Vanderbilt U. Prof Claims Math Education is Sexist
“a “gender gap” exists in mathematical ability due to these social constructs”
Is there any area of basic education which isn’t sexist or racist?
The Daily Caller reports:
Vanderbilt Professor Says Math Education Is Sexist
Is math sexist? One Vanderbilt University professor believes that it is.
Writing in an academic journal last month, the professor complained about the masculinization of math and how it causes the oppression of women.
Describing mathematics as a “white and heteronormatively masculinized space,” professor Luis A. Leyva insists that factors including teacher expectations and cultural norms “serve as gendering mechanisms that give rise to sex-based achievement differences,” per Campus Reform.
Leyva argues that a “gender gap” exists in mathematical ability due to these social constructs, and that there isn’t any inherent difference in male and female cognitive abilities when it comes to the subject. The differences, he says, give rise to the “myth of male superiority.”
Female underachievement in the field is highlighted, he argues, by teachers who point it out and reinforce cultural expectations.
n the article titled “Unpacking the Male Superiority Myth and Masculinization of Mathematics at the Intersection,” Leyva says that teachers “contribute to the masculinization of the domain that unfairly holds students to men’s higher levels of achievement and participation as a measure of success.”
In other words, being held to a high standard keeps women down.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
OK then.
Participation trophies for EVERYONE!
(previously known as diplomas)
So, she’s maintaining that women cannot attain the same achievements as men?
And THAT promotes the EQUALITY of women how?
Wuddah maroon.
Listen up, Pilgrim! Luis is a “he”. Not that it changes anything really. I guess feminists come with a wide variety of plumbing.
The was a “short take” a couple of days ago regarding how Engineering as a course of study was hostile to females. And now this Google dust-up over engineers. One could easily think that all these disciplines requiring actual study and having to get right answers when solving problems (engineering, math, etc) cause trouble for large groups in our population. We have to lower the standards in order to strengthen the field. I’m not sure how that works.
…Leyva insists that factors including teacher expectations and cultural norms “serve as gendering mechanisms that give rise to sex-based achievement differences,”…
Okay, let’s assume that’s true. Who is pretty much 100% in charge of educating teachers, and setting the ‘cultural norms’ of the US education system?
It’s those darn conservatives again, isn’t it!
In that we are closely following the Red Chinese model on education, I think it time to close down all universities.
I long for a time when this sort of claptrap would be called exactly what it is: claptrap.
At the urban community college where I administer and teach, we have a lot of women in our computer science, engineering science, and life science programs, and they can do the maths just fine, thank you.
Most of them are first-generation college students, minorities, and from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Science has no regard for intersectionality.
While science may not have any regard for intersectionality, it definitely does have a great deal of regard for proper preparation in (Gasp!) mathematics! We are falling behind the rest of the world in math, language, and every other subject (Logic!!) that underpins all science … a problem that Asian students in particular don’t have.
This is how we become a second-rate nation.