I remember how it was -- JR
Australian Chief Scientist wants more girls to embrace science and maths
This pressure is a bit arrogant. Why should girls not choose what they want?
Dropout rates from high school maths and science subjects have sparked calls from Australia’s chief scientist Cathy Foley for better trained teachers.
Dr Foley said women risk missing out on highly paid jobs unless more girls studied STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects at school and university. She said boys made up 78 per cent of physics enrolments for the Higher School Certificate in NSW.
Too many students were “dropping out of important subjects at the last minute’’ in years 11 and 12, Dr Foley said. “That’s not the recipe we need for great opportunities for women to have fabulous jobs that are technology-based.’’
Student enrolment data for the two biggest states, NSW and Victoria, reveal high dropout rates from science subjects in senior years. In NSW, one in three of all students who enrolled in physics or chemistry in 2019 had dropped the subject by the end of year 12.
In Victoria, a quarter of students who enrolled in year 11 chemistry in 2020 dropped the subject in year 12, with 3886 students quitting the core science subject last year.
In mathematical methods, necessary to study engineering or medicine, one in four students shed the subject between years 11 and 12.
Nearly 4000 year 12 students completed specialist mathematics in Victoria last year, but boys were twice as likely as girls to have studied the most difficult maths subject. Just 1653 year 12 girls completed physics studies last year compared with 5596 boys – with a 22 per cent dropout rate for the subject in the senior years in Victorian high schools.
In systems engineering, 68 girls finished the subject in year 12, compared with 1045 boys.
Dr Foley said school girls with a talent for science often dreamt of becoming doctors so they could help people.
That meant girls were overlooking lucrative and interesting careers in data science, artificial intelligence and robotics that could help humanity, she said.
“A lot of young girls are brought up with societal expectations to be a carer, a social secretary and to make sure they’re nice to people,’’ she said.
“But there’s a narrow idea of what it means to help people. If they go into STEM-related research, they can develop something used by many people; they can change the world by science.’’
Dr Foley said Australia will need an extra 250,000 workers with digital skills within the next two years. “We’re not graduating anywhere near the number of (qualified workers) we need … to move from a service-based economy built on mineral extraction and services.’’
She said international students were more likely than Australian students to study engineering or physical sciences at university.
Better teaching, rather than a new curriculum, was the key to stopping students dropping out of science and maths in senior high school, Dr Foley said.
“Curriculums don’t inspire children, teachers inspire children. It doesn’t matter how good the content is, you need an inspiring teacher.
“At the moment, teachers often are teaching outside their area of expertise.
“Phys-ed teachers working as maths and science teachers is not a pathway that’s serving us well.’’
Dr Foley praised schools such as St Aiden’s Anglican Girls’ School in Brisbane, where students learn about coding and robotics from their first year of primary school.
Girls take part in an annual robotics contest, the Australian Space Design Competition and a First Lego League contest.
Principal Toni Riordan said 45 per cent of the class of 2021 year 12 graduates had applied for STEM-related studies at university. This year, 22 per cent of year 12 students are studying physics, 54 per cent chemistry and 56 per cent biology.
“The quality and professionalism of our teachers allow us to deliver our school-wide priority to deliver age-appropriate and diverse opportunities in STEM,’’ Ms Riordan said. “Our students embrace these opportunities with a curious mindset and creative problem-solving, which we know will prepare them for the world they will encounter.’’
Dr Foley, who trained as a school teacher before becoming a scientist, said too few teachers had the “right skills’’ to teach maths and science.
She said children’s engagement with social media and gaming meant “their need to be excited and inspired and engaged is heightened’’.
Scientists, engineers and IT professionals needed financial incentives, such as scholarships, to retrain as teachers, she added.
And she questioned the need for university-educated professionals to complete a two-year master’s degree in education to become a teacher.
“If you’ve been on a fair salary, you can’t suddenly dip out for two years (to complete a master’s degree),’’ Dr Foley said.
“Many people who’ve been in the workforce a long time have skills that are transferable.
“They might not need to do all aspects of a two-year master’s (degree).’’
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Professors tweet about how they are using the '1619 Project' in class
Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted to college professors in December, asking them to share their syllabi with her if they use the 1619 Project in their classrooms.
Scholars from around the country have since left comments on Jones’ post about how they use or have previously used the ideas from her publication in their own classrooms.
Hannah-Jones claims in her "1619 Project" that America’s history is centered around the arrival of the first slave ship in the colonies in 1619.
John Duffy, a University of Notre Dame Professor of English, was among the first to post a reply.
“I don’t know if you saw this,” he wrote, linking to a Washington Post article that is titled “Professor: Why I teach the much-debated 1619 Project – despite its flaws.”
Duffy is quoted in the article and wrote extensively about his support for Jones and why he uses her ideas in his classroom.
“Yet my reasons for teaching the 1619 Project are not entirely intellectual. They are equally visceral,” Duffy states. “Most of my students come to the class with sketchy notions of the realities of slavery.”
Middlesex Community College Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Paralegal Studies Program Director Halye Sugarman shared a tweet about her own classes.
“I teach paralegal studies and have begun to incorporate 1619 and would like to do more! Anyone who want to collaborate DM me,” she wrote.
Illinois State University History Professor, Dr. Andrew Hartman, is teaching a graduate seminar about the 1619 project.
“Teaching a grad seminar this summer, geared for high school history teachers, that I call: "A Ruthless Critique of the American History Survey." We will take the controversy over 1619/1776 as our starting point,” Hartman tweeted.
Hunter College Professor of Art History, Michael Lobel, has found a way to incorporate Jones’ ideas into his art courses.
He wrote, “Not a whole course specifically on the project, but I'm teaching a course on the African American presence in the graphic arts & will be covering 19th-century prints that reference the date 1619, including this @librarycongress chromolithograph.”
University of Pittsburgh Director of Undergraduate Studies and Senior Lecturer, Brock Bahler, tweeted: “I taught a Philosophy of Race & Religion in Spr 21 & would like to incorporate #1619Project into it next time. The intertwinement of colonialism, slavery & Jim Crow w/ Christianity in US history figured quite prominently.”
He included a screenshot of his syllabus which already includes readings such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” Richard Delgado’s “Hallmark Critical Race Theory Themes,” and Peggy McIntosh’s pamphlet called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
Another University of Pittsburgh Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Health Equity, Dara D. Mendez, tweeted:
“Ive incorporate the readings into my Social Epi class over the past 2 fall semesters. Just got the book as Xmas gift :).”
On Mendez’s school profile, she includes a personal statement about her teaching practices. “My research, teaching, curriculum development and service applies equity, anti-racism, anti-oppression praxis as well as Black Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory and Public Health Critical Race Praxis,” she wrote.
More here:
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=19065
*************************************************A feminist failure
By MAGGIE McPHEE
I have been teaching at an all-girls’ school for more than 11 years, and I am still astounded at my students’ capacity for romance.
Even after 60 years of modern feminism, patriarchal myths sold in the fairytales of childhood, have al alluring pull over many young women.
A case in point: our leavers were asked to dress up as their future selves as a lighthearted activity. We saw astronauts and doctors, but a couple dressed up as “trophy wives”.
I asked them if they were being ironic. They were not.
Just the other day when my Year 12 English class was talking about gender politics in society, the subject turned to #MeToo. To my horror several girls asked innocently: “What’s #MeToo”?
As their committed feminist of an English teacher, I feel the need to “sell” feminism, to prepare them for when they inevitably leave the protected matriarchy of single-sex schooling and prepare to engage in earnest with the complex reality of a male-dominated world.
It’s a hard sell. Some of our strong, clever young women are afraid of the label “feminist” and avoid association with the movement. It is frustrating that some students are blasé about gender issues in a world in which Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins are fighting so hard for their rights as women. What are they afraid of? Being labelled as “difficult”? A complainer? Or perhaps the potential, and unspoken consequences of such an association.
Why are our young women disengaged from this issue that connects so directly to the shape of their futures? Perhaps the subtle messages their context sends them are part of the problem. Often, we underestimate girls, thinking they are not able to cope with the complexities of life. We protect them, enable their relatively harmless fantasies (the Year 12 ball is testament to that) and risk failing to prepare them for the challenges of a life that will expect them to be able to stand their ground and stake their claim.
We also give them an exhausting list of boxes to be ticked – you need to be independent, educated, skilled and trained, but you also need to be soft, empathetic, gentle, kind and feminine. No wonder my students are overwhelmed.
I suppose I can understand the impulse to retreat to the safety of apparently simple roles or solutions. Sometimes it may even be easier to opt out of the discussion altogether.
We all know the statistics trotted out every International Women’s Day about the gender pay gap, and we know the reasons : women tend to enter less lucrative industries; they take unpaid or poorly remunerated time out of the workforce for childrearing; women are less likely to go for top jobs and less likely to negotiate the same sort of salaries as their male counterparts. These statistics are stubborn – and although we are preparing girls for a world 60 years on from the second wave of feminism, it seems there is little we can do to shift these numbers.
What can we do collectively as educators to enable girls to be women who can choose to study in a male-dominated field or to have the self-confidence to apply for the top job and sit in front of a room full of men to argue for a higher salary?
At schools such as mine much has been done to try to develop resilient and courageous young women, including the introduction of programs designed to encourage taking a risk, potentially failing and trying again, as well as encouraging students to develop self-leadership skills, the confidence to persist in adversity.
It is important that we don’t just teach our young women the content they will need to study or to get a job – they need to have the personal skills to accompany that knowledge. All this is necessary. I see my role as a teacher as educating critical minds that will question assumed wisdom and cultural myths, including those around gender. The tempting illusions that we allow to remain unquestioned by young women should be challenged, for their necessarily complex lives to be rich and fulfilling.
Greater comfort will derive from deep engagement with the world as it is. The great challenge facing young people, not just girls, is disinterest and disengagement from the great ideas and movements flowing through the world. By protecting our students from the fascinating grubbiness, we are potentially robbing them of the chance to be realistic, pragmatic and perhaps even develop enough resistance to change the world.
I have made peace with the fact that my task is to plant a seed, not grow the garden.
Not everything can be taught before they leave school.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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