2 + 2 = Progress
Today’s Times highlights a National Science Foundation study on gender differences in math – and despite the diatribes of Ivy-bound thinkers like Dr Lawrence Summers, the news is good: A review of 7,000,000 students in 10 states shows no gender split in math achievement scores.
In a related report on NPR, high school teachers say that their advanced-math classes enroll about 50:50 girls and boys, a sea change from a generation ago. But one math-loving girl put a real-world perspective on the study’s findings: Patricia Li, a San Jose, CA, high-school senior summering at MIT, says it’s not that more boys like math than girls — more like, everyone dislikes math in equal measure, which is its own kind of progress.
See the article in Science magazine for all the number-crunching, math-laden details.
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