Girls can't do maths !

[Keepo]

My dd (10) loves maths. However, she is now the only girl in top set for maths in her class. All of her friends tell her that she cannot be good at maths because she is a girl . The other boys tell her the same.

This week they had a maths enrichment lesson and only the boys in her set got to go. I went to talk to her teacher about this and she told me she assumed that dd would not want to go. I asked why and she said "well I thought english might be more her thing she is a girl". . Am I alone in finding this odd. This attitude is starting to grind dd down.

Are all schools like this about girls and maths ? To be fair it does seem to have only come up this year.

I'm a Head of Maths (and female) in a secondary school and no one in my department would ever say something like that. We have a mixed dept. of male and female staff showing both sexes can be good at Maths. If I was you, I would say something to either the class teacher or the Head about it. It's so important to encourage all children and the teachers job is to do that for every subject. The danger is that she will be put off Maths for the rest of her school career. I can't believe there are people who are still so stereotypical about Maths and girls. Outrageous! Don't put up with it.

Agree with all the 'outrageous' comments. Your post shocked me, I am staggered this still goes on. This is a seriously damaging attitude for a teacher to hold and I really think it should be taken further - you need to see the head. Is it just this teacher or does this attitude pervade the whole school? What's it like in science. I wonder how many girls should really be in that class

I'm joining the shocked camp, I've got A-level maths, and a degree that used a lot of maths.

There's an international maths olympliad thing every year, and I was at university with the girl who was one of the very few Brits (I think there are only one or two in total), who got 100% in it

WTF!!

I got an A for maths, have a first class engineering degree and I qualified as an actuary more quickly than most of the men that started the exams at the same time as me.

Will be watching to see what they say on Monday as that is complete discrimination!!

Bet the teacher would never dream of saying 'Oh, of course Black kids can't be good at maths'.

FWIW, at ds's generally very good primary, they know there is an issue with boys writing and girls doing maths. One of the teachers was saying he thinks the maths thing is partly because the boys are so competitive it puts the girls off. They are trying to tackle it. Have also tried various ways to encourage writing but it seems the girls are running with the latest wheeze and doing even better while the boys still aren't catching on. (Broad generalisation, of course there must be individual children who don't fit the stereotype. Ds certainly enjoys writing.)

Thats terrible.My dd aged 6 is a year ahead in maths. I was good at it too (13 years as an accountant...)

what an awful thing to say

I think that you really must complain to the Head, not just on your dd's behalf, but the other children in her class, the boys for being labeled bad, and the girls for being labeled stupid (at maths if nothing else). I wouldn't be at all surprised if there weren't other girls that should be in that top set, and that your dd is really very good at maths. This teacher sounds as if she needs some retraining.

My DD is good at maths too....sexism is alive and well then obv.

Was this comment made in the 1950s? If not, shocking.

I have two maths A-levels and an engineering degree from Cambridge and run a small company. I'm sure I'm a girl.

Please encourage your daughter; maths leads in to good and flexible careers for women. I never met any of these attitudes at school from adults(our maths teacher was a woman) but at Cambridge a friend of mine said 'that's good for a girl'.

However, to survive and do well at Cambridge I did choose an all female college. (I was a bit fed up of cocky boys by then!)

Also, the last person who told me that women have no spatial awareness then drove his car into an adjacent one (five minutes later!)

I hate these stereotypes.

Nice to see all these maths types 'coming out' on mumsnet!

It sounds like the teacher feels uncomfortable teaching an almost all boys group.

Perhaps the school should have tried to keep up a greater gender balance in each set.

They've let the girls down up to now if they haven't managed to get a good mix in the top set.

"spatial awareness" - yup. That's another one.
I regularly topped my class of mostly boys at Engg drawing - 3D visualisation, slices of cubes inside pyramids inside cylinders etc.

And Map reading - that's another one. My Dh will get you reliably from London to Glasgow when you ask him to take you to St Ives. He may even manage to get you to France, if he tries real hard.
So no points for guessing who does the map reading in my house...

Another stunned one here- Maths A level and a degree- didn't realise that I couldn't do it 'cos I was a girl. I was in a mixed school as well and never heard this kind of prejudice.
I did find at uni (and this was a long time ago...20 years) -that the gender balance was a bit more male skewed (at school it was pretty balanced) - but I don't remember this was a problem - and to a degree (and I hate generalising) - as it was a bit more unusual to do maths as a girl- the girls tended to stand out more and be more sociable/active etc.

still shocked that a teacher can say that - surely she shouldn't be teaching if she actually believes that tosh?

{shock] {angry] i would be having some choice words to the teacher and explain that yes dd does want to go actually.

iTs funny, because here in Japan maths is considered a feminine subject i.e girls are deemed to be better at it! Also, apparently when you go to university you basically get the option of two different routes: the maths/engineering route and the communication/literary type route. So I get all het up thinking obviously the women are going to be channelled into the "communication" subjects but that is not the case at all. In fact men choose both routes roughly equally (i.e 50% of them go into communication subjects).

Its fascinating because it blows away all the notions of which sexes are supposed to be good at what.
( IN Japan, unfortunately however, women and man are ultimately split into two groups after uni when they join a company: men go down the "managerial" path and women learn to be office ladies . But regarding ability its interesting to see the perception of girls and maths is so different.

What a pile of tripe, that teacher needs to be sacked or at least retrained!

I went to an all girls school and did maths, further maths, physics and Art alevels. All the classes were equally filled!

I think becasue it's asscoiated with the logical right brain thinking which is sterieotypically male, there is an assuption that all men are good at it and all girls are not. Same with spatial awareness. As an architect, I don't seem to have a problem with spatial awareness 'despite' being a girl!

That teacher has no place being anywhere near a school - complain both to the head and the LEA. She should be fired.

My mum is a nuclear physicist and I work in finance. Your DD is very lucky that maths comes easily to her - it really is a foundation for an excellent career.

I'm a primary teacher and although these attitudes are rare, I've seen them before.

TBH, it has nothing to do with maths. Just bad teaching by someone who shouldn't be there. I've seen too many teachers who think it's their job to impart their ideals and beliefs upon their class rather than teach that class how to form their own.

I have taught in both the primary and secondary sectors and have only ever come across these sexist views from women in their 50s. One used to believe that women shouldn't work and felt that more of her time should be spent helping 'young ladies' find husbands. She was very bitter over having to work herself (her DH had left her).

You must go in and speak to the HT. You have a responsibility. How would you feel if next year these views were being spouted to a young girl without the same parental support of your DD?

Keepo I have to thank you for starting this thread. I am a TA in a mixed secondary school. I always wondered why there were only ever 6 girls (or fewer) in the top set for maths. If this is the attitude across the board in primary schools, then it explains the low number of girls who go on to do well in this subject.

The school I work in has a male head of dept and out of around 12 maths teachers, 2 of them are women. What a fine example to set for young girls.

My eldest DD attends that school and is in top set for maths. She was put in set 2 when she started in Sept, despite gaining a level 5 in her yr 6 SATs tests. She went up a set shortly before Xmas. I went to parents' eve last Thurs and was told she's doing really well. She is fortunate enough to have a teacher who is prepared to nuture the abilities of his pupils, no matter what gender they are.

While it is easy to advise you to go and complain to the relevant member of staff, tread very carefully. I have worked as a TA for some years now and I have discovered that parents who go in 'on the bounce' can sometimes make matters worse for their child (not to mention being the talk of the staffroom).

I agree with myredcardigan - you possibly wouldn't be the first to have concerns about her teacher. My mum is a KS2 maths coordinator and has never made comments about gender.

Someone else here who is absolutely appalled. Did Maths, Further Maths & Physics at A-Level.

Started a Maths degree at the LSE but changed to Computing after my first year (it was a modular course and I was already doing some computing courses so a very easy switch).

Somebody on this thread said girls usually found Pure Maths easier. Not me, I was always better at Applied and Statistics. This was the main reason I swapped degrees as the Maths was very Pure, actually we nearly all changed. About 25 of us started with straight Maths by the end of the first year there was only 1 left, we had all changed to Computing, Maths & Computing, Maths and Economics etc. etc.

P.S. I have always been good at map reading as well.

I went to a catholic girl's school run by nuns which took girls from the local council estates. We didn't live on a council estate, but my mum sent me there anyway in what she now reveals to be a moment of religious madness . The school was nicknamed 'Pramland' by kids at the lother local schools because the nuns would not teach sex education, and even cut the reproduction chapter out of the biology syllabus, and then wondered why so many 15 year olds were getting pregnant .

They had very much the same attitude to maths - ie, not for girls! The tuition was lousy, and I failed my A-level Maths.

Somehow that didn't stop me going on to become an airline pilot - a few weeks of watching Countdown had my mental arithmetic razor sharp , enough to pass the entry exam, and then once at flying school stuff like trigonometry all dropped into place. I realised it wasn't difficult, it had just never been explained in a way which made any sense at all prior to that.

If any teacher dares to tell my daughter that maths is not for girls I will go in and have a polite word. And when they have stopped shaking, I will ask them if their outdated opinions on gender-biased education have changed!

I have been um-ing and aah-ing about sending my DD to an all girl senior school (I also went to all girls school) and the fact that this sort of rubbish is still spouted even by teachers further reinforces my view that single sex is good for girls. They have lots of time later to meet boys...

Haha, yes, I get told too that girls can't map read and that spacial awareness is a 'boy thing.' I have never failed to land at the right airport .

For those outraged enough to speak up on this topic, I recommend contacting the Conservative Task Force, run by Carol Vordernam.

www.conservatives.com/Campaigns/The_Maths_Taskforce.aspx

I e-mail her several months ago basically just saying that I thought it was great that they were looking at maths. And she sent me back a parent questionnaire about my child's math education. So, I filled it out and told her what I thought of the Victorian attitudes in school today.

If anyo of you have similar experiences in your school, please, I urge you to do the same.

I don't know if there is a Labour task force. But if anyone else knows of one perhapse we should all contact them too (on the slim chance they might still be in power next year).