{"id":1232,"date":"2008-10-15T12:48:52","date_gmt":"2008-10-15T17:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2008-10-15T12:48:52","modified_gmt":"2008-10-15T17:48:52","slug":"barbie-says-bring-on-the-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/10\/15\/barbie-says-bring-on-the-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbie Says Bring on the Math"},"content":{"rendered":"

Girl with Pen is extremely pleased to bring you the inaugural post from Allison Kimmich, Executive Director of the National Women’s Studies Association. Allison will be posting her column, Girl Talk<\/strong><\/em>, which explores truths and fictions about girls, the third Wednesday of every month. -Kristen<\/em><\/p>\n

As a feminist, and as a professional advocate for feminist education in my work at the National Women’s Studies Association<\/a><\/strong>, I felt faint one day three years ago when my then-five-year-old daughter told me that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153girls don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do math.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out that my daughter was right. Last week the New York Times reported<\/a> on a study<\/a> that points to U.S. failures in math education. The article notes that the United States does a poor job of educating both boys and girls in math, but that we especially miss opportunities to encourage girls who could be excellent mathematicians unless they are immigrants or daughters of immigrants from countries where math is valued.<\/p>\n

Or as one of the study\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lead author Janet E. Mertz puts it, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re living in a culture that is telling girls you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do math\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat is telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Neither the study nor the article explores in detail what it is about American culture that undervalues math education, but the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls produced a report<\/a> last year that offers some insights. The report notes that self-objectification (buying sexy clothes or asking parents to do so, and identifying with sexy celebrities) can \u00e2\u20ac\u0153detract from the ability to concentrate and focus one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attention, thus leading to impaired performance on mental activities such as mathematical computations or logical reasoning.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My daughter is now seven, and I can confirm that she is bombarded with media images (see Montana, Hannah<\/a>) and consumer products\u00e2\u20ac\u201dspaghetti strap tank tops for a seven-year old?\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat encourage her to think a lot about her appearance and image in others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 eyes.<\/p>\n

For now, my daughter insists that she is not a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fancy girl,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and she happens to be proud of her math skills. I suspect she has forgotten that kindergarten-era conversation. I mentioned the Times article to her feigning disbelief\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcan you imagine that some children and parents think that math is not important or fun? I asked. She did a double take and wrinkled her forehead: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No way, Mom!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

So schools can do a better job at teaching girls (and boys) math, and our culture sexualizes girls in unhealthy ways. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably not surprised by either of these findings. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still aghast, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not feigning this time.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m aghast because it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take a genius to see that our country needs everyone in the game to find solutions as we face most serious economic crisis of my lifetime, one that my daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s generation will inherit.<\/p>\n

Taken together, these reports raise a provocative question: How do immigrant girls and their families tune out dominant cultural images and messages about what girls can or should do? How and why do they succeed where many other girls do not? I really want to know. Tell me, what do you think?<\/p>\n

Allison Kimmich<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Image Credit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Girl with Pen is extremely pleased to bring you the inaugural post from Allison Kimmich, Executive Director of the National Women’s Studies Association. Allison will be posting her column, Girl Talk, which explores truths and fictions about girls, the third Wednesday of every month. -Kristen As a feminist, and as a professional advocate for feminist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21395,5007,100],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-girls","tag-pop-culture","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}