This Bit About Girls And STEM

This looks to me like a pretty well-designed research study. It is what they call a “meta-analysis,” which means the authors put together studies other people have done and analyzed the lot of them, in that process which poetess Anne Sexton touched me a long time ago by calling “that awful rowing toward truth.”

Truth is hard to find and I basically believe in the scientific process that tries to get to it.

Although, — truth be told — I must admit that I happen to know from the earlier part of my career, when I functioned as an academic, that it is cheaper and easier to get a paper published analyzing everyone else’s research, as opposed to actually doing a bunch of research yourself.

But the conclusion from the study is pretty delicious.

Basically, there isn’t much difference between boys and girls in terms of their mathematical abilities.

I have already reviewed a lot of discouraging reviews of the paucity of women who graduate college with majors in math, science, and engineering.

The sexes seem to be indistinguishable in terms of mathematical and scientific proclivity early on, but to lose interest in around late high school and college.

This is when young folks feel their oats and test their limits. I am still surprised how many young (men and, more) women around 18 find their way into the office of an adult psychiatrist like me, perplexed about what to do with their lives.

More choices mean more responsibilities and more fear.

Add discovering and dealing with sexuality to the mixture.

So many people say “I’m not a school person” and don’t take opportunities before them, I can’t really tell if it’s laziness or fear.

All I know is I spend a remarkable amount of energy as a cheerleader, for people who don’t seem to have passion.

At first, I thought I had to mentor young ladies. but there is something deeper going on. Inspiration is rare. Celebration of natural curiosity in a child is even rarer.

I am beginning to wonder if most education is not supposed to make everyone into faceless masses of people who serve a power structure so powerful, so immense, that it seems built on self-preservation.

I read a long time ago that raw IQ was not a terribly good predictor of success — if success were measured by conventional measures like social status or income.

That honor goes to something more difficult to pin down. It is “motivation.”

I believe in the human species, and in its capacity to improve and evolve, even if we are so diverse and there are so many of us that evolution the way Darwin described it is not what is going to be taking us forward.

It will be the human spirit.

Encourage curiosity and the consequent love of knowledge.

In everybody around you and every chance you get.