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Difficult Passage: Gifted Girls in Middle School


This article nicely encapsulates some of the ambivalence I've found about the growth mindset viewpoint. I understand that it's better to praise effort than ability, but I think there's a role for helping children to understand their own ability, too.

Yes, this is well said.

Yes!!

Thank you so much for posting this, Elizabeth. Our own journey through adolescence with an HG+ girl has been bewildering in terms of battling her distorted, and even downright bizarre, sometimes crippling self-perceptions.

Mostly she feels inadequate or even fraudulent-- and what is mystifying is where on earth such an attitude could possibly have come from in the first place. ???

also yes - as someone at the beginning of this journey this is what my gut tells me. I so wish someone would have taken me aside as a kid and told me I was really smart and maybe I just needed to study a bit differently. I think it would have been life changing for me.

No worries here, as I've been ignoring that particular bit of advice on the growth mindset for years. I've always felt that a fundamental belief in your abilities is a great counterweight to fear of failure.

I have made sure that my DD doesn't think that boys are naturally better at Maths. Also, one of the reasons that I encouraged her to play chess was so that she could beat boys at it and learn that they are not inherently smarter.

I have also started to broach my DD's LOG with her to help her understand why she is different and is treated differently by her age and her grade peers. I absolutely want her to have faith that she is intrinsically smart and that having to work something out instead of just almost instantly groking it is ok and something to expect as stuff gets harder. Just another reason why I love what AoPS is doing for my DD.

The need for bonding and fitting in (the physiological/biochemical stuff) is why we have put the family vacation money into a CTY camp for our DD this year.

Hopefully my DD will come though adolescence with her sanity, self confidence and sense of humor intact LOL

This seems to be agreement with mindset.

The quoted article in the original post mischaracterizes the linked material. For example: is in agreement with
While it is difficult to condense years of research and a book of nearly 300 pages, these two quotes summarize it well and
Meanwhile this "teaser" introduction to the article does not summarize mindset well:

This thread on gifted girls, their confidence, and self-esteem, flows well, I think, from the observation on foils from a recent post on another thread "Feeling threatened by the success of others" is a tendency of a fixed mindset, whereas "finding lessons and inspiration in the success of others" is a tendency of a growth mindset. (page 245, mindset )

This thread is also reminiscent of the recent thread, Against the growth mindset.

Some articles on mindset may be written to encourage audiences with children having lower IQs to not create self-imposed limitations based on those numbers. That audience of readers may be different than those who frequent this forum. However in the book mindset and the author's articles flowing from it, I've not seen a recommendation to withhold information from gifted children regarding their IQ (other than the teaser referenced earlier in this post); These kids often have already observed that they are different and may find it a relief to have their observations affirmed and explained. While maintaining motivation may be best achieved by a focus on praising effort rather than praising intelligence, this does not preclude informing gifted kids of their IQ, class rank, etc... it simply does not emphasize these things.

For anyone who has not read the book mindset, I do recommend it. It is based on years of research. Not that I agree with every idea/application, but on balance found a number of ideas to be useful. Beyond implications for children's classroom learning, there are lifelong applications of this motivational theory, including "Mindsets in love (or not)."

Some may say that "being reminded you are smart" and having a "fundamental belief in your abilities" would include not only a belief in one's innate intelligence, but also a belief in embracing challenges, persistence in the face of setbacks, effort as a positive path, interest in learning from feedback as well as from mistakes, and reaching ever-higher levels of achievement, in a manner which is genuine and emotionally satisfying.

Interesting thread--stumbled across it in a search for achievement tests. I've been uncomfortable with the growth mindset thing myself, but haven't been totally able to put my finger on why. (And yes, I did read the book.)

One thing that was a revelation to me, as a gifted girl in adult form, was to discover the concept of "impostor syndrome." It was so gratifying to be able to put a label on how I've felt my whole life, and has opened up some wonderful conversations with other grown-up gifted girls. It's a concept that is concept that's constantly in the back of my mind as I raise my two gifted girls, neither of whom are in middle school yet, though one is getting close!

Girls don't have the monopoly on this. I spent a lot of my life feeling it too.

"Huh? Is that all there is to this? I thought it was going to be hard. And difficult to follow/understand.."

Was a thought I had a lot as a kid followed by:-

"I must be missing the deep insight that everyone must be feeling"

they weren't LOL

Unfortunately, our girls still have to be pretty tough to succeed in some of the male dominated fields, even with their high IQs. My D20 is researching on campus in computer science at her college this summer (second summer on this project, so getting pretty knowlegable). Her prof arranged a conference call with some teams at other universities doing similar research so they could compare data and issues. Partway thru the call, my D recognized a problem a young man from another college was describing, and asked a question. Dead silence on the phone, then the guys says "Is there a GIRL on this call??". I give her prof credit, he said, "Yes, there are three WOMEN from my team on this call." Followed by awkward silence -- then the guy went on, and didn't acknowledge or answer her question! She was embarrassed and angry. It sure doesn't help her feel intellectually validated when that kind of crap happens.

Yes, that would have been great! But she was flustered and embarrassed, and tends to be shy to start with. She said later that she should have said, "Wait, there are BOYS on this call?" But she didn't think of it until later, of course.

HowlerKarma - we've had the same sort of thoughts about our DD12 a few times. No idea where she gets the idea that she is a fraud, but it is definitely there.

I have also seen it often in my students. One in particular was so convinced that she was a fraud she stopped being able to function in class because she was convinced that she shouldn't be able to do things as easily and as well as she could. It was very sad, and she is still working through these issues.

I think that middle school girls benefit so much from being told how smart they are AND how this effects others' perceptions of them before they start puberty. Because once puberty starts they seem to have an even harder time understanding that they really could be as smart as they are. I think this is one reason why so many girls opt out of science and math at this age - they no longer believe that they should be able to do those subjects and no one is explaining that they should be able to and that they can do it. I have colleagues who just take girls' sudden lack of confidence in themselves at that age as the norm and nothing to be concerned about. When I have explained why it is important to support them and help them through they call me crazy and walk away! Needless to say, I continue to pester them.
I have a master's degree in physics, so I have lived similar situations of having people shocked that I am a female physicist and can carry on conversations about complex physical situations. It is a drag, and does make you feel embarrassed and frustrated. I have had many times when I have thought of great comebacks later on. However, over the years, I have learned how to respond in the moment. The interesting thing is that it doesn't always help - it has ended up with the other person deciding I was being a bully or worse. (A reaction that they would not have had if it had been a male questioning them.)

Intparent, I just relayed you a personal experience for your DD in PM.

Yes, Kerry! It's so frustrating! Ironically, in many circumstances, it is both men and women who demean or underestimate young professional women.

Regarding imposter syndrome, the original post's quoted article's second link discusses this:
(emphasis added)

Note that attributing failure to lack of effort reveals a growth mindset;
attributing failure to a lack of ability reveals a fixed mindset.

This is consistent with and

I have worked in IT since 1986 and have only seen this sort of behavior from a minority of Indian men. a) - pretending not to hear a question when they realise that the other person will potentially make their cluelessness obvious and b) seemingly incapable of accepting correction from a woman. Admittedly, I started out in IT when the average IQ (or PRI, at least) of a programmer was probably higher (lower PRI was weeded out via aptitude tests) and have worked at companies considered leaders in their fields.

Keeping in mind that this is just another college student behaving this way, and that therefore his reaction doesn't represent the reality of the industry in any way, I'd explain this reaction to my DD in terms of, "This guy is probably 35 and joining the call from his mom's basement. The question had nothing to do with computing, and everything to do with the fact that he hasn't spoken to a female who wasn't his mother in the last seven years."

literally sitting in dr's office right now while daughter is being tested (full psychoedu. eval.).
Ran across this thread, great discussion.

Here is a ted talk, which on the face is interesting stuff about posture building power and confidence (which I believe is related to the discussion) but ALSO a great GEM towards the end where the author mentions her own struggle with imposter syndrome. She has more reason than most to have doubted her abilities; also a bit on how she has worked with others on their own imposter syndrome.
(haven't watched it in a while and I can't review it now..anyway I recollect it being pretty cool).

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=en

For what it's worth, as a materials engineer, I have encountered this kind of behavior professionally a couple of times, both from Japanese men. One guy when I was interning in Alabama ("You go to MIT? Is your daddy president of the university?"), and a student when I was TAing graduate thermodynamics (he never came to tutorials or talked to me about his poor grades, and I got the impression from him that my sex was the reason why not). Those are the only egregious incidents I recall of the many, many men that I have interacted with professionally, although of course there have been lower-level slights. I am now a patent lawyer, not a practicing engineer, but (to be slightly crude) whenever an engineer or scientist has tried to get into a dick-measuring contest with me, I've won.

chris1234 - great TEDTalk. We shared it in a workplace discussion group and it had rave reviews. Amazing story.

Maybe a predisposition to believe that Japanese men are sexist can cause one to believe a Japanese man ignored you as a TA because you were female, when there other plausible explanations, such as his not being serious about the class or his being reluctant to get help from anyone, male or female. You are generalizing based on a sample size of two.

Please stay on topic here, as I'm not comfortable with the direction this is heading.

Oops, sorry, Melissa. (FWIW, I didn't mean to imply that someone ignored offered help because of an ethnic difference, and I agree that their could have been many reasons. My point was really the "[t]hose are the only egregious incidents I recall of the many, many men that I have interacted with professionally.")

Our girls need to be prepared to deal with sexism, no question. Probably gifted girls in particular, and particularly because imposter syndrome can make them uniquely vulnerable to it, and because they are uniquely qualified to combat it if they don't fall prey to imposter syndrome.

Well -- I talked to my daughter, and she thinks this student was a Russian grad student at a US university. I do think that many (not all!) American men have gotten the message that it is just inappropriate to act that way in the workplace, but a lot of the rest of the world may lag behind. My niece (from the US) is an engineer in Australia, and she says it is a tougher battle there than here. Wish it wasn't a battle anywhere... but the reality is that it is. I would love to have seen her professor not only correct the guy in the meeting, but follow up afterwards with his professor/mentor about it -- but no idea if that will happen. I will let you know if anything more comes of it!

Working here on the Gulf Coast, it's quite noticeable how few women are in upper management and in primarily technical positions. They're over-represented in areas like project management, quality assurance, and positions with the word "analyst" attached to them. Positions that have the word "engineer" attached to them (systems, network, security, etc.) are almost exclusively male, and software development is about 75% male.

My experience in California... not so much. My employer there had more women in management than men. On my first day my team lead, manager, and division manager were all women. I had female peers/team members throughout my time in engineering roles.

So, in my observation, sexism in IT in the US differs by region, and is expressed quite a bit differently than is seen from other countries/cultures, but it's still very much alive and well.

Conjures up all manner of Big Bang Theory would be scenes in my mind LOL nerd dudes having zero clue about interacting with the opposite sex.

maybe the reality of actually talking to an actual real live girl (over the phone admittedly) was too much for him and he had to blurt that out because he could hardly believe it was happening.

I think different interests and aptitudes, not sexism, explain why there are more men than women in tech. Venture capitalist Paul Graham was asked why there are more tech startups founded by men. His answer was that more boys than girls are hacking from an early age. My 11yo boy installed Linux on his own onto a Windows PC. He thinks Linux is simpler than Windows because you can do stuff from the command line rather than dealing with a GUI. He has already programmed in Scratch, Basic, C, and Python. I bet far more 11yo boys than girls have done those things. When they get to college, more boys than girls will have programming and other tech experience, which affects their choices of majors.

YC’s Paul Graham: The Complete Interview

Which is exactly why my 10 year old daughter has her own Raspberry Pi and Arduini Uno board.

She has taken to Python like a duck to water.

I now have to get her more competent in Linux because it comes with gcc...

I want her to have the self confidence of ElizabethN when she grows up.

Loved that last sentence, Elizabeth :-)

Why the difference in interests and (apparent) aptitudes, though? Because they're told at an early age that those things are not for them.

This'll do for an illustration: https://gma.yahoo.com/parents-organ...-cant-193601986--abc-news-parenting.html

Furthermore, the stark difference between different regions of the same country shows it must be a social construct, not a genetic one.

You wrote that there is less sexism in the California tech industry, but Silicon Valley firms have also been criticized for a lack of ethnic and gender diversity.

IMO, the "tracking" of girls starts early and runs their entire lives. When DD (then 8) tested for one of the gifted programs the testing proctor told her, before the test, "you'll do fine on the reading test, but girls have trouble with the math" My DH, who was there, was shocked. Fortunately, DD and I had talked several times prior to that incident about how you can tell when someone is really ignorant because they will use sentences with the phrases "girls can't" or "girls don't" or "boys can't" or "boys don't" and she was then allowed to completely ignore whatever they said next as being their own misguided opinion. Yup, had the sexism talk with my 3 year old. Then again and again with new and expanded topics as she has grown.

Having to do some deep breathing. The incident, among others my mathy girl has endured, still makes me wish I could breath fire and fly (think raging dragon mom).

Anyway.

Research does support you Dude, the bias is early and impactful. See the original study here:
On The Origins of Gender Human Capital Gaps: Short and Long Term Consequences of Teachers' Stereotypical Biases

http://www.nber.org/papers/w20909

or the NYTimes opEd here with additional links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/u...rom-math-and-science.html?abt=0002&abg=1

What practical steps can we take as parents to counter this? I don't know if my DD2 will want to do tech-y stuff, but I don't want her to feel like the doors are closed to her. It should be her choice.

I like brilliantcp's idea of being proactive in discussing these situations with kiddos:

"Less sexism" is not the same as "no sexism."

Anyway, I was just reporting on my own personal experiences, which were far outside of Silicon Valley.

It is crazy. I have only boys and they occasionally come out with crazy statements like girls can't play mine craft. There have been opposite assumptions though when they did ballet and now when ds8 is the only boy in his team in one of his sports (there are about 3 in the league). But really why would an 8 year old girl be worse at maths and a boy have more trouble reading?

The reality of 'multiculturalism' is that there are going to be some facets of alien cultures or sub cultures that will be found unpalatable and to some extent you just have to take it in your stride.

One of my friends summed it up best - "as a programmer the guys (1980s Bell Labs NJ) used to tell me that I didn't belong (for being a girl) with them, I took that to heart and ended up as their manager" - LOL

I am raising my daughter to expect adversity and to develope skills to overcome it...

This old thread Underconfidence in gifted girls seems relevant to re-visit at this point.

I agree, it is crazy. I've heard a robotics club coach (not the one at my DD's school) say (to a prospective member's parent) "It is really great, there is a girls tournament in [nearby large city], so the girls have a chance to drive (the robot) then. Otherwise they wouldn't get the chance" When asked, by another parent, what the girls usually do, the coach replied "most of them are in the promotion team (advertising and fundraising), which is also really important to the team and is such an important role that enables the competition team to do so much more. One or two of them help the programming squad (writing code), but not at tournaments; there's so much pressure and you have to write code on the spot" Picture me standing there with my mouth open.

I just don't understand...

1) Why don't girls get to drive the robot at regular tournaments?
2) Why would girls prefer to raise money and make posters for the robot club? I mean fine if they do, but do they really?
3) I mean it's the ROBOT club. Doesn't he think that most of the kiddos must be interested in ROBOTS?
4) Why can't girls who do write the code, write it at tournaments?
5) Does he really REALLY think girls can't handle pressure?
6) Brain locks up.

Anyway. Fortunately, at this point the coach moved on to talk about other things (non girl directed) and DD decided not to join this club as it conflicted with other things. Or so she said.

That is over the top. However, I am not quite as surprised as I ought to be. I still remember one of our elementary school administrators (who previously taught GT math for many years) making an off-hand comment about girls not being strong in math. We were discussing my mathy DS at the time and I was almost tempted to remind him that DS has a twin sister, who may not be mathy, but who could still out-perform just about every other boy in the GT class.

What if in trial runs, it were found that the boys were better at writing code under time pressure. What if girls disliked the experience? Would it then be OK to have all the coders at the competitions be boys, or should there be a gender quota system?

The math team our school sends to competitions is about 80% Asian and 80% male. I think that reflects who is best at math competitions. Impartial selection procedures often lead to some groups being underrepresented.

I like this! I'm definitely going to have this talk with DS. We've already discussed the fallacy of "too young" (there are almost always other objective criteria that can be referenced logically, instead), but I hadn't thought of a good way to in innoculate against sexism. Thanks!

My advice would be: Treat her like a human being, not as a girl.

Also: Internalize the message that girls are just as good as boys, so when she expresses her concerns, your reaction is natural.

For example, my DD was 6 or 7, I think, when she was exposed to the notion that dads are supposed to prefer sons. She'd probably been chewing on the question for a while before she asked me if I wished she'd been born a boy. My answer: "If you'd been born a boy, then I would have played football with you, wrestled with you, taught you to hit a baseball, played violent video games with you, done computer stuff with you, put together or fixed things with you..."

And DD had a grin on her face as this list kept going on, because they're all clearly things that are usually in the "boy" category, yet we had been doing all of those things for years. And before she could wonder if I was trying to turn her into a boy or something, I pointed out how much her girl peers loved doing some of those things, and there's nothing wrong with women liking things that are fun.

What if a Girl Scout troop formed a FLL team and it performed well enough to advance to state finals?

That's not a hypothetical.

lol loved the whole response but this part really made me smile. My sister and I (both engineers) have joked that we were both the sons our father never had. I remember one Monday morning when one of my coworkers said he wished his wife would fix the brakes on his car like I had just done for DH. I commented that while I was doing that DH was cooking a 4 course meal while dealing with a cranky baby. DH and I both thought we were the ones that got off easy that day so it was a perfect solution.

There are lots of things at play but our parents (and extended family for that matter) broke many typical gender roles and stereotypes. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that many things are supposedly girl things or boy things. They certainly weren't in our house. Both my sister and I have a fierce streak of "oh, you don't think I can do x, I'll show you" in us which I feel was encouraged if not actually taught somehow but don't ask me how. I'm still trying to figure it out so I can somehow pass it on to both my DS and DD.

I have encountered some mostly minor sexism in the workplace. However, for the most part I've been lucky that most of my career has been in places where skills and competence were valued and rewarded above all else. Speaking with friends in more female dominated professions, politics and other horrific behavior isn't just limited to men being sexist towards women. Many of their stories are completely foreign and shocking to me and IME men don't have a monopoly on sexist and/or nasty behavior. It has really made me appreciate the workplaces that I've been lucky enough to be a part of.

Dude, a local all-girl Catholic high school in my city has a top notch FIRST Robotics team. The first year my D was in Robotics (different local high school), these girls in pink t-shirts & tights and black skirts finished in the top 3 out of 60 teams at a regional competition. My D was stoked just watching them. I happen to be wearing one of their team t-shirts right now (volunteered for FIRST, and got the team to give me a shirt because I think they are so cool!). My D did FIRST at her school, and definitely did have to push some to get to work on the design and build teams (I don't think she aspired to drive). But it was worth it -- I think FIRST gave her the confidence to apply to and attend a top STEM college.

I agree. Those situations, in my mind, are a reflection of the problem -- however, the underlying problem to be solved is that capable girls are not involved in math/coding/etc.

Someone told me their son was once on a sports team with all boys and one girl, who was quite good at the (contact) sport. Whenever she did particularly well up against another player, she'd casually toss her golden curls at them when they walked out after the game, shocked to be beaten by a girl. Personally, I would've joined every boys' sports team in town if I was athletic (pretty big if).

On another note, though, I think it's also important to tell both girls and boys that it is okay to do things stereotypically of their gender as long as they are not limiting themselves TO those activities. I'd be perfectly fine with a boy or girl who programs computers to bake pink, glittery cupcakes, because those shouldn't be mutually exclusive activities. However, it is much, much easier for girls to be discouraged in STEM pursuits, and boys in "feminine" ones.

I've worked in the IT field for 25 years (omg, I'm old). Since before I graduated from college.

I've had a few sexist experiences along the way, but only a few. In my experience (and in my experience only) I believe that there's a correlation between age and sexism (when I was young in the industry, colleagues from my dad's generation or older -- nearing retirement -- were more likely to have sexist attitudes). And there's an inverse correlation between intelligence and sexism (the smarter my colleagues were the less likely they were to have sexist attitudes). My industry is highly self-selecting for intelligence, which puts me in the fortunate position of working in a bubble of really smart people (many who are much smarter than I am).

The public education system has no such filtering, which makes me guess that those sexist attitudes are more common. My daughter's experience corroborates that. This could be the reason that fewer girls make it into those fields to begin with, which is reflected in the hiring practices of companies. Of course that doesn't mean there aren't sexist tech companies. There most certainly are. But my insider's point of view is that my problems as a woman are far fewer at work than in society at large.

* Disclaimer for full transparency. I'm not a programmer or engineer. I came to tech through the side door of documentation / usability and all my technical knowledge has come through years of osmosis.

DD's chess team organizer was also excited to have a girl in the team.

I am sure you're right. But for an 11yo boy to do these things, someone has to introduce him to these concepts and he has to think they are socially acceptable to do. You brought your son to these things to some extent, I am very sure. It may also be the case that his peer group is interested in them or they are dicussed in his peer group. All this is less likely for girls. Culturally, there is a divide. Children at the age of 9-11 are very gender-segregated, which I personally find annoying (and btw all the pink/blue toys and "men and women are from different planets" stuff doesn't help, IMO). If computers are not what is done by girls, then computers will not be what is done by (most) girls. It doesn't mean girls can't do it, it means they won't-- just as most 9-11 yo boys will not be found refining their drawing skills by drawing outfits and manga girls or practicing their singing in chorus or private voice lessons or their ballet. (But they could, if they wanted to.) Your argument doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

It's not a hypothetical *AT ALL*. It's happened. My FIRST team competed against them and lost

FWIW, we had girls and boys (about an even split) on my ds' FIRST team. The teams were open to any kids who wanted to sign up. We had kids who were more interested in working on the project than programming and vice versa, but there was no gender-trend for either.

polarbear

Regarding this:


Were impartial selection procedures used to determine who JOINS math team?

I'm sure DD would have been "chosen" for math team if that was done based on grades and standardized test scores, but of course, it's voluntary.

(There's a lot more to this discussion, but come now.)

IIRC, high-ability Asian girls are outscoring high-ability Asian boys on some math measures.

This. DD attended the math team's first meeting at our urging- it was her first and last time attending. The way it was structured/organized guaranteed that she would not enjoy it. There are girls on the team, but as UM noted, they are predominantly Asian girls, and the team is mostly male students. (Though it is notable that at this year's school awards ceremony, the class math awards and the AIME/AMC awards were dominated by girls).

My DD, and probably many other girls, are competition-avoidant- DD qualified for, but declined to participate in the school spelling and Geobees in middle school, despite urging from us and teachers. (And as UM noted, I suspect she would qualify for the math team if it was a team that was chosen, not based on volunteering). I think it is a combination of disliking competition, and not wanting to draw attention to her smarts, which contributed to some bullying in the past. As an aside, now that DD is in high school, she seems to be handling competitive activities much better, and is (mostly) embracing her abilities, so things can improve.

Anyone can attend meetings of the after-school math club. Who represents the school at meets is determined by who scores best on tryouts. I think that is impartial.

I have wondered if some non-Asian children and girls notice that the math club (or the local chess club) is mostly Asian and male and decide that it therefore not for them. But then it is their own biases that are at fault.

I tend to agree.

I think it is naive to attribute the bias *solely* to the kids vs. the environment they experience up to the point of making the decision to participate or not.

That said, my strong-willed DD *refused* to participate in MathCounts throughout middle school, despite personal invitations from the teacher who mentored the school team (and who is also the coach of the state team, which generally does quite well in national competition). I have no regrets about that, and was glad she had the time for other activities. She does not need the competition to motivate her - she has just finished Calc AB as a high school freshman, with a deeper understanding of the concepts covered in that course than most of the engineering undergraduates I teach.

If participation on the math team is predicated on membership in the after-school math club, then that school is doing its team a tremendous disservice, because the majority of stellar math students have other interests besides math.

Besides, everyone knows the math club and the chess club are for NERDS*, right? Socially-conscious GT students avoid them in favor of more socially acceptable activities: sports, music, drama, debate team, robotics, etc.


*By this I mean gifted students who lag in social development. The Asian tiger-parenting method is known to inhibit social development.

Math club meets once a week. Students can participate in other extracurriculars and still be on the math team. Math team aspirants don't need need to be at each club meeting, although missing the material presented could disadvantage them. They do need to attend on tryout days. How would you choose team members for math meets?

If some kids who might benefit from math competitions think they are for nerds, that is their problem.

I wouldn't, because I wasn't into such things. Spend a Saturday taking math tests? I'll pass.

I did a couple of them in middle school anyway, though, because my teachers asked me to, and I liked those teachers. That's the way they did it... tap the top students on the shoulder, and ask them if they want to participate. The teachers know who those students are already. They don't need to see them in a math club first.

My schools picked Pentathlon teams the same way. I did it once, and it was even worse than a math competition, because it was testing ALL DAY. I refused further invitations until 9th grade, when we piloted the Quiz Bowl format. THAT was a lot of fun.


Okay, I'll bite. Apart from the same benefits one might attain from after-schooling in math (and if you're already such a stellar math student, what are you really gaining?), what are these benefits, and how are they different from those gained in any other extracurricular activity? Because you can win awards, pad a college application, and qualify for scholarships with any one of the other activities I already mentioned. In addition, most college admissions officers prefer well-rounded applicants.

IMO, it is hard, but worthwhile to examine the causes of "self selection" and make changes to be more inclusive. If a specialty club attracts members that do not represent the demographics of the school, the adults need (IMO) be vigilant to make sure that this is not the result of problems in the club's organization, goals, interpersonal interactions, or some other factor not related to the specialty interest. Example: Here in my area almost all chess tournaments for elementary students are on Saturday. There are some rated quads on Friday nights, but that is all. This makes chess less appealing to families that have religious, educational, or cultural obligations on Saturday. These families children may attend the Thanksgiving tournament or some chess camps, but they will not be able to become truly competitive in tournaments. Adults helping to run the school chess club may only see that they have a "self selecting" membership that is very interested in tournament play and is free on Saturdays, but they could choose to stop and examine the reasons behind the selection. What is the focus of chess club? Will more students join chess club if the focus of the club is tournaments or by having a broader focus? Are there hidden costs to joining chess club (travel, entry fees, etc). Do students lack transportation to club activities because both parents work and may work on weekends? Are the club meetings held at a time that students that take the school bus can attend?

All of these factors mentioned above help to determine the "self selecting" population of the club or activity in ways that are clear and easy to discern.

This type of analysis seems more difficult when we start talking about gender (IMO), because adults may not know why girls and boys perceive themselves as unwelcome or "not a good fit" for a club. It may be simple and hard to solve: it seems to the child that "everyone else's dad works at [local high tech firm] and they can help. My dad doesn't" or "I don't have money for private music lessons and everyone else in jazz band takes them so…" It may be complex and hard to solve: All of the boys in math club talk over each other when trying to be the first to answer a question; the girls just go away rather than struggle with making their view heard. It may be something that I, as an adult, don't acknowledge is a real and substantial issue when you are young: there is only one student bathroom at the chess camp and girls have to share with boys; or there are no other girls at all.

Not sure what the solutions are. As parents, others have given good suggestions above, but I think the institutions need more sensitivity too.

After school is actually quite tricky re who can and can't attend. To attend after school, you usually (most schools) have to have alternate transportation home after the club ends. If you're participating in a school team sport, those practices (here) often take place *every* day after school. If you have other types of lessons or siblings and a crazy family schedule, your parents might not be able to fit in one more after-school-day-per-week activity. If you are attending a before school activity, you simply might be tired by the end of the day.

It's not possible to find a time and method of selection that will work for everyone, and it's not easy to find a best-fit for things like this. OTOH, it's very easy to look in from the outside and say "Oh, only rottweilers who wear purple head bands are attending this activity, therefore they must be the best candidates."... without taking into account that it's quite likely that there is some other selection factor influencing who attends that may, in fact, be entirely unrelated to who is naturally a best fit for a competition or who is naturally most interested in the subject.

polarbear

ps - I'll offer up one situation that happened in my family. One of my dds was very interested in joining our school's chess club, so she went to the first meeting and stuck it out for another 1 or 2 meetings after school. She quit - not because the chess was difficult (she was, in fact, having a lot of fun with the chess) - she quit because she had a difficult time with the approach of the teacher sponsoring the club, and also because there were quite a few students in the club she didn't really feel like hanging out with. I don't think the quitting due to not enjoying the sponsor fit or not feeling like hanging out with the other kids is exclusive to a "girl's" personality either - same thing has happened with my ds and other boys I know.

Great post, brilliantcp. Yes, all of that.

The point I was trying to make, Bostonian, is that if someone had gone through all the stduents at DD's school (identified by number only, let us say) and taken students with the highest math GPAs and standardized test scores to nominate for math club or team, my daughter would surely have been on that list. (I don't know how she would have done on math contest try-outs, but let's leave that aside for now.) But she would never have considered joining the club (I did ask her when the letter came home, as it did to all students). It is mostly boys and she does not consider it her venue or her thing. She had already had the experience of feeling outnumbered, socially alone and ignored at chess club. Mind you, I think the worst part was feeling socially alone--you do want to have friends at your afterschool activities.

polarbear, my son had a hard time at chess club sometimes last year because he was a kindergartener who was quite good at chess, and that really did not sit well with the older boys. A few kids called him "Kindergarten" in a not-nice way. He stuck it out because he loves chess and probably recognized some of this as sour grapes. This type of atmosphere is also not fun for many girls, who have been socialized to not be into this (or are just not into it...whatever).

= general mutterings of society as a whole that my DD has been subconsciously listening to her entire life. No wonder at age 6 she decided she would never again discuss her STEM interests at school

I can understand that the older chess club kids might be tough on a kindergarten kid. But as our kids got older, if it was an activity they wanted to do, we told them it was not about being with your friends. You don't need to be friends with the other kids on the chess team, math team, baseball team, etc. You just need to be polite and respectful, and be a teammate.

My eldest played her sport with kids who were not her friends - she was not in that group. They seemed to be okay with her, but they were downright nasty to some other kids. When they were about to graduate HS, these kids apologized to her for being not so nice in their younger years (though my kid certainly didn't receive the worst of it from these kids). However, they were teammates on the field and worked together on the team (even placed 4th in the state in their sport one year). They just weren't buddies outside the team.

As for conflicts, there will always be conflicts with various activities. You can't always participate in all of the activities you would like to do. As kids get older, they often must choose one or two activities and drop others. Anyone who is seriously into math competitions, a travel sport or similar will quickly realize that these things take a lot of time. My kids play a travel sport and the tournaments consume every weekend in the spring/summer (and they have played travel since 2009). They also know kids who are very serious about math competitions, as in making USAMO (one kid did so every year from 8th grade on) - then it isn't just about padding the college application.

Now after I said all of that, I admit that middle kid did Mathcounts because of the friend thing. Her friend's dad was running the Mathcounts club/team and the friend didn't want to be the only white kid there. So she asked middle kid and one other friend to come to Mathcounts so she wouldn't feel alone. They ended up having fun - the dad does a lot of fun math projects and provides plenty of snacks. When middle kid was in 7th grade, a couple of the good team members were sick on the competition day, so middle kid and the other friend had to sub on the team. Turned out to be an all-girl team (two white kids and two Asian kids) and middle kid and friend hadn't really done much practice, but the team managed third place at the county level out of about 24 teams.

So if a kid thinks they might like an activity, tell them to give it a fair chance. They don't need to be friends with the other kids, just be a good teammate and treat others with respect. This might not be a good approach for really young kids, but once our kids hit 9 or 10, this was our approach (and I think it has worked out pretty well, at least for our kids).

Is that so? My son is heavily involved in both chess and math, to the point where he has won a national title in the former and is very competitive at the state level in the latter. He spends a *lot* of time on both activities, by choice, because he NEEDS mental stimulation every day.

He was also just elected school president in a school with 900 kids so these "NERD" activities obviously haven't affected him socially. It is not the activity that determines social acceptability. It is the child and how they interact with others that determines social acceptability.

Hopefully the main benefit is that they enjoy the activity.

I am separating this last part of Dude's statement because so many people have this incorrect perception.
Selective colleges are NOT looking for well-rounded applicants. They are looking for a well-rounded CLASS. They can put together a well-rounded class by getting the star athletes, the champion debater, the musical prodigy, the politicians, accomplished actors, and yes, even the math and chess prodigies.

Some very specific examples:

* My nephew, who graduated from Yale a few years ago had the 4.0GPA & 2400 SAT (one sitting) and had done some science research with a professor while in high school. His words were "Yale doesn't want well-rounded people. They want pointy people!"
* My next door neighbor has a daughter who is a math prodigy. She is finishing or has finished her PhD in Harvard.
* Two doors down, their son was high school President and near the top of his class, and was accepted into Cornell.
* D's best friend's older sister is now in Harvard. She was a state champion debater.
* My boss has two children in HYPSM. One child was state-level competitive in both debate and track. The other was exceptional in math.

Mithawk, that's all anecdotal. It doesn't prove anything.

Val,

My nephew's comment about pointy people was something told to him by someone in Yale (it's been a few years so I can't remember who it was).

Think of it a different way. The most selective colleges have plenty of kids that can succeed academically at their college, to the point where have to refuse about 80% of the academically capable kids.

So what makes an admissions officer say "We want this kid" over the many others with similar test scores and grades? Will it be the well-rounded kid from an upper-middle class family that dabbles in five different activities?

Or will it be the kid that achieved exceptional grades despite being shuttled around six different foster homes? Or the kid from a highly under-represented demographic. Or the exceptional oboe player that can replace the graduating senior. Or the kid that won the USAMO gold medal? Or the girl with crew ERG times better than anyone. Those are accomplishments that admissions people can point to to choose one child over another.

Now, this really only happens at the 25-50 most selective colleges, and people can make a very good case that this competition is not good for most kids. That is an altogether different discussion.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread any further so I may start a new thread about this soon.

This is where my D goes to college. They are making great strides in getting women into STEM areas where there is less representation. My D toyed with the CS major, and is even researching in it this summer, but recently changed her mind and switched to physics.

http://theconversation.com/closing-...-making-a-difference-in-many-lives-41422

I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.

Harvey Mudd gets very bright students, so I could see this approach working there. Programming, like many other things, is a skill. Smart kids can pick up the basics quickly and solve moderately difficult abstract problems.

However, others become reasonably proficient through years of experience in learning what problems to avoid. So I wonder how well this approach would work in a lower level college.

As the book "In! College Admissions and Beyond" by Lillian Luterman and Jennifer Bloom, two college admissions consultants, says, "be alike but spike". "Be alike" means have very good test scores and grades in demanding classes. Mithawk gave examples of "spikes".

Power! Glory! Awesomeness!

Except for the second one in your list.

Class president? Cornell?

Kind of run of the mill. Is Cornell even considered elite or relevant these days?

The spike the elite colleges are most interested in is the one in their parents' income levels.

It's not about being with your friends? What IS "it" about? Unstoppable pursuit of excellence? Man, these are kids. I can't blame my children if they don't want to continue in an activity where they have no friends or are treated poorly by other kids, even if they're good at it and enjoy the activities. They aren't robots. I mean, if they want to continue anyway, of course, more power to them, but not enjoying the social aspect of an activity (especially one with a heavy time commitment) is a valid concern, IMO.

FWIW, research on what kids like about sports show that what they value most about it are being with friends and having fun, with skill development also on the list. Winning and getting trophies ranked very low.

That is not my impression of young chess players. On some days our chess club has tournaments with trophies as prizes, and other days are for open play. The days with tournaments have noticeably higher turnout.

Power! Glory! Awesomeness!

The ability to truly achieve what you were destined to achieve!

Back to the OP... here is a free online resource by the Mensa Foundation which discusses internal motivation: Lit From Within. Slide 41 of 43 in the Prezi reminds us that self-concept should be realistic and skill-based. Slide 42 reminds us of the role of effort (actually, grit): destitutus ventis, remos adhibe (deprived of the winds, take their oars).

Dweck (author of mindset) is one of several sources listed in the presentation.

I'm not talking about tiny kids when I say it isn't about being with your friends. I understand that all kids (all people, really) would probably prefer to be around friends for activities. But when your kid is in middle school or high school, and your kid likes soccer and their friends like cross country (or football, field hockey, etc.) does your kid quit soccer and run instead?

My kids are not about the unstoppable pursuit of excellence. My kids are not great athletes - my older two have had interest from DIII coaches, but they will never be DI material. They do enjoy playing their sport with others around their skill level. It is not enjoyable to play on teams with others who are far more or far less skilled than you are, even if those others are your friends.

The discussion started with an article about gifted girls in middle school. They tend to lack self-esteem, lose interest in STEM, adhere to stereotypes, etc. These girls probably tend to hang out with their friends in whichever activities the friends choose. I thought it was all about pursuing your interests, being confident and not succumbing to stereotypes.

(shrug) These studies didn't look at chess. I'm not sure we can consider chess a typical sport. My son's chess experience has been much more focused on winning than his sports experiences have been (he plays soccer on a lower level, though).

My son declined a trophy recently at a chess event. We have a lot of them and are running out of room, something I have been known to complain about. It was a "minor" trophy, given for a certain minimum number of wins at a tournament, not for placing (he always wants that kind!) He also sometimes gets participation trophies, which, don't get me started, so we really have a lot. The people running the tournament looked at him like he was insane, but IMO it was a win-win (less cost for the organizer!)

No, not if they're happy with their soccer experience overall. But if soccer is socially unenjoyable and another physical activity seems like it would be enjoyable on more levels, then maybe it's time to switch. I'm not going to worry about the lost potential, unless maybe I really think a scholarship is imminent. I do think these activities are "about" making friends to a significant extent. I don't think they should be about denying your passion either, though.

I mean, I get that we don't want girls quitting chess and math club because there are no other girls in the club, but ideally, I'd attack that problem by changing chess and math club, not by telling my child (mine was in second grade when she dropped chess, and hardly a serious chess player, though she still is better than she lets on) "You don't go to chess club to make friends!"

My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.

It was such a huge turn-off that my DD just couldn't take anymore of it and bailed on the major. She looked around and realized that if that was who she was going to be spending all of her time with-- no thanks.

This is our household, too-- we don't really follow traditional gender-norming at all, and there is nothing that is "well, you're a girl, so...." other than stuff that is truly biological. (I wouldn't be having a talk about how to fit bras with a son, after all.)

So I don't think that my DD ever realized that some things were "male-dominated" until she WAS in college. That was a bit of a shock, I think-- to walk into her first CS class and realize that she was one of four women in a room of 160 students.

This is so disheartening. I was pleased as punch to find out a classmate of DS's was going to on of Intel's 'Girls Who Code" summer program this summer. It really sounds like a great program. There are a number of groups in the Bay Area that are really trying to get women back into coding. I say back into because my first programming class back in college wasn't exactly 50/50 between the sexes but it was WAY better than 2% you describe. Although being one of the few women in a class never turned me off. It seems that programming has become MORE sexist of late.

And I do know many universities are taking this problem of women not being very well represented in computer science a big problem. Part of the issue is women aren't even applying to their programs. Our local university girls in CS has been running Coding workshops for 12-18 year old's for example. I keep thinking this is something I'd like to get involved in.

Historically it's been quite a pendulum shift, because in the 1960s, programming was considered women's work. Hardware was where all the manly-men worked. Men are hard, and women are soft, right? Also, programming meant typing.

See: Apollo Guidance Computer.

In the 1960s the two big programming languages were COBOL and FORTRAN, the latter used by engineers, scientists, and statisticians for FORmula TRANslation. I doubt that there has ever been gender parity among Fortran programmers -- the Real Programmers

Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal

As a former FORTRAN geek myself-- the disparity has grown since the 1980's-- shockingly so. I was astonished that it was THAT large a difference, and while it didn't bother my DD that she was the only female in her lab section of 48, it did bother her that she was treated the way she was by virtue of being female and not being obsessed SOLELY with coding.

She was taken less seriously by everyone around her because she also has interests in the arts. Apparently-- polymaths need not apply.

That particular attitude worries me in a much larger sense, honestly.

There are some interesting articles on this topic of coding as culture, its bizarre hiring practices and how it affects things like business performance, etc. over on LinkedIn.

My instinct is that some of it is a defense mechanism by those on the inside.

I'm betting this strangeness fizzles sooner or later.

Love it. They stopped teaching fortran the year after I took it in University. I stopped putting it on my resume years ago because I figured it was too dating

Your daughter's story makes me so very, very sad. I graduated EE as one of 4 in a class of 80 some in the late 90's. I'm now surrounded by polymaths and love the bizarre topics of daily discussion. Most hiring managers I've encountered are looking for people that can not only code but that have interests outside of computers and can hold a conversation. It's sad that these kids are being turned off before they even get started.

Bostonian - your story reminds me of my first day in the computer lab in first year. I had NO CLUE about computers, like none - hilarious considering where I've ended up. I was following the instructions line by line which walked us through using vi to write a fortran program (complete with escape :wq in the instructions). I was seriously in WAY over my head but doing my best not to show it. This guy walks behind me looks at my screen and screams "you're using vi? vi is for babies, real programmers use emacs!". Luckily it was obvious he was a complete dork so it was more entertaining than insulting. Luckily I have yet to encounter someone so..... um, special in my career.

I think it's a problem when kids feel they have to eat, sleep and breath one thing in order to be a success at it. The post secondary arms race probably isn't helping things - they are trained in high school to keep their eyes on the singular prize and maintain focus on it alone - interested in ..whatever..? Will it help you on your college application? No, well you need to find a better interest that does. All of the success stories of tech founders that came up with their big idea and started companies as teens or really young adults probably isn't helping either. They think they can be the next Jobs/Gates/Zuckerberg/etc if they ignore all else and become a coding fiend. A little eccentric? Lack people skills? No worries as long as you can code or at least that is often the narrative in the media (although less so IME IRL). Never mind the failures, detours, timing, luck and/or genius that helped many of the success stories actually become success stories.... ok enough rambling but hopefully some useful tangents in there.

I've been made aware of this also, and have wondered whether it was due to the shrinking of the economy over the past decade or so... analogous to the aftermath of the "Rosie the Riveter" campaign of the 1940's, when women were temporarily called to work in factories when men going off to war created a labor shortage... and then were expected to remove themselves from the labor force when the economy no longer needed the "excess" human capital.

The lead software engineer for Apollo 11, whose team is credited with software heroics that saved a nearly aborted landing, was Margaret Hamilton, a woman.

Enrollment of women in undergraduate degree programs in computer science peaked in the mid-80's at over 40%, and then has since declined by about a factor of 2.

It wasn't just that a woman was the lead software engineer (a term Margaret Hamilton coined, btw, in an effort to gain some well-deserved respect from the hardware folks), but the programming team was woman-dominated.

They wrote it in assembly language. The man who invented FORTRAN did so, he candidly admitted, because he didn't like programming, and coding in assembly was too hard.

Introducing Grace Hopper, a woman, into the conversation.

There is a reason I worked for 15 years as a computer programmer but have been unemployed (stayed at home with the kids) for the past 10 years. Company went out of business and I had some health issues that redirected my life's priorities. I tried to do some consulting at home for a few years but the whole coding as culture made it hard for me to every want a full time job in the industry again. Now that my kids are older I've been rethinking what I want to do next.

I've been reading about the Dunning-Kruger effect (DKE) lately. For the uninitiated, this means that incompetent people not having the ability to recognize that their performance is poor (even if it's pointed out to them). This is because the skills you need to recognize poor performance are the same skills you need in order to perform well. The flip side of the DKE is that highly competent people tend to underestimate their performance relative to others (because if something is easy for them, they tend to believe it's easy for everyone). This effect has been documented many, many times.

Basic example. Many Americans say, there's two of them instead of there are two of them. They presumably believe that there's two is correct usage. Say they're given the phrase there's two of them on a grammar test. They'd mark that expression as being written correctly and would be sure they got the question right. They don't know what they don't know, and therefore are incapable of recognizing their own poor performance. Likewise, they wouldn't be able to recognize someone else's good performance. Now scale that, and you get the idea about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I read the following information in a review article, and it applies perfectly to the debate about whether boys are inherently better at math and science:



In other words, males may overestimate their abilities (due to being less competent), while females underestimate their abilities (due to being more competent).

Source: Dunning D et al. (2003) Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence Current Directions in Psychological Science 12(3): 83-87. PM me if you want a copy.

HK....that's just horrible. Hugs to you and your daughter. I hope she has a better experience with her other interests! They were probably just jealous of her many talents and, you know, manners.
At least she figured it out now, instead of five years from now when she's stuck in a miserable career.

Your study showed that these gender differences in perception exist when competency is equivalent, so, no. Women are not dropping out of the sciences because they're too smart for them.

That's not what I was saying at all. The DKE says nothing about how smart you are. It describes an effect of overrating skills (in general) among those who have poorer skills and underrating them (as compared to a group) among those with higher skills.

The study quoted found that women underrated their abilities in scientific reasoning, and that this problem may play a role in their higher dropout rates.

This finding is a counterargument to the idea that males are more capable than females in STEM fields. Guys say they're better. That doesn't make it so.