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Observations about kids at the camp


lewelma
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DS told us last night that there are only 2 girls this year our of 26.  How does this happen?  Also, there are only 2 white kids and the rest are Asian. It just seems so stereotyped.  I don't know what to think.  DS was told in jest that he was terrible at ping pong because he was not Asian. ;) But he still gets to play because he was the only one smart enough to bring the ping pong balls! :D

 

Ruth in NZ

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I have a photo of my son's MOSP (the US math olympiad training camp) class from 2005.  That year, there were 31 camp kids in the black & blue levels. These levels are the highest scores in the nation on the USAMO. Of these, only 2 were girls. About half of the 31 campers were Asian, the rest white....

 

These days MOSP usually adds a separate subgroup for the highest scoring girls, who train for the China Girls' math olympiad.

 

Here's a photo of a CTY grand awards ceremony, i.e., a group of kids scoring at the SET level (700+ on SAT) before their 13th birthdays. Similar demographics. My very white daughter was in that group, and she really felt what it was to be in the minority that day!

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I'm not sure of the definition of "Asian" in these cases.  Of the kids I know in this highly gifted group, several seem to have one Asian parent and one Caucasian parent.  Thus although they might look Asian in a photo, they are perhaps genetically, and culturally(?), as Caucasian as they are Asian.  And of course they are all Americans.

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At Math Kangaroo the last few years, DD10 stuck out like a sore thumb-a white girl among mostly boys of Asian ancestry (there are usually two of them-there's another girl her age who does both most of the math competitions in the area and does the same piano camp each summer-they're both tiny, very dark haired, very pale girls, so you have these two clones....)

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But why?  Where are we going wrong with the girls?   When I taught highschool math, the best students were girls.  The boys were all bluster, 'this is too easy', 'give me something hard to do', but the girls got down to business and got the work done efficiently and accurately.  Are the girls just not directed to more difficult material, like the competitions? 

 

As for our Asian contingency over here, ds said they were mostly from China and Korea.  And in NZ they are most likely children of first generation immigrants.  So given how well respected the IMO is in those countries, I'm sure we are looking at a straight forward cultural effect.  But at some point this would slide, wouldn't it, to the new country's culture?  Can you have a strong cultural effect in 4th and 5th generation immigrants? 

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Interesting opening for a good discussion about cultures.  :)

 

Absolutely.  My ds has been taking Mandarin for 5 years, and has studied Wing Tsun with a *very* traditional, 64-year old, chinese teacher for 6 years. So we have a lot of Asian friends, and for DS, it is a complete non-issue.  The other white kid is Jewish American; both girls are Asian.  DS is the first homeschooler ever so gets a few questions.

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But why?  Where are we going wrong with the girls?

 

I am not sure it means we are doing anything wrong with the girls. There are physiological differences in the brains of males vs. females.  (I did a VERY quick google and found this link http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ)  

 

Consider my 16 yr old dd.  She is pretty close to being every bit as good at math as her older brother.  Trust me when I say that pre-cal is most definitely her easiest class and she searches through the book trying to find harder questions.  I would say on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most difficult, math is a 1 or 2 (I just asked her and she burst out laughing.  "Yes," she said, "it is a 1 or 2." )

 

But, she doesn't like math, even though it is easy.  She LOVES words and languages.  There is no failure in her not pursuing anything math related.  It is simply preference.  Now, if she wanted to pursue something in math and was discouraged simply bc she possesses two Xs, that would be a failure.  But based on physiology, it really isn't surprising to see the gender differences.

 

Now, the racial differences, otoh, that I believe is failure.

 

And Mathwonk, obviously we have no idea about both parents, but in addition to looking Asian, the other winners' names read Asian: Fang, Li, Wang, Zhang, etc. :)

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But why? Where are we going wrong with the girls? ...

Can you have a strong cultural effect in 4th and 5th generation immigrants?

This is just for my area. Elementary school teachers tend to cut too much slack for girls in math and science. The same teachers cut too much slack in boys for writing. The teachers also have higher expectations of Asians probably because we are notorious for afterschooling.

 

The girls from tech industry families are going to be afterschooled and some coach for STEM competitions. These girls can look at lady CEOs in the industry as someone to aspire to. The girls who don't have family coaching/encouragement are going to be aiming for sports like gym championships.

 

Yesterday there was a free local Lego competition 1st-6th grade at the local library. All the competitors were asian and about half are girls. A girl won. All parents present were Asians, the three judges were Caucasians. My city school age children is about 30% Asians, 30% white, 30% Latino/Hispanic according to demographic report by school district.

 

Girls being good in STEM is so normal in Asia no one thinks twice about their daughter working in engineering or even construction. There is no hype to get girls into STEM. There is no need for pink construction toys for girls to like science. It's a cultural shock here that school girls are allowed to say they are bad in math or science and do nothing about it.

 

As for cultural effects on 4th, 5th gen immigrants. I am guessing from what I see that it is diluted down the line. Some 2nd gen immigrant parents are feeling the competition from 1st gen immigrant parents and becoming competitive.

 

Immigration however never stop. China and India (with the biggest populations by country) are going to continue to have citizens migrating in hope for greener pastures. There would always be the immigrant effect.

 

ETA:

In my kids homeschool science class, all the girls have at least a parent in a STEM related field.

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I looked at the California math, physics, and biology contests and they were 99% Asian/Indian participants. Definitely mostly Chinese names and 95% male. The racial disparity is stunning in a state so heavily Latino.

 

But, it's not just STEM fields. I take my youngest to baby story time in French and Hebrew at the La Jolla library. It's always 95% Asian, and again, mostly Chinese. Why Hebrew? They just don't care. The Asian parents stretch and push those synapses early and often. 99% of the Caucasian moms are at the park next door, chatting, looking at cell phones, and drinking Starbucks.

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I am not sure it means we are doing anything wrong with the girls.

 

But, she doesn't like math, even though it is easy.  She LOVES words and languages.  There is no failure in her not pursuing anything math related.  It is simply preference. 

 

:iagree:

 

Oldest DD sailed through high school level math when she was quite young. She could not care less about math competitions.  Not a failure at all, just possibly a different attitude toward high ability. 

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IMO, the gender difference is due to cultural, not biological, factors.

 

Here's a research study that attempts to quantify & explain both cultural and gender discrepancies in the mathematical problem solving community in the US (one of the authors is a former coach of the US IMO team):

Cross-Cultural Analysis of Students with Exceptional Talent in Mathematical Problem Solving

 

Lots of good data here, but since we're talking about girls in math, take a look at table 5. The US had only 3 girls on their IMO team from 1974 through 2008. During the same time period, Bulgaria had 21, East Germany/Germany had 19, USSR/Russia had 15, Canada had 9, & the UK had 11. Something is going on culturally in the US :confused1: Our girls aren't born with stupider math genes!

 

As a teacher & parent of the math gifted, I've noted that girls keep up with the boy both in talent and in numbers until middle school or so. After that, girls drop off dramatically. Just take a look at MathCounts, summer math camps, math tournaments like Harvard-MIT's, or participation at math circles or the AoPS forums. When you get all the way to the highest levels, whether the IMO team or math PhD recipients, there are very few US-born women left.

 

The paper cited above first looks at the backgrounds of all the US kids who excel at the highest levels in math in high school and college. These are the kids going to the elite math camps, winning USAMO and Putnam awards, etc. One trait that they had in common during high school was spending a lot of time on extracurricular math pursuits outside of school. This could be working with a mentor or PhD parent, attending summer math camps, being on a TJHSST-type math team, or attending a math circle.

 

Then the paper looked at all the girls in the US who made it to the top 25 of the USAMO. Almost all of them were foreign-born, Asian-American, or homeschooled. The authors hypothesize that the scarcity of USA born, non-Asian, schooled girls is not due to a lack of intrinsic aptitude & ability, but instead due to the their choosing to spend less & less of their free time on extracurricular math pursuits as they reach the teenage years. Why do these girls choose to move on to other things? The authors suspect that it's because of the cultural attitude here. It's not cool to do math, & there's a social stigma to being a 'mathlete' among teenaged girls ..and I'd tend to agree with them.

 

Girls often prefer collaborative to competitive "I win, you lose" situations.

 

Girls suffer from imposter syndrome in higher numbers, "I must be smart because I work hard, not because I'm brilliant at math"...

 

There's also attrition of women in the pipeline from starting a PhD program to becoming a tenured faculty member. A female TA might get comments on her course evaluations like, "She's very good so far, but I doubt she'll be any good next semester when the material gets harder. Girls can't do that stuff."  Her PhD advisor makes sexist remarks and always seats her facing a picture of a naked woman on the wall of his office. She hears at job interviews for tenure track positions, "Do you plan on marrying & having a family?"  When she does obtain a faculty position, she finds herself the only female faculty member out of 30 or so profs. Her coworker advises her to "Concentrate on publishing and don't give up your chance of a career by marrying and having kids." She finally gets tired of the constant feeling of being alone & wonders why a girl from a working class, rural family ever thought she had it in her to be a mathematician...

 

This attrition leads to a lack of women on the math faculty at some colleges, which in turn implies a lack of role models for young women seeking math careers. My dd took many math classes at Stanford, & never had a female math prof. I found that really sad.

 

Until we fix these cultural problems and make it rewarding to acknowledge and develop mathematical talent, we're going to continue to have few women at the uppermost levels.

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I am not sure it means we are doing anything wrong with the girls. There are physiological differences in the brains of males vs. females.  (I did a VERY quick google and found this link http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ)  

 

Consider my 16 yr old dd.  She is pretty close to being every bit as good at math as her older brother.  Trust me when I say that pre-cal is most definitely her easiest class and she searches through the book trying to find harder questions.  I would say on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most difficult, math is a 1 or 2 (I just asked her and she burst out laughing.  "Yes," she said, "it is a 1 or 2." )

 

But, she doesn't like math, even though it is easy.  She LOVES words and languages.  There is no failure in her not pursuing anything math related.  It is simply preference.  Now, if she wanted to pursue something in math and was discouraged simply bc she possesses two Xs, that would be a failure.  But based on physiology, it really isn't surprising to see the gender differences.

 

Now, the racial differences, otoh, that I believe is failure.

 

And Mathwonk, obviously we have no idea about both parents, but in addition to looking Asian, the other winners' names read Asian: Fang, Li, Wang, Zhang, etc. :)

 

I hear you, 8. It is no failure that we as a society encourage kids to follow their own interests, STEM or not.  It is just that white females students represent 35% of the NZ population, and not a single one of them has enough interest in math to go to the camp.  Really? I see it as a failure that we have clearly not encouraged them to even see math as an option worth considering.

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There's also attrition of women in the pipeline from starting a PhD program to becoming a tenured faculty member. A female TA might get comments on her course evaluations like, "She's very good so far, but I doubt she'll be any good next semester when the material gets harder. Girls can't do that stuff."  Her PhD advisor makes sexist remarks and always seats her facing a picture of a naked woman on the wall of his office. She hears at job interviews for tenure track positions, "Do you plan on marrying & having a family?"  When she does obtain a faculty position, she finds herself the only female faculty member out of 30 or so profs. Her coworker advises her to "Concentrate on publishing and don't give up your chance of a career by marrying and having kids." She finally gets tired of the constant feeling of being alone & wonders why a girl from a working class, rural family ever thought she had it in her to be a mathematician...

 

Please don't tell me these were your personal experiences. :crying:

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he US had only 3 girls on their IMO team from 1974 through 2008. During the same time period, Bulgaria had 21, East Germany/Germany had 19, USSR/Russia had 15, Canada had 9, & the UK had 11. Something is going on culturally in the US :confused1:

 

Wow. I'm assuming someone has done a study on *why* this is true.  How these cultures more effectively interest girls in higher level math.

 

I also posted a couple weeks ago about the run-in with my neighbor who was very clear that she thought majoring in math was a waste of time because it would not lead to any jobs.  And I think she is pretty representative of the attitude here. Which might explain why there are only 2 non-Asians at the camp, and those 2 have American parents. 

 

ETA: Wow.  I just realised that this likely means that there is not a single 'native' NZ kid at the camp.  Yes, they are all NZers now, but the family attitudes represent other cultures. 

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I wish they weren't, but they were. :mad:

 

I liked your response upthread because it very clearly explained to me a situation I was rather perplexed about. Like Ruth, that you experienced this personally, I definitely cannot like. Infuriated really. :grouphug:

 

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Dd16 is the only girl on her Robotics team.  Racially it's more diverse, a mix of Chinese and Indian and white.

 

Weirdly, at the FLL level, right here in the same town, the team dd participated in was about 99% Indian boys.  Not a single Chinese kid, and she was the only girl.  I think there may have been 1 or two other white kids.

 

I'm still on their email list - this year they said they had enough girls to form their own team.  I thought things might be turning around... well, in one way, maybe, but I looked at the pic in the paper - all Indian girls!

 

My brother runs a Science team at his high school - not sure about this year, but last I saw a pic it was almost all Chinese, with an Indian or two, no white kids.  There were girls, though.

 

Dd14 wanted to join a Robotics team this year, but didn't want to join the local all-boy one.  She joined one 1/2 hour away - only one Indian kid (still no Chinese?) and while there are still lots more boys, there's a very healthy ratio of girls.

 

I think part of this phenomenon might be people tending to gather in like groups?  When a group is overwhelmingly of one sort, it subliminally sends out the message to those not of that sort "you don't belong here", even if the group has no such intent, even if it's actively recruiting 'others'.  It takes a strong personality to overcome being the only one like you in a group.  Dd16 doesn't seem to be that bothered by it.  Dd14 is much more sensitive to it.

 

Most of the Asians I know here that are heavily afterschooling are recent immigrants (many of the kids were even born abroad).  The kids from the next generation or from mixed-race households seem to be much more typically "American" - maybe still have high academic expectations, but not to the exclusion of all else (like friends, free time, sports, tv/internet).

 

 

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IMO, the gender difference is due to cultural, not biological, factors.

 

Here's a research study that attempts to quantify & explain both cultural and gender discrepancies in the mathematical problem solving community in the US (one of the authors is a former coach of the US IMO team):

Cross-Cultural Analysis of Students with Exceptional Talent in Mathematical Problem Solving

 

Lots of good data here, but since we're talking about girls in math, take a look at table 5. The US had only 3 girls on their IMO team from 1974 through 2008. During the same time period, Bulgaria had 21, East Germany/Germany had 19, USSR/Russia had 15, Canada had 9, & the UK had 11. Something is going on culturally in the US :confused1: Our girls aren't born with stupider math genes!

 

As a teacher & parent of the math gifted, I've noted that girls keep up with the boy both in talent and in numbers until middle school or so. After that, girls drop off dramatically. Just take a look at MathCounts, summer math camps, math tournaments like Harvard-MIT's, or participation at math circles or the AoPS forums. When you get all the way to the highest levels, whether the IMO team or math PhD recipients, there are very few US-born women left.

 

The paper cited above first looks at the backgrounds of all the US kids who excel at the highest levels in math in high school and college. These are the kids going to the elite math camps, winning USAMO and Putnam awards, etc. One trait that they had in common during high school was spending a lot of time on extracurricular math pursuits outside of school. This could be working with a mentor or PhD parent, attending summer math camps, being on a TJHSST-type math team, or attending a math circle.

 

Then the paper looked at all the girls in the US who made it to the top 25 of the USAMO. Almost all of them were foreign-born, Asian-American, or homeschooled. The authors hypothesize that the scarcity of USA born, non-Asian, schooled girls is not due to a lack of intrinsic aptitude & ability, but instead due to the their choosing to spend less & less of their free time on extracurricular math pursuits as they reach the teenage years. Why do these girls choose to move on to other things? The authors suspect that it's because of the cultural attitude here. It's not cool to do math, & there's a social stigma to being a 'mathlete' among teenaged girls ..and I'd tend to agree with them.

 

Girls often prefer collaborative to competitive "I win, you lose" situations.

 

Girls suffer from imposter syndrome in higher numbers, "I must be smart because I work hard, not because I'm brilliant at math"...

 

There's also attrition of women in the pipeline from starting a PhD program to becoming a tenured faculty member. A female TA might get comments on her course evaluations like, "She's very good so far, but I doubt she'll be any good next semester when the material gets harder. Girls can't do that stuff."  Her PhD advisor makes sexist remarks and always seats her facing a picture of a naked woman on the wall of his office. She hears at job interviews for tenure track positions, "Do you plan on marrying & having a family?"  When she does obtain a faculty position, she finds herself the only female faculty member out of 30 or so profs. Her coworker advises her to "Concentrate on publishing and don't give up your chance of a career by marrying and having kids." She finally gets tired of the constant feeling of being alone & wonders why a girl from a working class, rural family ever thought she had it in her to be a mathematician...

 

This attrition leads to a lack of women on the math faculty at some colleges, which in turn implies a lack of role models for young women seeking math careers. My dd took many math classes at Stanford, & never had a female math prof. I found that really sad.

 

Until we fix these cultural problems and make it rewarding to acknowledge and develop mathematical talent, we're going to continue to have few women at the uppermost levels.

 

FWIW, I got a lot of that even as music history/musicology major. My saxophone professor told me flat out that he'd never seen a woman complete an academic music path at that particular university (and I ended up eventually getting my final degree in education, not in musicology) and suggested that if I wanted to be a musicologist, I should transfer elsewhere. Because ultimately, I was going to face a lot harder path as a woman than I would if I were a man. When I switched to education, humorously doing research that strongly overlapped what I'd been doing as a music major (and with many of the same people still on my committee), where women were a major part of the department, suddenly the critiques.became much more constructive and much less destructive.

 

One thing that I loved last summer at the conference was seeing just how many female herpetologists/ichthyologists there are out there at all levels. And she got a very, very warm and supportive welcome from the female herpetologists at all levels. One of the moms of one of the high school pre-bac students commented that her son mostly got ignored and allowed to blend into the background, while DD had someone coming up to talk to her almost constantly. Part of that, I'm sure, is that her age makes her a lot more noticable, but part of it was, I think, these women seeing a chance to encourage a girl in a world that isn't always friendly.

 

I think in the US South, part of the absence of girls, and especially of girls who aren't from families recently immigrated from Asia or Eastern Europe in math competitions is that there's a definite aura of "girls don't compete with boys". My mother relates tales of being told that she shouldn't take a job from a man who needed one to support his family, and I think that still holds to a degree. So girls' sports can be completely, utterly and totally competitive, but when something is co-ed, the girls just seem to fold. In academics, there are certain areas girls are allowed to excel in-Writing, for example, but math and science are considered male domains. It was the case when I was in school-and I was in a magnet program for math/science. There were about the same number of girls/boys accepted into the specialized program-but invariably, when you looked at the kids who did the academic competitions, it was very gender divided.

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I think part of this phenomenon might be people tending to gather in like groups?  When a group is overwhelmingly of one sort, it subliminally sends out the message to those not of that sort "you don't belong here", even if the group has no such intent, even if it's actively recruiting 'others'.

 

Interesting. I bet this is going on at the 4 NZ schools that are sending most of the kids (like 80%).  So in contrast to America, a lot of these kids know each other from school, and since all the kids are Asian, the math competitions become an Asian boys' thing at these schools.

 

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So girls' sports can be completely, utterly and totally competitive, but when something is co-ed, the girls just seem to fold.
 

 

Very insightful.  I would not have thought of that distinction.  And unfortunately, I think many people view girls competitions as not really real when a co-ed competition in the same field is available.  Like 'you need your own competition because you can't cut the real one.'

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How these cultures more effectively interest girls in higher level math.

The Germans in my kids German Saturday school do not cut their daughters any slack in math or science. Germany's Chancellor Merkel has a doctorate in physics so there is a role model out there. I think it is more of not getting negative messages than about getting positive ones.

Having math guide books (e.g. those by Danica McKellar) targeted at girls sents a sublimal message that girls need a customized math education.

I attended NUS for undergrad engin. The dept head of Electrical Engin. is a lady. Lady lecturers can be easily found in EE, CE, ME, ChemE.

 

As for a career in math, people are not tied to being mathematicians. Many get jobs in actuarial science/finance too.

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I had similar negative experiences as mentioned upthread. I LOVED math and it was definitely my passion.  But I couldn't stomach the extreme competetiveness - it sucked all the fun out of it.  There was even an element of showing the white girl that asians/indians were smarter that came from the parents - (I grew-up in a rural midwest town but there was a university so my school was quite diverse).  Very unpleasant.  I stopped competing early high school.  

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Very insightful.  I would not have thought of that distinction.  And unfortunately, I think many people view girls competitions as not really real when a co-ed competition in the same field is available.  Like 'you need your own competition because you can't cut the real one.'

 

 

Just think of the language that most schools use when describing girls' and women's sports. They are the "Lady Spartans" or the "Lady XYZ mascot," not the real Spartans/team. One of the reasons I never looked seriously at the Marines was because they refer to female marines as WMs (women marines) and used to run the "We're looking for a few good men" ads when I was considering military service.

 

I agree with those that assert that the dearth of women in math is cultural vs. inborn. How many of us were straight A math students in middle/high school and beyond. Yet, it *never* occurred to me to consider joining a math club and participating in math contests.  As if. Cheerleading? Yes. Volleyball? Sure. But, a math contest? Uh, no. Not even on my radar, and potentially considered social suicide for some.

 

Even in college, I did very well in math. Talked to my professors about it quite a bit, was finally stoked to see the beauty of math, but no one ever encouraged me to major in Math (at a LAC where almost everyone double majored in something). If you're smart in the U.S., you're encouraged to become a doctor or lawyer (or more recently, in tech). If your're competitive, you become an athlete or work on Wall Street. That's the culture for a lot of high-achieving/high-ability students in the U.S.

 

 

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The physiological differences in the brain are real.  http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html (This is from a 10 sec google.  I don't have time to search for a better article.

 

 

Scientists working at Johns Hopkins University, recently reporting in the "Cerebral Cortex" scholarly journal (1), have discovered that there is a brain region in the cortex, called inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) which is significantly larger in men than in women. This area is bilateral and is located just above the level of the ears (parietal cortex).

Furthermore, the left side IPL is larger in men than the right side. In women, this asymmetry is reversed, although the difference between left and right sides is not so large as in men, noted the JHU researchers. This is the same area which was shown to be larger in the brain of Albert Einstein, as well as in other physicists and mathematicians. So, it seems that IPL's size correlates highly with mental mathematical abilities. 

 

HOWEVER, it culture most definitely does play a difference.  Perhaps the biggest factor in the US is that we have a "follow your dream" culture vs. a more dictated philosophy toward career goals/objectives.  

I imagine in many cultures our dd would have been pushed toward STEM b/c for sure there is more $$ and stability in that direction vs. my letting her do whatever she wants. (She is currently fascinated with language restoration....not much of a practical field.   :tongue_smilie: ) The latter is probably very foreign to many cultures.  

 

Another huge part in general is American attitudes toward education.  Most Americans don't value education enough to exert any effort beyond sending their kids to the local public school.  Those that do are the ones having educational success (goodness knows, it isn't happening in most classrooms.)  Combine that with the boring approach to science and math used in schools, no wonder.  :eek:

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I imagine in many cultures our dd would have been pushed toward STEM b/c for sure there is more $$ and stability in that direction vs. my letting her do whatever she wants. (She is currently fascinated with language restoration....not much of a practical field.   :tongue_smilie: ) The latter is probably very foreign to many cultures.

That is a very interesting point. very.

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I think part of this phenomenon might be people tending to gather in like groups?  When a group is overwhelmingly of one sort, it subliminally sends out the message to those not of that sort "you don't belong here", even if the group has no such intent, even if it's actively recruiting 'others'. 

 

National Spelling Bee and National Geographic Bee.  It is happening not just in the STEM areas.

 

 

.  Perhaps the biggest factor in the US is that we have a "follow your dream" culture vs. a more dictated philosophy toward career goals/objectives.  

 

I imagine in many cultures our dd would have been pushed toward STEM b/c for sure there is more $$ and stability in that direction vs. my letting her do whatever she wants.

 

Outside of US, it probably also depends on how comfortable the parents are with their financial situation.  A wealthy family would be less stressed with a child following his/her dream.  A family that needs the first born to help financially would be more worried.

 

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I don't think it is a ''problem" that some groups choose not to compete in math/science/technology or in sports/dance or in beauty pageants or in anything else.  It is just a preference, regardless of race or gender.  Most folks in my cultural background just aren't into intense mental competition.  Most of the people in my family were very good at lots of things (including math, science, computers, etc.) but either did not compete ever, or just competed at more of a recreational level.

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I just talked about this thread with dd and she brought up an interesting pt. She was wondering if the notes in a language (of course it has to do with language ;) ) could also play a factor in brain development. She thinks she remembers reading that Oriental intonations actually hit higher pitches. Thinking about the connection between music and math made her wonder if a different part of the brain might be being stimulated that enhances mathematical thinking.

 

No idea, but I thought it was an interesting thought.

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Thanks 8! :)

 

I just talked about this thread with dd and she brought up an interesting pt. She was wondering if the notes in a language (of course it has to do with language ;) ) could also play a factor in brain development. She thinks she remembers reading that Oriental intonations actually hit higher pitches. Thinking about the connection between music and math made her wonder if a different part of the brain might be being stimulated that enhances mathematical thinking.

No idea, but I thought it was an interesting thought.

 

I was going to mention this too! The languages use different intonations as well as non-romanized (right word for it?) writing systems. My own native tongue for example has a very interesting system where you can plot consonants in one axis and vowels in another axis in a chart and the sounds all line up neatly and systematically. Consonants used can make tiny changes to the sounds and you have to juggle all the little nuances in your head. Other languages can be very pictorial and I'm so sure (but don't know if there are studies on it) that affects how you learn to use symbols later in your life too.

 

We've often discussed here how math is a language!

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Thinking about the connection between music and math made her wonder if a different part of the brain might be being stimulated that enhances mathematical thinking.

A lot of the Asian languages are pictorial; Hindi, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai. The Visual-Spatial part of the brain is simulated.

 

ETA:

This article by U of HK on the difference in Chinese and English speaking dyslexia might interest your daughter

http://www.ugc.edu.hk/rgc/rgcnews18/eng/04.htm

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I participated in the National Engineering Design Challenge two years in a row when I was in high school, and I was the only female both years. We made it to the national level and all of the teams were lacking in female participation. This stuck out to me because there was not such a disparity in the general science fair in the middle school years. Even at the higher levels, female participants represented quite equally among the competition and among the placers. Now, this could be because there is such a variety of sciences represented in a general science fair vs an engineering oriented competition, but I think something happened/changed in the age frame from middle to high for the girls.

 

In the talented and gifted program I found it sad that my classes were predominantly white whereas the regular classes were about 50/50 between white and black students. It was very obvious that there was a problem.

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We talked about written language but we weren't sure how many kids here actually write and read in their ancestral languages as exposed to the spoken language or people speaking English as a second language (BC their intonations would still be the same.) This is complete ignorance on our part. Are a high percentage equally fluent in all aspects of the language? BC, yes, I do think it would be a huge difference in processing.

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We talked about written language but we weren't sure how many kids here actually write and read in their ancestoral languages as exposed to the spoken language ...

 

In my area most H1/green card parents are trying for bilingual (English & parents native) or trilingual (English & parents speaking different native languages)

Some kids came over to US with families at school age and has already mastered the rudiments of their native language.

I don't know if any stats have ever been compiled for that.

 

This Nov 2014 article might also interest your daughter.

"An InfantĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s Brain Maps Language From Birth, Study Says" http://time.com/3593064/an-infants-brain-maps-language-from-birth-study-says/

 

ETA:

My ancestral languages would be the Chinese dialects of my grandparents villages in China. Maternal and paternal grandparents speak different Chinese dialects. My native language is Chinese while to my grandparents Chinese is the national language. I learned English from birth but I still refer to English as my Lingua Franca.

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And wasn't it Liping Ma who noted that many of the Asian languages (I think she cited Japanese, but it's been a while since I read) have shorter and rhyming numbers? She pointed out that the times tables can be sung in Japanese (because the names of the numbers flow so much better than in English), and that many Japanese adults know that 7 x 7 = 49 because the SONG SAYS SO, not because they have to stop and recall. (They're perfectly capable of recalling, but she highlighted the value of actually knowing all the times tables before knowing what they mean. I find that the opposite is often true in the U. S. at the middle school level - students understand the concept of the times tables, but do not have them committed to rote memory.)

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In my area most H1/green card parents are trying for bilingual (English & parents native) or trilingual (English & parents speaking different native languages)

Some kids came over to US with families at school age and has already mastered the rudiments of their native language.

I don't know if any stats have ever been compiled for that.

 

This Nov 2014 article might also interest your daughter.

"An InfantĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s Brain Maps Language From Birth, Study Says" http://time.com/3593064/an-infants-brain-maps-language-from-birth-study-says/

 

ETA:

My ancestral languages would be the Chinese dialects of my grandparents villages in China. Maternal and Paternal grandparents speak different Chinese dialects. My native language is Chinese while to my grandparents Chinese is the national language. I learned English from birth but I still refer to English as my Lingua Franca.

 

Thank you for sharing!  I find your language background fascinating.  I will pass on the link.

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This Nov 2014 article might also interest your daughter.

"An InfantĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s Brain Maps Language From Birth, Study Says" http://time.com/3593064/an-infants-brain-maps-language-from-birth-study-says/

 

I just read this article. Wow, it gave me a lot to think about.  The dd who loves languages was born while we lived in Brazil.  She lived there the first yr of her life.  We had a housekeeper who constantly spoke the to kids in Portuguese and our oldest ds and his friends were always around and they only spoke in Portuguese.  (none of the kids knew English.)

 

My dd has self-studied French rather successfully.  Most people seem to think it is rather odd that she has been able to reach the level she has w/o any tutor.  She went to an Alliance Francaise meeting last night and one of the Francophones told her that she thought Portuguese had similar tonal patterns as French.  (Dh went with her and he is completely fluent in Portuguese.)  Now I wonder if that is why she has been so successful at it???  Hmmmm.  The brain is such a mystery.  Wait until dd reads the link in the morning.  I know she is going to want to read more.  Neurolinguistics is something she has looked at briefly.  This might spawn a new path of research for her.   :)

 

Sorry to derail your thread, Ruth.   :)

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We had a math club at my high school.  I have no idea what the demographics of the members were, because I had not the slightest blip of interest in math as a social activity.  No offense to those who do, but I didn't.  I was good in math but it was a tool, a means to an end.  Same with computers, although I had taken programming classes and an electronics class and had a computer at home (unusual for a young teen in the early 1980s).  My brother was fascinated by all that stuff and made his career in it, but it just didn't hold my interest.

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It is a while ago I read it.

But It seemes Belgium has a lot of girls studying Math, but they are all opting for being a teacher in Secondary school.

They choose not the academical bachelor.

 

Belgium's schoolsystem doesn't fill the social gap, the schoolsystem makes the gap even bigger.

As long as I live in Belgium this is known, but in those 10 years I have not seen any improvement.

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I am so glad I posted about this because you guys have really helped me to see what I could not see. I was assuming that boys and girls would be equally competitive, and expected that twice as many boys might be interested in math as girls because of cultural influences. And the numbers just did not add up. Those numbers would give 17 and 9; rather than the observed 24 and 2. But saying that girls are less interested in co-ed competitions, and that competition clubs can have a group identity that is hard to vary from, has gone a long way to explaining the huge skew.

 

I certainly don't feel that competitions are the be all end all, I just thought that the numbers represented the talent, and it sounds like that is simply not true.  For which I am very glad!

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