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I was a physics teacher in Australia and the UK from 2015 to 2021. I wrote a comment about teaching in a boys' school yesterday, but most of my career was spent

by cjs_ac 2y ago

I was a physics teacher in Australia and the UK from 2015 to 2021. I wrote a comment about teaching in a boys' school yesterday, but most of my career was spent in girls' schools, due partly to the Vogonic culture of the NSW Department of Education and Training. There were many 'get girls into STEM' initiatives, and they all felt very tokenistic and superficial. They were science-themed, but none of them got at the guts of STEM. In Australia, physics - in the schools that offer it - is taught by chemistry or biology teachers who've been given a physics textbook. In the private boys' schools, there's a cadre of actual physicists, but they're old men on the verge of retirement; students in government schools, systemic Catholic schools and private girls' schools get a very un-mathematical physics education, if their school offers a specialised physics course at all. The end result of this is the propagation of a very misleading view of STEM to girls. All the high-paying STEM jobs are in those fields that have a rigorous mathematical formalism - physics, computer science, engineering - but our STEM outreach programs ended up pushing girls towards 'soft science' careers in biology. I understand that there are now so many bio lab workers in the UK that they're now on minimum wage. If we really want to encourage women and girls to take up high-paying STEM careers, we need to be demonstrating and teaching the cognitive styles that underlie success in mathematics. At the moment, all we're doing is making maths pink[0]. [0] https://skepchick.org/2010/08/smbc-women-in-mathematics/ https://skepchick.org/2010/08/smbc-women-in-mathematics/

gizajob 2y ago
"very tokenistic and superficial" - welcome to 'straya m8.
pydry 2y ago
I dont think there is any real political imperative to welcome women into science. STEM is intrinsically difficult and in demand which means it's highly paid and as a result there is a political imperative to drag down wages....somehow. Bringing more women in probably seems as good a way as any to the old, white, male (and sexist) reactionary politicians and their business leader sponsors. So, they tried to make science pink shrug
card_zero 2y ago
I understand that in the UK, girls perform better than boys at mathematics, but mostly self-select for biology and medicine and psychology anyway, for obscure reasons.
- masfuerte 2y ago
  That first statistic is kind of misleading. Half as many girls as boys do Maths A level (the exam for 18 year olds in the UK). Roughly speaking, you're comparing the best 20% of girls at maths to the best 40% of boys. Of course the girls do better on average. It would be astonishing if they didn't. But it is true that girls are more likely than boys not to continue with a maths-heavy subject.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Oh, OK. So the boys are relatively overconfident, so more of them fail, but the girls are relatively realistic, so fewer of them try. Then the boys continue being overconfident and get related jobs, but the girls mostly don't. (Or perhaps they just like stats better, there's lots of stats in biosciences.)

by cjs_ac 2y ago

gizajob 2y ago

"very tokenistic and superficial" - welcome to 'straya m8.

pydry 2y ago

I dont think there is any real political imperative to welcome women into science. STEM is intrinsically difficult and in demand which means it's highly paid and as a result there is a political imperative to drag down wages....somehow. Bringing more women in probably seems as good a way as any to the old, white, male (and sexist) reactionary politicians and their business leader sponsors. So, they tried to make science pink shrug

card_zero 2y ago

I understand that in the UK, girls perform better than boys at mathematics, but mostly self-select for biology and medicine and psychology anyway, for obscure reasons.

masfuerte 2y ago
That first statistic is kind of misleading. Half as many girls as boys do Maths A level (the exam for 18 year olds in the UK). Roughly speaking, you're comparing the best 20% of girls at maths to the best 40% of boys. Of course the girls do better on average. It would be astonishing if they didn't. But it is true that girls are more likely than boys not to continue with a maths-heavy subject.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Oh, OK. So the boys are relatively overconfident, so more of them fail, but the girls are relatively realistic, so fewer of them try. Then the boys continue being overconfident and get related jobs, but the girls mostly don't. (Or perhaps they just like stats better, there's lots of stats in biosciences.)