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We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children—the myth of inborn genetic math ability.
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Miles Kimball & Noah Smith Oct 28 2013, 10:30 AM ET
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“I’m just not a math person.”
We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children—the myth of inborn genetic math ability.
Is math ability genetic? Sure, to some degree. Terence Tao, UCLA’s famous virtuoso mathematician, publishes dozens of papers in top journals every year, and is sought out by researchers around the world to help with the hardest parts of their theories. Essentially none of us could ever be as good at math as Terence Tao, no matter how hard we tried or how well we were taught. But here’s the thing: We don’t have to! For high-school math, inborn talent is much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence.
How do we know this? First of all, both of us have taught math for many years—as professors, teaching assistants, and private tutors. Again and again, we have seen the following pattern repeat itself:
Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class. Some of these kids have parents who have drilled them on math from a young age, while others never had that kind of parental input.
On the first few tests, the well-prepared kids get perfect scores, while the unprepared kids get only what they could figure out by winging it—maybe 80 or 85%, a solid B.
The unprepared kids, not realizing that the top scorers were well-prepared, assume that genetic ability was what determined the performance differences. Deciding that they “just aren’t math people,” they don’t try hard in future classes, and fall further behind.
The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.
Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The idea that math ability is mostly genetic is one dark facet of a larger fallacy that intelligence is mostly genetic. Academic psychology journals are well stocked with papers studying the world view that lies behind the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy we just described. For example, Purdue University psychologist Patricia Linehan writes:
A body of research on conceptions of ability has shown two orientations toward ability. Students with an Incremental orientation believe ability (intelligence) to be malleable, a quality that increases with effort. Students with an Entity orientation believe ability to be nonmalleable, a fixed quality of self that does not increase with effort.
The “entity orientation” that says “You are smart or not, end of story,” leads to bad outcomes—a result that has been confirmed by many other studies. (The relevance for math is shown by researchers at Oklahoma City who recently found that belief in inborn math ability may be responsible for much of the gender gap in mathematics.)
Psychologists Lisa Blackwell, Kali Trzesniewski, and Carol Dweck presented these alternatives to determine people’s beliefs about intelligence:
You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you really can’t do much to change it.
You can always greatly change how intelligent you are.
They found that students who agreed that “You can always greatly change how intelligent you are” got higher grades. But as Richard Nisbett recounts in his bookIntelligence and How to Get It, they did something even more remarkable:
Dweck and her colleagues then tried to convince a group of poor minority junior high school students that intelligence is highly malleable and can be developed by hard work…that learning changes the brain by forming new…connections and that students are in charge of this change process.
The results? Convincing students that they could make themselves smarter by hard work led them to work harder and get higher grades. The intervention had the biggest effect for students who started out believing intelligence was genetic. (A control group, who were taught how memory works, showed no such gains.)
But improving grades was not the most dramatic effect, “Dweck reported that some of her tough junior high school boys were reduced to tears by the news that their intelligence was substantially under their control.” It is no picnic going through life believing you were born dumb—and are doomed to stay that way.
For almost everyone, believing that you were born dumb—and are doomed to stay that way—is believing a lie. IQ itself can improve with hard work.
The single most important factor in being successful is hard work. quote]
Tell that to folks working three jobs, busting their a** and still barely able to make ends meet.
Tell that to the child who is in tears because math has become such a nightmare, "Well Johnny, if you would just try harder."
That is the lie that we have been taught; that if you work hard, you will succeed. Hard work cannot overcome everything, if it could we wouldn't have the income/class disparity that we have in the US.
Why just bits and pieces of the truth? Why not the whole truth?
First, solid curriculum and pedagogy is what matters most.
Then "hard work" matters a lot too. Academics is one of the most improvable areas with lots of practice.
Unlike the arts where there is a lot of God-given talent involved.
Then circumstances that can severely limit someone's ability to do the miraculous "hard work" matter just as much. Disadvantaged family background, need to work several jobs, inability to see the importance of academics when you are young and could not care less...and your parents don't guide you or expect much in that department anyway, etc.
Sometimes I think that these clearly ill-willed ideologies/theories are literally spread by interests at the top to keep most people where they "belong"; which is a place of ignorance, unable-ness and inability to demand a better life.
After all, does our society really need THAT many people with THAT solid of an education?
It certainly needs way more than it needed in the past...but out of 7 billion souls - those needs are met anyway.
Let's assume that through a miracle most young people learned their lesson, stopped being "unmotivated" and became academically stellar over night. Well... top colleges, medical schools and other fancy gateways to the "good life" would still have only so many spots available for only so many people...which means they would have to pick only the geniuses from all that large pool of academically stellar students.
They would still differentiate applicants somehow. ...because the system is set up so that only a few can claim access to the "good life" - no mater what intellectual qualities they bring to the table.
Granted you don't want the trouble of explaining to a mass of smart ass*s why they live like crap despite having achieved so much...isn't that wiser to leave them in the dark from the beginning?
Telling them things like "math requires inborn talent" is one way to do it.
Telling them that it takes genius genes to produce a medical doctor (when nothing could be further from the truth!) is another way to do it. The first time I heard the "MD = academically brilliant" person was when I arrived in this country in my mid 20's.
Growing up I had heard "MD = medium-to-very good" intelligence + a ton of bookish-ness (effort) and this is exactly how MD-s were. Nothing brilliant about them. They are the same here, in this country, only their egos are 1000 times more inflated.
And there are other nice myths to use so that many people won't even bother.
Our education system is geared towards the slow learners, stupid and special needs. Inordinate amount of money is spent "closing the gap" with little evidence that the gap is narrowing to support continued expenditures.
As some have pointed out we have no problem with some kids being athletically or artistically gifted but kids having different intellectual abilities is somehow a problem. Our competitors are not burdened by such silly thinking and in due time will eat our lunch as a result.
A few are VERY academically talented or VERY supported at home. They will rise above, will motivate themselves or will have the living lights tigered out of them by their parents until they shine bright enough.
Most can acquire decent academic skills on a high quality curriculum, good teachers and high expectations at school.
A few will acquire very little academic skill despite high quality curriculum, good teachers and high expectations.
And even fewer will be completely dead academically - usually those with mental/heavy behavioral problems.
I don't see how this distribution prevents the educational system from implementing a strong curriculum, high expectations and an emphasis on effort - for EVERYONE.
Stop focusing on outcomes and outputs.
Focus on high quality inputs and you will maximize your crop. If you start out wit the mentality that only a chosen few will be able to handle solid academics...whereas the rest can be given up on from the beginning, hence you should not even bother with a solid curriculum for the masses...then you are setting up a system destined for savage inequalities from the start.
WRONG, UNETHICAL, IMMORAL.
I agree that it is wrong, unethical and immoral to refuse to allocate resources to a solid curriculum for all. The place where I have a problem is that under the current educational system the lion's share of resources goes to the bottom. The lion's share of the resources should go the lion's share of the students, which is those in the middle. The rest of the resources should be allocated to those at the bottom AND those at the top. It is backwards to spend the most money on the least able.
Utter PC nonsense. Sure practice makes you better but if you can't get over the hump, can't figure out what is being calculated and why, you will eventually hit a wall.
Utter PC nonsense. Sure practice makes you better but if you can't get over the hump, can't figure out what is being calculated and why, you will eventually hit a wall.
In a recent study described in the journal Developmental Science, lead author and post-doctoral fellow Melissa Kibbe and Lisa Feigenson, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, found that most preschoolers and kindergarteners—children between 4 and 6—can do basic algebra naturally.
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If this kind of basic algebraic reasoning is so simple and natural for 4, 5, and 6-year-olds, then why it is so difficult for teens and others?
"One possibility is that formal algebra relies on memorized rules and symbols that seem to trip many people up," Feigenson said. "So one of the exciting future directions for this research is to ask whether telling teachers that children have this gut level ability—long before they master the symbols—might help in encouraging students to harness these skills. Teachers may be able to help children master these kind of computations earlier, and more easily, giving them a wedge into the system."
Note that algebra should NOT be taught by rote rules and memorization. Concepts are important, not memorizing what equation goes with what type of problem.
Our education system is geared towards the slow learners, stupid and special needs. Inordinate amount of money is spent "closing the gap" with little evidence that the gap is narrowing to support continued expenditures.
As some have pointed out we have no problem with some kids being athletically or artistically gifted but kids having different intellectual abilities is somehow a problem. Our competitors are not burdened by such silly thinking and in due time will eat our lunch as a result.
You are right that the ed systen is geared towards the "slow learners, stupid and special needs" (pretty offensive and certainly not helpful labels but... OK, we get the message); but this is not because of a lack of belief in "different intellectual abilities". It is in fact because America believes TOO MUCH in the importance of innate intellectual abilities!!
By espousing "fixed intelligence" theories, we dumb down the curriculum to supposedly "meet the needs of the less able" and by doing that we keep both the "less able" and the "able enough" at low levels of academic achievement, all while allowing the Genetic Tigers or those with Tiger Parents to rise to unprecedented levels of privilege.
I agree that it is wrong, unethical and immoral to refuse to allocate resources to a solid curriculum for all. The place where I have a problem is that under the current educational system the lion's share of resources goes to the bottom. The lion's share of the resources should go the lion's share of the students, which is those in the middle. The rest of the resources should be allocated to those at the bottom AND those at the top. It is backwards to spend the most money on the least able.
I agree for the most part.
I just think that focusing too much on distinguishing between the unable, the "moderately able" and the "very able" at early stages in the educational process is not a good or fair strategy.
Expose ALL to a high quality curriculum. Expect ALL to do as well as they can on the tests derived from the high quality curriculum you hopefully provided.
Quit testing, measuring, tracking, separating, labeling and reporting so much throughout the process.
If teachers could also be paid more and burdened less with administrative junk and dumbed down yet very time consuming pedagogical methods - that would be even great. It would attract higher and higher caliber candidates to the teaching profession - who will otherwise run to the private sector.
Help as much as possible those students who fail miserably (there won't be as many as you think if the curriculum and pedagogical inputs are high quality) but don't spend ALL of your efforts on the completely hopeless, as you well put it. Those few won't make it in life with academics anyway.
Focus on the majority (the "moderately able" and the "very able"). Expect the "moderately able" to reach towards where the "very able" sit comfortably. It will mean a serious stretch for many in the middle but at least they will know that this is what the educational system requires and this is what the labor market will require of them too - if they are to stand an equal chance with the "tigered" kid.
Don't dumb down the curriculum - this is the fair thing to do.
The trouble will be when all those well prepared young people will be released into the labor market to start the Hunger Games.
From there...you be the judge of how society should change.
Utter PC nonsense. Sure practice makes you better but if you can't get over the hump, can't figure out what is being calculated and why, you will eventually hit a wall.
What's your solution? Not bother explaining algebra to the "less endowed" because they "hit a wall"?
You brought zero evidence that the less endowed children would absolutely NOT be able to overcome that wall if taught properly, practiced a lot, shown the steps in slow motion, etc.
Of course IQ correlates with how well you do in algebra; or how fast you catch on how math is done.
In my highly demanding high school I used to simply NOT GET IT RIGHT AWAY when the teacher would introduce difficult math concepts. My desk mate caught on more easily.
She would sit with me during the break and explain it slower, one more time.
I had mini-tutoring from my desk mate during the break - and I would eventually get it too.
She was a sweetheart, yes.
I finished more grad school than she had - though I am pretty sure that when it came to all things "quantitative", her IQ was higher than mine.
If this genetic stuff is taken so seriously again, can we at least implement a good old, honest Eugenics program and not allow so many unfortunate souls to be born in a world where a high IQ is required or else? Just a thought.
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