You've hit the nail on the head. The problem is not with the innate ability; it's a combination of poor teaching methods in the junior and intermediate grades, combined with an overwhelming dose of socialization that says girls shouldn't study high-level mathematics. By seventh grade, that socialization is already ingrained deep enough that girls believe they're making a free choice not to study higher-level math.
Ontario doesn't split that early; all strands of math are taught in a generic math class until grade eleven, but as of grade nine, classes are divided according to difficulty into three strands. Frankly, I think streaming according to ability is one of the single biggest problems our education systems have, because it encourages all the stakeholders to think that ability IS innate, and furthermore that it can be assessed with accuracy by the age of fourteen, and the research mostly shows that that's not true; given enough parental support of the right kind and really good teaching, pretty much anyone can succeed at a high level.
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Date: 2010-07-08 10:08 am (UTC)Ontario doesn't split that early; all strands of math are taught in a generic math class until grade eleven, but as of grade nine, classes are divided according to difficulty into three strands. Frankly, I think streaming according to ability is one of the single biggest problems our education systems have, because it encourages all the stakeholders to think that ability IS innate, and furthermore that it can be assessed with accuracy by the age of fourteen, and the research mostly shows that that's not true; given enough parental support of the right kind and really good teaching, pretty much anyone can succeed at a high level.