U.S. students steered away from math, UW-led study says

The Capital Times  —  10/10/2008 11:43 am

A "culture of neglect and social ostracism" is derailing American students, especially girls, who are gifted in mathematics but don't end up in the field, according to a new study.

The report, published Friday in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, said students with a profound ability at math get into a culturally restricted pipeline that puts American leadership in the mathematical sciences and related fields at risk.

Since American culture holds math in low esteem, the study said, girls with extremely high aptitude for math are rarely identified in the United States because they veer from a career trajectory in math. Systemic flaws in the public school education system and a lack of role models add to the problem, the study says.

UW-Madison oncology professor Janet Mertz was the senior author of the study.

"The U.S. culture that is discouraging girls (from math careers) is also discouraging boys," she said. "The situation is becoming urgent. The data shows a majority of top young mathematicians in this country were not born here."

The study was co-authored by University of Minnesota-Duluth math professor Joseph Gallian, UW-Whitewater math and computer science professor Jonathan Kane and University of Texas-Dallas math education professor Titu Andreescu.

The study used decades of data from high-level math competitions. According to the findings, highly talented math students in countries where the skill is valued are identified and nurtured, while such talent in America is routinely overlooked or ignored and American kids feel they are actively discouraged from excelling in math.

Another finding showed American children of immigrants coming from countries where math is prized, notably Eastern Europe and Asia, are much more likely to be identified as having extraordinary mathematical ability.

The lack of American students going into math fields is evident, according to the study.

Eighty percent of female and 60 percent of male faculty hired in recent years by the top American research university math departments were born in other countries, the study said.

In large part, then, who ends up in the mathematical fields is possibly more a matter of environment than brains.

"Many girls exist who possess extremely high aptitude for mathematical problem solving," the study said. "The frequency with which they are identified is due, at least in part, to a variety of socio-cultural, educational or other environmental factors that differ significantly among countries and ethnic groups and can change over time."

"Innate math aptitude is probably fairly evenly distributed throughout the world, regardless of race or gender," Andreescu said. "The huge differences observed in achievement levels are most likely due to socio-cultural attributes specific to each country."

"Fitting in" with their peers stymies girls gifted in math as they grow older, the study said.

Girls do as well or better than boys in math in elementary school, the study shows, but they start losing interest in middle school, mostly due to peer pressure and societal expectations.

Social stigma and a lack of challenging educational opportunities for the mathematically precocious becomes a hard reality as kids go through middle and high school in this country, so gifted girls, more so than gifted boys, often camouflage their math talent to fit in well with their peers, the study said.

The Capital Times  —  10/10/2008 11:43 am