it was a question of incompetence, I think it was a communication/pedagogy style thing.)
June 7th, 2007 at 8:24 am
i must have had bad english teachers because i don’t know what “pedagogy” means. yay for dictionary.com!
i had a similar experience to trista, i didn’t take the AP physics exam even though i had taken AP physics but i took the AP history exam despite not being allowed to take AP history because the teacher didn’t think my history grades were good enough. i got a 5. i too wonder what i could have done in the math and science fields if i had had the same attitude towards math as i had toward the social sciences.
and like trista, i also largely attribute my relative success in physics vs. my failure in math classes to the fact that the math was “for a reason” in physics.
coincidentally, yesterday i was told that i am good at math! we bought a car and when the guy told us the price was X plus 5% sales tax, i immediately calculated the sales tax in my head. to me, that seems really simple (i just took off a zero and divided by 2) but both travis and the car salesman seemed impressed and said i am a math whiz. just thought that was ironic in the context of this conversation.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
My favorite English teacher is actually lurking and reading this discussion. As is my favorite History teacher. Don’t you wish they would comment too?
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:10 am
We’re about the same age and it astounds me how us girls were steered away (either consciously or unconsciously) from math and all things quantitative, even in the 1970s. I grew up with a great Mom who made my sister and me believe we could be anything we wanted to be with enough hard work and gumption. My Grandmother was president of her NOW chapter and took us to suffragette marches on the US Capitol and taught us to expect — never ASK for — equal treatment in all realms of society.
And yet it was also taken for granted that a calculator would not be a career tool tucked away in our attache cases (next to the “Scarf Magic” book.)
I remember being placed in advanced math classes up through 8th grade, and then something happened. I was a lazy student and generally school came easily to me. Math OTOH, started becoming a challenge. I actually kind of liked it, even though I wasn’t earning my customary A’s without lifting a finger. I brought home an Algebra exam once on which I scored a miserable “C-”. And my Mother, God bless her, wanted to make me feel better so she said: “It’s okay. I was never good at math either. You’re more of a verbal person.” It was as though I’d been given a Get-Out-Of-Math-Free-Pass. So I proceded to a prep school and took 3 foreign languages but only the minimum math classes.
Fast-forward through dropping out of college at 17, being a slacker guitarist in a RiotGRRRL band, and having a show on the local college radio station. At some point I got my act together and went back to community college at night. I took a basic stats class and LOVED it. I even got an A. I thought: I'’m going to see how far I can take this. So I took pre-calc and did similarly well. I kept going — not always getting A’s, but enjoying the challenge and feeling great about conquering the evil Calculus Ogre. I transferred to a 4-year college and graduated at age 30 with a BS in Statistics. I went on and earned an MS in Statistics at Virginia Tech. It was hard, and I was always at the bottom of my class rank-wise, but hey, at least I finished.
I spent a few years as a math and statistics instructor at two different colleges, one of which happened to be my undergraduate alma mater. And here is the thing: YOUNG WOMEN ARE STILL BEING GIVEN A “PASS” AND NOT EXPECTED TO EXCEL IN MATHEMATICS!!! I was astounded. This was 2000-2004. It got to the point where in my first-class-of-the-semester spiel, I’d say, “Please, never come to my office and say the words: ‘I’ve never been very good at math.’ I cannot stand hearing that. Nobody ever goes to an English teacher and says, ‘You know, I’ve just never been very good at reading….’ ” and this would usually get a laugh and lighten the mood a bit. But seriously! It’s the same thing! There is no reason why a person in college cannot at least get through a pre-calculus class. And it is SO necessary. Data-driven evidence is becoming so integral in almost every professional and academic discipline; I believe our young women are being done a terrible disservice when they are given a pass on this score. (The Soft Sexism of Low Math Expectations?)
I heartily agree with the posters above about the quality of teachers and pedagogies that are geared toward ‘male’ ways of thinking. My abolutely wonderful undergrad Calc professor and mentor (Dr. I-Lok Chang, a gem of a man and educator) would always say: “You must teach in three ways: in words, in pictures, and in symbols.” He recognized that people learn differently and if a student can grab on to one of the ways a concept is presented, the other ways will follow.
On top of that, you are absolutely right about the computer thing, and it is a complete schande that they did that to you. I suspect there was no malevolent intent; I’d hazard a guess that they got these computers and had to figure out a way to utilize them and justify the expense. I had a similar experience with some Tandy (were they TRS-80s?) computers in a 9th grade math class. Their existence and our work with them made absolutely no sense to me.
I’m going back to school for an EdD in Math Education. I am determined to dispel the myth that young women cannot do math. I am also on a quest to teach the world the correct interpretation of a confidence interval. But that’s another story for another day.
–Marice (Rhymes with “Paris”)