Wait, girls aren’t good at math?

I have female friends in STEM fields who were told, some at a very young age, that “girls aren’t good at math.”  Some said that adults expressed surprise at their abilities in math and science, because that was strange for girls.  Even my husband remembers being aware as a child that girls weren’t supposed to be good at math.  In the readings from “Whistling Vivaldi” by Claude Steele, the gap between women’s and men’s success in math is mentioned many times.

Honestly, this is all very strange to me.  I was a girl who loved math, now grown into a female engineer, and I don’t remember a single time before high school when anyone told me anything negative about girls and math.  I remember being encouraged to enjoy math by many female teachers (I don’t think I had a male teacher until seventh grade).  I remember being called a “little engineer” by my parents at a very young age (normally in exasperation when I did something that made perfect sense to me, but apparently didn’t to the rest of the world).  I remember being the fourth grade “fast math” champion and being inordinately proud of a skill that, I realize now, is really not very useful.  I remember doing a report on Grace Hopper (the inventor of the first computer compiler) in sixth grade and being more impressed by the fact that she was a Navy admiral than the fact that she was a female computer scientist (my father was in the Navy).

I realize that my childhood was out of the norm in this way.  I honestly don’t know why I didn’t hear about this incredibly pervasive stereotype.  In light of the studies Steele discusses, I do wonder if or how this has affected my academic performance.  Did anyone else have a similar experience?

On eggshells

Hello. My name is Cody, and I….

  • …am white.
  • …am a male.
  • …am married.
  • …am a father to a wonderful son.
  • …come from an extremely impoverished, agricultural community in rural Alabama.
  • …am a student loan statistic, living with unbelievable student debt.
  • …am the first generation of my family to graduate from University.
  • …am the first of my family to finish an advanced degree.
  • …am an agriculturalist, ecologist, biologist, botanist.
  • …spent three years working in the field before pursuing a PhD.
  • …am a follower of Christ.
  • …come from a broken family with continued rocky relationships.
  • …am neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative nor liberal.
  • …have worked with members from more cultures than I can count.
  • …drive a Subaru.

And so much more.

In talks concerning inclusivity and diversity, more often than not, the first two items on my list of descriptors are all that matter. According to these discussions, I am the pinnacle of society, and therefore, am not a concern of progressive thought. However, if one of the first two items in my list of descriptors could change, I would be viewed as the object of progressive thought. It is here, that I want to draw our attention to a video I related with this week:

In all our talk about how to move forward with inclusivity and diversity within the university, it feels as though we are always looking for the nouveau approach (if for no other reason than to remain relevant). Now, it is currently apropos to announce our pronoun preferences (as unique and specific as they may be), if not to further advertise more of our personal identifiers (e.g., gender). Why this is now important in the classroom is beyond me. More importantly, I feel this movement trivializes so much.

Let me ask: If, in an attempt to be inclusive, we implement pronoun announcement in class, why do we not also seek to know more of the individual? Why is it not important that I announce my life experience in poverty? Isn’t my learning framed by that experience as much as someones gender? My point is not to denigrate the gender spectrum revolution, but instead to point out how I feel our progressive steps are misguided. We are taking one step forward, and three back.

Referring to the video, searching ancient knowledge, and visiting the creased pages of history, I am reminded of how important a mere assertion was for relationships of past centuries: Are you friend, or foe? Would not our classroom benefit more from a similar model of camaraderie amongst the students? Of course our society has become one of individuality, in which the parts are greater than the sum. Here’s hoping we can again be sojourning learners and citizens, instead of each vying for our place, first identifying with a group that does not pertain to the purpose of the classroom.

In the classroom, we should first be learners. Then we can hope for common ground with everything else.

Hello. My name is Cody, and, in the classroom, I….

  • …am a learner, and a facilitator of learning.

 


Social Justice Education to Social Justice Activism

The issues of diversity and social justice are connected to so many things I care about in life that I’ve found it difficult to narrow the topic down to what can fit in a single blog post.  First, as a liberal, I value everyone’s right to be treated equally and want to correct any real injustices that we identify to create a fair playing field for all.  I don’t value diversity for diversity’s sake, but I do value it in the contexts that it has benefits for society and in promoting equality.  Second, I’m a member of the skeptic/atheist communities (the 2 overlap considerably) and social justice activism has created a schism in our movement during the past 2 years.  Free speech and rigorous debate have long been valued in the community, but so has social justice, specifically the injustices caused by religions and religious communities, but also just general liberal values as we are mostly Humanists.  We have historically criticized injustices within religious communities, striving to counter ideas, not attack individuals.  Most on the Left saw this as important work, especially when we were challenging conservative Christianity in our own country on issues like homosexuality, sexism, and their theocratic tendencies. But about 2 years ago, Islam suddenly became off-limits and anyone criticizing Islam or Muslim norms was now labeled an Islamaphobe.  What happened?  It is probably a confluence of several trends, including the rise of victimhood culture, but I think the logic is that Muslims are an oppressed group therefore we cannot criticize their ideas, which is paternalistic and feeds in to the bigotry of low expectations.  Never mind that women, homosexuals, and apostates in many Islamic societies are among the most oppressed people, any criticism of Islam or Islamist regimes only fuels bigotry towards Muslims so they get a free pass.  Social justice is also causing a schism around the issue of feminism within the atheist/skeptic community with everyone agreeing on the goal of gender equality but with a subset engaging in what I think is misguided and dishonest social justice activism.

Again, I’m all for social justice–it’s the tactics of activists that I think are counterproductive.  In a democratic society or on a college campus, there is a tension between freedom of speech and physical and emotional safety.  In our democracy, freedom of speech is more or less absolute.  We allow speech as long as it does not lead directly to violence, defamation, or harassment.  On a college campus, we value freedom of speech, but we also get to decide who gets a platform to promote their ideas on campus.  There is obviously a line of acceptability of ideas below which we would not want to give someone a platform to speak.  For example, we wouldn’t invite a child rapist to come explain their position.  But this line is subjective.  How do we negotiate this?  Ideally, we do so as a community.  Since there is a wide range of opinions on a college campus, I think we want to set a bar that allows the opinions of the majority of residents to have the right for their views to be given a platform.  We may not agree with these views, but college is supposed to be a place where we are exposed to ideas that challenge us, perhaps make us uncomfortable, even angry.  We then should counter ideas we don’t agree with with better ideas.  This is how you change minds and expose yourself to other positions so that you can change your mind if you happen to be wrong about something.  Or if you’re not comfortable hearing challenging ideas, you don’t show up.

College student justice activists largely are not doing this.  They are deeming only ideas firmly within their social justice agenda worthy of being given a platform and de-platforming (192 in 2013), physically blocking, and disrupting the events of speakers they don’t agree with.  Dissent is silenced by using labels like bigot, sexist, and homophobe, things liberals really don’t want to be labeled, at the drop of a hat.  Even social justice activists aren’t safe–one misstep and you’re labeled and deplatformed.  This is the opposite of a safe space!

So I’m curious if there is a link between social justice education and the sorry state of social justice activism.  Arao and Clemens define a safe space to be ‘an environment in which everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule, or denial of experience’’.  This sounds like a very reasonable way to conduct the classroom, but I’m interested in some of the specifics.  I’ve never been in a classroom with formal safe space guidelines so I have a few questions.

1.  What counts as an attack or ridicule?  I would argue this should be limited to a personal attack e.g. a racial or sexist slur.  But social justice advocates have a more broad definition of an attack including the criticism of certain types of ideas, such as one’s religion and cultural practices (if you’re a minority, this is fair game if you’re not), tenets of feminist, gender, or race theory, and the law, to name a few.  It is true that criticizing one’s firmly held beliefs can often feel like a personal attack but in a democratic society, we need to draw a firm line between attacking people and criticizing their ideas and people need to get used to having their ideas criticized and being able to handle it.  So, I think it is a problem to lump the criticism of ideas in with personal attacks.  Is this occurring in the classroom or is it mission creep after they leave the classroom?  Arao and Clemens define an attack as an instance of extreme disrespect.  People often feel extremely disrespected when you question their firmly held beliefs.  But I’m glad to see that they recognize this distinction in their brave space concept.

2.  What counts as a denial of experience?  Obviously, we shouldn’t deny that something someone claimed they experienced never happened.  We can personally be skeptical of it if it sounds extremely implausible, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt.  But can we recognize their experience and then argue that it is not relevant to the question at hand?  I hope so.

OK, I guess I only had 2 questions.  I want to end by talking about perhaps the most important type of diversity on college campus that is currently being largely ignored–viewpoint diversity.  The faculty at American college campuses are overwhelmingly liberal and roughly 96% of the faculty in the social sciences are liberal.  Not only does this situation likely lead to biased research in the social sciences, a largely liberal administration and faculty are more likely to give in to unreasonable student demands such as systematically no platforming conservatives.  Yes, I am a liberal suggesting that we increase the number of conservative faculty on campus–that’s how bad I think the current climate is.  I think it will make for better rounded students more able to cope with the real world once they leave campus.  However, I’m not optimistic this will happen.

Update:  Here is a great video from Maajid Nawaz.  “No idea is above scrutiny, no people are below dignity”.

The only real object of investigation…

Where do I start? Since Wednesday night I have been asking myself this question and I still do not have an answer. At least it is by no means a perfect answer or even an answer at all. At this time it is like a puzzle so I plan on describing a few pieces and hopefully it will result in something meaningful in the end. Bear with me.

When I saw that the readings for this week included Claude Steele’s work I instantly consulted my teaching notes from a year ago and found that while teaching a Social Psychology lesson I had used one of Dr. Steele’s videos as a way to introduce the topic of Bias, Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination for my students. You can find it on YouTube here. Much of what he talks about in this video is summarizing what we read in the chapters from his book Whistling Vivaldi. A few things that stood out to me in Dr. Steele’s work were:

  1. The explanation of what makes a social identity important “if you have to deal with things in situations because you have the identity then that identity is likely to become very important to you…” (approx. 14 minutes in his talk)
  2. How “Identity Contingencies” become central to how one functions on a daily basis.
  3. “a question that makes you aware that you’ve got an identity” (approx. 16 minutes)
  4. Contingencies that threaten us become more important… caring makes you vulnerable (approx. 35 minutes)

I will deliberate on the third point here just to provide perspective. Somewhere along the path of life we all realize that we are individuals, that we are different from other people in a particular way. This could be anything like Dr. Steele explains. It could be gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, metal health status or ability to name a few but a differential status that makes a person vulnerable from the get-go is what is central to how we feel about it and how we function with it day in and day out. Growing up in a majorly male chauvinistic society in India I always knew as a female child that I would not be treated equally. It was an awareness that I did not argue with till later in life. My gender being a part of my identity and having lived with it for numerous years and being discriminated against for it never really came to me as a shock. Something else however came as a shock…eventually.

One particular situation that comes to mind happened in 2005. I was in U.K. based in a small town high up north neighboring the Scotland border. It was 4am on a crisp August morning and I was waiting to catch a bus to London so as to fly back home to India for good. Eventually another individual, with a similar situation I’m sure, came up to me and started making small talk – weather, sports and what not but the question that made me realize something about myself apart from what I already knew and that I had never thought of before was “what country are you from?” and soon after that came “so you are a Hindu, right?” No harm done just as long as they were questions based on curiosity. We all get curious. Just to add a little context to that situation though this was the time when U.K was in upheaval, upset and torn by the London Tube blasts that had unfortunately taken place not even a month ago. Not sure what the next question would have been or how this situation would have ended but the bus pulled up at that very time. As I boarded the bus I realized something I had never thought of before – I walk with every single one of my identities. Some are overt and some covert but still every single day, I enter situations in which other individuals have the opportunity to form an opinion about me even when they do not know my name or what kind of person I am.

I used Bias, Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination together in a sentence earlier as I have always arranged them in my mind on a continuum. Bias – showing an inclination or preference for one over the other. Stereotype – a generalization about a group of people or social category, usually incorrect or presumptuous in nature. Prejudice – an unjustified attitude towards an individual, usually a result of stereotyping. Discrimination – behavior or actions towards an individual, usually negative and usually a result of prejudiced ideas or stereotypes. So it makes sense if you arrange the four concepts on a continuum, right?! Now was it bias, stereotype, prejudice or discrimination that was exercised in the aforementioned story? Can you tell? Maybe it was one or maybe it was neither. I still cannot decide but it lends perspective on the fact that identity contingencies that fire up our fight or flight response become important.

Dr. Rick Hanson in his book with Dr. Richard Mendius called Buddha’s Brain explain simply that any incident that triggers fight or flight or the limbic System or the primitive brain as it is sometimes called will result in the prefrontal cortex or our thinking brain to shut down. Therefore, no matter what we know through our prefrontal cortex, the area that is responsible for higher level thinking and reasoning, we are not thinking with that part of the brain anymore. Everything at that time and in that moment is about survival. Thus, it would make complete sense if I were threatened or felt threatened due to one or two identity contingencies that those contingencies would then be extremely important to me and any time, any single time one of those identity contingencies were threatened, they would trigger a fight or flight response in me. How simple does that sound on a cognitive prefrontal cortex level. On the level or our primitive brain however, it sounds horrifying.

If I learned anything on my journey to becoming a counselor it was to treat every individual as…wait for it…an individual. Even while considering them in various roles and different social contexts one always has to try and understand the individual. This takes time. After listening to numerous stories, and mind you real, horrifying, heart wrenching life stories, and trying understand how it feels like to be in my client’s shoes, I can say that it has been the most humbling experience of my life. One has to make a deliberate shift from forming an opinion to forming an understanding. Carl Jung in his famous work The Undiscovered Self says:

“Judged scientifically, the individual is nothing but a unit which repeats itself ad infinitum and could just as well be designated with a letter of the alphabet. For understanding, on the other hand, it is just the unique individual human being who, when stripped of all those conformities and regularities so dear to the heart of the scientist, is the supreme and only real object of investigation.” (p. 10)

Stepping into the role a teacher then we have to decide – what is the real object of our investigation? If the object of our investigation is what inspires learning in our students then we would need to know who the student is. In order to know the student then, we would need to understand their identity contingencies. If we are neglecting to understand our student’s identity contingencies we are neglecting to understand the student and therefore in turn neglecting to understand what really inspires learning in our students.

Lastly, I know I am a dreamer, but even I know that a perfect world does not exist. I know that even an ideal world is difficult to create. Just like years ago I knew that in the Indian society a female child is a liability and as I mentioned before, would never be treated equally. Is it however, too much to dream that every individual could be, should be and has the right to be treated with equity?!


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