“Is Math a Gift? Beliefs that Put Females At Risk” by Carol Dweck is the 3rd essay featured in the book “Why Aren’t More Women in Science?”. Dweck’s essay takes a turn from the first two essays although it still relates to themes brought up within both Valian and Kimura’s essays. Valian’s idea of incremental and entity theorists is brought back and Kimura’s theory of men and women being inherently different is also touched upon in this essay. Overall, Dweck discusses how important it is to create the right environment for girls to thrive. Dweck starts the essay by talking about how higher IQ’s are related to how each gender copes with confusion to show that despite both boys and girls being smart and capable of doing harder things, each gender coped with the confusion differently, pointing to a larger problem. Dweck relates the confusion to math because she says that math is a difficult topic that requires everyone to cope with confusion at some point or another. Dweck continues to keep a positive outlook after making that connection because she argues that the ability is there, but that it has been hidden due to vulnerability to outside factors such as stereotypes. At this point, Dweck ties in the incremental and entity theorists idea from Valian’s chapter, but in regards to how the students portray their own ability. Dweck says that students who view ability as fixed or as a gift are not as capable of coping with confusion and that they also question themselves. On the other hand, she says that students who view their ability as improvable (incremental) are better copers because they are more optimistic about their ability. Dweck presents experiments to show that intellectual girls can do just as well as boys as long as the girls’ abilities are nurtured and she believes that her abilities can be improved upon. Dweck says that this can be done by conveying to students that they are capable of improving their abilities on their own by doing hard work and developing the skills themselves. In summation, Dweck thinks that everyone can be successful if they are set up for it.
I think Dweck’s theory about creating the proper environment is important because I believe that it is a better alternative than Valian’s suggestion of simply giving women more opportunities. In my opinion, by setting women up for success earlier in life nullifies the need to give them extra opportunities when they get to that point because women will be considered equals in their abilities. Also, when I reflect and think about how growing up was as a girl, I can think of numerous instances where I could have been discouraged from being interested in math and science, but I can also think of times where my teachers did what Dweck suggested and how that made a difference in how I thought about that class. For example, I was one of three girls in my Advanced Math Topics class of 16 people during senior year and although it was senior year, our teacher made sure that everyone was treated equally and to instill the idea that all of us were capable of doing all the math if we just put the time into it. As the year progressed, it became evident that all of us were thinking about our math abilities differently. We were always known as the kids who were good at math just because we were, but now we thought about ourselves as the kids who were good at math because we cared about it and tried. After I read Dweck’s chapter and thinking of my own experience, I came to the realization that by making sure students are aware of their own ability to better themselves, they will do just that.
In addition to making me come to the realization about my senior year math class, Dweck’s chapter made me think of some questions I had about her approach. One concern that I was left with after reading the chapter was how students at younger ages would be ingrained with the knowledge about their own ability to better themselves because many young students fall into the category of thinking that ability is a gift. Also, one shortfall about Dweck’s theory is that she is only considering students who have higher IQ’s and can perform at higher levels but does not consider students who may not be capable of performing at such a high rate. Also, in saying that I am assuming that Dweck’s theory would only work with smarter students, but that cannot be known for sure until further experiments are conducted and more data is collected. In summary, Dweck’s theory is very compelling, but it does have some holes that make me question its credibility.
In conclusion, I think that Dweck’s ideas could have very real implications. As shown by my math class, one teacher’s insistence on us thinking in a different manner forced my entire class to think about math in an entirely different way; however, it is not always that easy to instill that new approach into students. I think that if teachers were to being teaching students starting at a young age about how they can do things that they set their mind to and explain as to why they are saying that, then I think that many girls and boys would grow up with a different and more optimistic outlook on their abilities. It would also solve the problem about the imbalance of women in fields such as math and science because more women would be sure of their abilities and be determined enough to go into such fields. It is amazing to think that by simply changing the way that the idea of ability is presented, so many problems could be solved because more people would believe in their own abilities.
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