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Girl’s EducationGirls’ Education in Mathematics and ScienceChristina Park 1
 
Girl’s Education
Girls’ Education in Mathematics and Science
The subjects of math and science seem to have equal appeal to girls and boys until the middleschool years, when girls begin to lose interest in these classes. By the end of high school, fewgirls pursue advanced math and science courses, sealing off future opportunities in science andtechnology, which provide some of the highest-paying jobs. This creates a gender gap in mathand science achievement, resulting in a noticeable lack of female representation in these fields.(AAUW, 1992), (NYS Occupational Education Equity Center, 1995), (Zohar, 2005).In the effort to eliminate this gap and increase high-paying job opportunities for girls,researchers have studied the female students’ experience in high school physics and math classesto determine the cause of their lack of interest and confidence in these subjects, (NYS OEEC,1995), (Zohar, 2005). In a recent, comprehensive meta-analysis using 81 international studies,researchers found an unusually high degree of gender bias present in these classes against femalestudents’ participation coming from their teachers, their teenage male peers, and sometimes eventheir parents, (NCGS, 1993), (NYS OEEC, 1995), (Zohar, 2005). Girls are given a sense of alienation from these fields by attitudes that females do not belong practicing math and scienceand have no future in it. These attitudes are communicated by classroom dynamics, which give boys more attention in class than girls, and ignore innate abilities in females, (Sadker &Zittleman, 2005), (NYS OEEC, 1995), (NCGS, 1993), (Zohar, 2005). Also, their teachers werefound to frequently counsel females against advanced study in these subjects, while encouragingmales with average grades to continue in the field, (NYS OEEC, 1995), (Zohar, 2005).Contributing to this bias is current science and math curriculum and textbook materialswhich, despite years of Title IX reforms, almost unanimously ignore female scientists andmathematicians in history, only citing the work of males in the field; many even reinforce2
 
Girl’s Educationstereotypes, (NYS OEEC, 1995), (Sadker & Zittleman, 2002/2003). This applies to three of today’s leading teachers’ science texts and three of the leading teachers’ math texts, (Sadker &Zittleman, 2002/2003).The traditional ways of teaching these subjects also causes most girls to tune out, since theyinvolve methods that are oriented to male learning styles. Lessons favor the use of lectures,competitive activities, working in isolation, criticism of thinking, and theoretical abstractexercises with no real world context, all of which appeal to boys but not to girls, (Pierce, 1998),(Zohar, 2005). Nationwide goals for ridding the school system of gender-biased attitudes will requireeducational reforms on state education department levels, altering policies to change textbook standards and setting clearer guidelines for providing a more gender-equitable learningenvironment, (NYS OEEC, 1995). However administrators and educators can significantlychange the female educational experience in science and math classes with reforms in their approach to teaching. Preventing teaching methods from being dominated by male-type thinkingcan eliminate the sense of alienation from the field that girls feel, (Pierce, 1998). Eliminating pervasive gender bias requires that these teaching reforms must address males as well as females,(NCGS, 1993). According to the National Association for Women in Education, creating afemale-inclusive learning environment in the school system is a matter of adjusting what istaught, and how it is taught, (Pierce, 1998).Curriculum and content that includes the work, achievements, and perspectives of women,acknowledging their heroism when appropriate, is essential for students to recognize women ascontributors to human civilization, (Pierce, 1998). One leader in the field of science who should be included in curriculum is Rachel Carson, a scientist and the author of “Silent Spring”, written3
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