Encourage Everyone

Yesterday's Science Friday 50-minute segment talks about encouraging women in mathematics. You can listen to it here.

One of the panelists is none other than Harvey Mudd President Dr. Maria Klawe, and good for her and Mudders everywhere, she relentlessly plugged Harvey Mudd's unicycles and genuine love of math. They all talked about some of my favorite movies and television shows: Proof, Good Willing Hunting, A Beautiful Mind and Numb3rs.

While I'm generally skeptical about the role model theory when applied to racial groups, I must confess that efforts to promote math to women have me intrigued, even if I find them flawed. Namely, this whole theory goes something like this: women can only learn math from other women, [insert random ethnic minority] can only learn [insert academic discipline] from other [insert random ethnic minority]. I reject those arguments at face-value.

If educational facilities have finite resources do we, by encouraging other students, necessarily exclude others? How might we design programs that encourage all students?

My math and science interest got out of the way of my twin loves of French and political science when I entered high school. Like every kid with a sick parent, I wanted to be a doctor, but in 7th grade, I applied to a school-funded science program. Without really considering anything about the politics that go into such programs, I filled out the application -- only to be told that the program was only for women! There wasn't a complementary program for men in science and so I wasn't allowed to participate, even though there were vacancies in the program.

If a mathematician or a scientist can come from anywhere as these panelists and others attest, why not test the hypothesis? Why design programs that deliberately exclude the other sex?

The real question is what can we do to increase success across the board and here, at least, they provide a good answer: encourage people who love math to teach math. But that doesn't really fit with the role model theory, now does it? A good teacher is a good teacher.