These statistics are actually kinda shocking to me because of these two:

9. Visual and Performing Arts: 77% female

"6. Drama and Theater Arts: 60% female"

I thought these were like 50% female and 50% homosexual male.

I'm really shocked that it's more women than men.

"Early childhood educators and social workers can expect to earn around $36,000 and $39,000, respectively"

Jesus Christ how do they live on that salary? I'm taking into account the debt they must go into to get those degrees.

Here's a leftist/feminist's take on what Sommers wrote.

Ppen, I am not saying this is true of everyone or even a significant number -- I just don't know. But a week or so ago I stumbled across this piece:

http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/16/why-i-let-my-daughter-get-a-useless-college-degree/

Why I Let My Daughter Get a ‘Useless’ College Degree

A new study from the Federal Reserve offers more evidence that my humanities-loving child will graduate with lots of debt and not so many job offers. And I'm O.K. with that.

My oldest child, Emma, just returned to campus after a long holiday break to finish up her last semester of college.

But even before she has put the final period on her senior thesis, friends and family have begun bombarding me with one question: What is she going to do after graduation?

The job market is, after all, awfully tough. Just this month the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study showing that “recent graduates are increasingly working in low-wage jobs or working part-time,” if they’re lucky enough to find work at all.

The bright spot, according to the Fed analysis, is for students who majored in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — areas in which recent graduates “have tended to do relatively well, even in today’s challenging labor market.” But Emma is a student of the much maligned humanities at a small liberal arts school. She’s an American Studies major with a focus on the politics and culture of food.

For quite a while, I tripped all over myself to describe how her field of study is so trendy right now that I’m not the least bit worried she will find a decent job. “Emma’s concentration and interests could lead her in any number of directions,” I would tell people. “Writing for a food blog. Working at a nonprofit that improves health and nutrition for the urban poor. Managing social media for a food-related startup.”

Clearly, I wasn’t just explaining; I was overexplaining in an attempt to rationalize how Emma’s chosen path will turn into a steady paycheck. It’s as if her employment status were a referendum on the choices that my husband and I have made about her education. In retrospect, I’d hit a common pitfall: equating Emma’s personal success with my own success as a parent.

Yet the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve decided to be honest. “I’m not sure what Emma is going to do,” I now say. “But she’s gotten a great education and has really found her passion — and I know those things will serve her well over the course of her life.”

Don’t get me wrong. We are not immune to the high cost of college. Emma’s father and I have made sacrifices to give her and her brother the kind of education we value. There will be loans to pay when she graduates — and, yes, my husband and I will foot that bill. And of course, we will be thrilled if Emma finds work come May and doesn’t have to move back in with us.

http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/16/why-i-let-my-daughter-get-a-useless-college-degree

Wow. I don't know how many students have the fortune of having their parents foot the bills for their $100K or so of college loans.

But that's how she's going to make a living with her useless degree.

I mean, she literally has a degree that prepared her to ask people if they want fries with that.

Not sure how others did it. After scholarships, I was responsible for all of my bills and paying off my loans. But I went for a STEM education.

Rex I am glad you linked that, I was about to.

PeeZus the famous atheist skeptic throws all critical thinking and analytical skills out the window and buys the whole kit and caboodle.

What's worse is that it's one thing for him to toss out gender traitors like Christina Hoff Sommers, but Slate Fem Hanna Rosin has debunked it too: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gender_pay_gap_the_familiar_line_that_women_make_77_cents_to_every_man_s.html

And uber-liberal Robert Reich has debunked it:
http://freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-labor-questions/
"Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career choice?
A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market."

So that helps demonstrate how the PeeZus is actually a pretty ignorant man who refuses to honestly explore dissenting ideas (like Sommers and so many other people telling him the same thing) and so ends up exquisitely ignorant of even what his fellow liberals are saying.

Instead of being literate about the argument he calls Sommers:

a jerk who makes bogus statistical arguments to make the gap go away

who uses fudge factors

and makes a profoundly sexist argument

and superficial and self serviing arguments at that.

But for the most part Sommers uses the same facts, logic and analysis as Rosin and Reich.

Maybe he thinks Rosin and Reich are jerks, and fools and sexists too.

PeeZus Christ indeed.

Early childhood educators and social workers can expect to earn around $36,000 and $39,000, respectively"

Jesus Christ how do they live on that salary? I'm taking into account the debt they must go into to get those degrees.

My sister in law started in social work. She was paid minimum wage, no benefits, working with violent teens who often had to be strapped down so they wouldn't attack anyone. Worse for her were her managers: social workers who had hung around and developed some disturbing interpersonal relation techniques of their own but no discernable management skills.

I think it is much the same for elder care. We say we want to take care of our loved ones, but we pay like we want the best of guards out of a Dickensian Bedlam.

Thanks for that link, Rex. One of my close friends is an engineering professor. She's a woman. It's really hard stuff. Perhaps that's why even Americans are in short supply in her department. Okay, maybe they're American-born, but you go down the hall and look at other professors' door tags and everybody's named Sing Wo Wi or Something Indian Singh.

Here's a leftist/feminist's take on what Sommers wrote.

He lost me when he parroted the old 77 cents on the dollar trope. If that were true, businesses would be tripping over themselves to hire women and reduce their labor costs, their number 1 cost of doing business.

And the Department of Justice isn't going to sue you for gender discrimination, either.

Imagine, just by hiring the right gender you could give yourself a nice little bump in the profit margin. Or you could take a smaller bump and reduce your prices.

Also, in the STEM fields, you'll find that women tend to make a bit more money than the men in the same fields. It isn't much, a couple of percent at most. But it is an inconvenient truth.

PZ is a pussy trolling douche bag. And a fine one to talk about bogus statistics to make an augment.

The wage gap is manufactured by capping full time work at 36 hours OR MORE

So even if a woman makes the same hourly rate if she works 36 hours and the guy works 48, its sexist that she makes 75% of what he does, EVEN THOUGH SHE IS ONLY WORKING 75% of the hours he does

It's the math. Most people cant do it. Those that can, generally make pretty good money,

You cant "train" someone without math aptitude to be a Petroleum engineer. Anymore than someone without athletic ability is going to ever become a professional athlete.

People self select in college for majors which match their intellectual abilities. It started getting worse when the government funded everyone in the name of equality of opportunity, and colleges responded to the free money by dumbing down the course work and the degree requirememts, so that they could continue selling "certificates".

you go down the hall and look at other professors' door tags and everybody's named Sing Wo Wi or Something Indian Singh.

This isn't new. I went to MIT in the late 60's. Started majoring in math, but switched majors because too many of my math professors spoke with such thick accents, I couldn't understand their lectures.

"It's the math. Most people cant do it. Those that can, generally make pretty good money"

It's worse than that. J'accuse: Most humanities types (educators, politicans, journalists, etc.) hate math. They would ban it if they could. Because math keeps telling them things they don't want to hear.

It's worse than that. J'accuse: Most humanities types (educators, politicans, journalists, etc.) hate math. They would ban it if they could. Because math keeps telling them things they don't want to hear.

Posted by: Cousin Dave at February 5, 2014 8:35 AM
" and it tells them things they don't understand which makes them feel stupid since they cant learn what it tells them without exposing their ignorance"

That is very true,and lawyers are the worst. I got an A in Family law in law school, as one of only two people in the class who correctly applied the formula and calculated child support on the final exam.

This was in the old days before you just filled in the blanks and let the computer program do it for you.

Woohoo! Engineers represent! Just some personal observations. My husband and I are both aerospace engineers, but we agree that if we weren't, we would be pharmacists.

I don't know how much math-aversion is taught versus inborn. Obviously people who hate math aren't good at it. But which came first; the hatred or the lack of aptitude?

My husband and I have no problem with spiders (unless they're in my shoes), but my daughter's kindergarten teacher is afraid of spiders and now my daughter is afraid of spiders.

I'm sure my math/science abilities are inherited because not only is my dad an engineer, but my *grandmother* (my mother's mother) was a petroleum engineer. In the '50s.

Math aptitude is inherent.

But I suck at math and applied myself because you need a good foundation for it (especially since I'm in manufacturing).

My math teacher was drawing something on the board and couldn't draw it. So I went up and did it for her, and someone said "Math people should learn to draw" she retorted "Artistic people need to learn math". It's why I stayed.

I would never be great at it, I'm just good enough. It goes against the grain of my whole thought process.

Sosij it's fascinating that your grandma was a petroleum engineer.

"But which came first; the hatred or the lack of aptitude?"

By the way my brother and my cousin used to force me to do math as a kid.

Yup, they are engineers.

(My favorite nephew is a robotics engineer AND a cheerleader)

"It's the math. Most people cant do it. Those that can, generally make pretty good money, "

There are other ways of making money. Having jobs others don't want to do.
I hear people who put up cellphone towers are pretty well paid, don't need much math or skills, but you have to be willing to work 100 ft in the air in some of the worst weather. And you don't find many women who are willing to do that.

You know, I've heard it said several times that people who become Psychiatrists are so screwed up themslelves and seem to have gone into the field trying to find answers for their own issues. I've heard this from people who are actually in said field (it never applies to them though, of course). I'm beginning to think the same is true of the various social worker/humanities fields in some way too. Not for all, of course, but many.

Hey, I work with computers because I really don't like working with people all the time. I worked a service job as a teen, I didn't really care for it. At least I can admit that was a part of my decision process on what to focus on learning though.

Boy are they touchy when you dare try to say that there are valid reasons they're not paid the same as people that busted their asses learning something in the STEM fields though. Yeesh.

From the article Rex linked is this fantastic reply from the author to another commentator:

As a professor at a liberal arts university, I have heard variants of that damned stupid fucking “joke” ten thousand times, and every time it makes me want to smash a beer bottle and cut the asshole repeating it. It’s an implicit evil that presumes that the purpose of an education is to prepare people for the corporate workforce.
Don’t do it again.

Touchy, touchy.

There are people who refuse to acknowledge that there is a real world vs their utopian dream and that if one wants to make a decent living, they need to look at what skills are actually valuable and attainable.

I'm sure my math/science abilities are inherited because not only is my dad an engineer, but my *grandmother* (my mother's mother) was a petroleum engineer. In the '50s.

Posted by: Sosij at February 5, 2014 1:35 PM

Math ability is inherited to a large extent, but there have been studies showing that children born prematurely, are poor at math and analytical skills. Something they believe, about necessary neural pathways in the brain developing late in the gestational period.

My father's sister was an engineer who graduated college in 1942. My mother's brother was also an engineer. I have more innate math ability than my husband, also an engineer, but have noticed that modern textbooks, and poor teachers keep a lot of people from developing their natural math ability.

My husband is very good at laying a problem out, and tackling it one piece at a time. I tend to be a little ADD and easily frustrated.

I hear people who put up cellphone towers are pretty well paid, don't need much math or skills, but you have to be willing to work 100 ft in the air in some of the worst weather. And you don't find many women who are willing to do that.

Posted by: Joe J at February 5, 2014 2:40 PM

Many technical jobs like that are not only done in an unpleasant and dangerous environment, they also require hand and upper body strength that most women and older men, simply don't possess.

"people who become Psychiatrists are so screwed up themslelves and seem to have gone into the field trying to find answers for their own issue"

I have a friend who is incredibly perceptive about others and has psychology degree. Except she is always complaining about the same thing-that she goes out and meets new people and they don't talk to her.

She doesn't realize they don't talk to her because she is really really introverted and hard to talk to. She's even been on dates where they don't talk to each other.

But damn is she smart about other peoples issues.

I wish I could find the video I saw in the 90's on PBS. But basically the HR type study guy was talking about the 77¢ to the $1 issues to a crowd of equally divided men and women. They were generally in the 30+ age range. It was about 60-70 people.

He had everyone stand up. Then he asked a series of conditions for doing jobs like would you:

• work graveyard shifts?
• work outside?
• work overtime?
• work all weekends?
• be on call?
• do extended shifts?

The point being is that the supposed pay inequality is really based a lot off of personal choices. If I were to be hired at a company and I was expected to work weekends to do software upgrades with no comp time or extra pay and my female coworker was let out of it because she has kids, but we're paid the same -- I'm going to find a new company. Or I'm stuck on graveyard shift because I don't have a "family" and a co-worker does. Your personal life is not the responsibility of your employer. And pay should be that way as well.

Posted by: Jim P. at February 5, 2014 4:36 PM...

But, but, but.. the very fact that women tend to make (or are forced to apparently) those choices is actually a problem in and of itself.

At least according to plenty of whack jobs out there, like the guy at the article Rex linked and many leaving comments.

She doesn't realize they don't talk to her because she is really really introverted and hard to talk to. She's even been on dates where they don't talk to each other.

A woman who doesnt talk INCESSANTLY? How attractive vs nuts is she?

All joking aside that is one thing I dont understand about women. Their need to talk.

I was on an airport shuttle, these two women by the content of their conversation had
1. Met in college
2. Been roomates all throught
3. Became lovers
4. Lived together for the last 40 yrs
5. Just going home from a month long retreat where theyd spent the entire time in some sort of therapeutic enclave for people in good relationships.

And after 40yrs of being in each others presence almost daily they would not shut up. Seriously, how do you do it? The inanity of it all would drive me nuts.

"PS I have the upper-body strength of an 8-year-old. Girl."

Umm, dear, with the equipment you carry... that's no 8-year-old, there!
If you're saying you don't have any strength to spare, OK, I get that!

But, but, but.. the very fact that women tend to make (or are forced to apparently) those choices is actually a problem in and of itself. -- Miguelitosd at February 5, 2014 5:03 PM

Don't you know women aren't competent to choose their decisions unless it is to prosecute a guy for a sex crime or blame guys for discrimination?

If they don't want to sacrifice themselves tom meet the industry standards they are not in the wrong. The industry needs to adapt to the women's needs.

PeeZus the famous atheist skeptic throws all critical thinking and analytical skills out the window and buys the whole kit and caboodle.

No, no, you don't understand. Being skeptical about something PZ doesn't believe in is critical thinking. Being skeptical about something he does believe in is denial (as in, "global warming denial" or "rape culture denial").

Spend some time on Pharyngula, it will all become clear. :)

Math ability is partially innate, but we take that idea waay too far in this country. Koreans are not all doing well in math because every single one of them is innately better at it than we are.

i found trig challenging. I kept going because it didn't occur to me that I could just throw up my hands, declare I can't do math, and stop. I'm glad I didn't. I love higher math.

"Spend some time on Pharyngula, it will all become clear. :)"

I have, and it has. One of the great tragedies of modern blogging is the difference between the scientific rigor PZ expresses when he speaks in his field, and the free-for-all that results when he does otherwise.

But let me give you an example of how scientific subjects are not presented correctly to novices.
If you check the Wikipedia entry for "three laws of thermodynamics", you'll find a lot of concepts that are somewhat difficult to observe. But here's a way to show a novice how heat transfers without going through all that difficulty:
Heat is the transfer of energy due to a difference in temperature.
Temperature is a measure of the amount of kinetic energy possessed by a substance. It is not heat.
Heat flows from hot to cold.
You cannot prevent heat from flowing from hot to cold. You can only change the speed of that process.
Not all of the heat in the heat source reaches the heat sink- the cold part.

You can show a couple of examples of this on the whiteboard somewhere, and your audience will have practically everything they need. The complexity of equations and the finer points of heat transfer can be tailored to the audience as they learn.

"But I suck at math and applied myself because you need a good foundation for it (especially since I'm in manufacturing)."

Exactly. Few people are good at everything, but most of us can learn to become at least competent at all of the skills we need for daily life. At some point in college, I realized that my writing skills were poor, and I made a concerted effort to improve. No one will ever confuse me with Faulkner or Hemingway, but I've taught myself to write well enough that from time to time I've been able to work as a tech writer, preparing manuals and training materials.

So I prefectly understand if the humanities guys aren't doing vector calculus problems for fun in their spare time. However, I think there's more to it than that:

"There are people who refuse to acknowledge that there is a real world vs their utopian dream and that if one wants to make a decent living, they need to look at what skills are actually valuable and attainable."

It's even worse than that. Today the humanities are peppered with people who very much desire to live in a fantasy world where the very laws of physics bend to their will, and they get extremely angry when reality intrudes on that. I will say this: what has happened to the arts and humanities in America today makes me sick. They've been overrun by Philistines who desire nothing more than an intellectual palace for themselves, where they can sit on a throne and rule and never be questioned. Once upon a time we had something called middlebrow culture, in which Faulkner was a best-selling author and Igor Stravinsky was employed by NBC. The Marxist professors of the '60s and '70s took art away from the middle class. I want it back.

"Math ability is partially innate, but we take that idea waay too far in this country. Koreans are not all doing well in math because every single one of them is innately better at it than we are."

Not necessarily. Koreans and Japanese, well Asians in general, tend to be better in math on average than Europeans, but the differences are smaller than you think. And their IQs follow a standard distribution as our's do.

Selection bias accounts for most of the perceived Asian superiority in math.

The education system in Japan is more structured then here. And they seem to be better at making you repeat a process, or an operation till you actually learn it. My husband is currently studying Japanese at a Japanese cram school, so has experienced their methods, first hand.
I have had three asian foreign exchange students live with me. They were uniformly good at manipulating numbers if you gave them a math problem. What they could not do, as well, or any better than American students was to take a real life problem, and set it up, so it could be solved mathematically.

This entire discussion of being "good" at math and the notion of "innate ability" with regard to mathematics is missing some significant points.

When people discuss those who are "good" at math, it isn't simply that they can handle the very foundational mathematical manipulations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation. It also isn't simply that they understand the marginally more complicated notion of symbolic manipulation that is used in middle school algebra.

People who are "good" at math are "good" precisely because they understand and work with advanced mathematical concepts like multidimensional calculus, partial differential equations, and complex analysis (and this doesn't even include people who are "exceptional" at mathematics who work at the frontier and develop *new* mathematics).

People all too often use the notion of "good" at math as being a foil for the fact that a person is capable of calculating the tip for dinner... this is EASY stuff. It is really basic level.

That this acts as a kind of litmus test for being "good" at math is a significant part of the problem.

This would be the functional equivalent of saying that someone who can read the menu at a restaurant is "good" at reading.

Someone who is incapable of reading the menu at a restaurant is someone who is illiterate.

Similarly, someone who is incapable of calculating the tip for a meal is mathematically illiterate.

People are failing at math because it has become socially acceptable to "suck" at math. When the same social stigma exists for someone who is incapable of compounding interest as for someone who is incapable of reading street signs we will begin to see more people capable of doing really fundamental math.

This is why people in other countries tend to be "better" at math... because it is socially unacceptable to "suck" at the simple stuff.

My grandmother was a phenomenal person. Her husband, my grandfather, fled the communist takeover of China in 1948. She had to stay behind for 6 months with 3 children under the age of 5. Parents didn't send their daughters to college in those days, but her wealthy parents felt she was so smart it was wrong not to send her. She got her engineering degrees in the US after they had all settled in Taiwan. I've heard from older engineers that the industry here accepted Asian women earlier than the accepted the presence of white women.

By the time I was born she had retired, and I didn't even know she had been anything besides a wife and mother until I was in high school. She died during my second year of college. My physics professor asked me how she handled the gender barrier, and I wailed, "I don't know!" I had only recently decided to be an engineer myself and never talked to her about it. :(

I think Artemis has a very good point. Can't calculate a tip? No big deal. But it SHOULD be a big deal. Of course, the people we trust (?) with educating our children are, in my estimation, among the least math-literate. Until they get to middle school or high school and then it's too late.

I was discussing this article with my husband last night, and he brought up the good point that, when I was last working as an engineer, I was not actually doing the same job as my colleagues with the same job description. My childless coworkers often worked late or on weekends. I worked a standard 40-hour week; sometimes less because my daughter was sick often. My boss was wonderfully flexible about my having to leave to pick her up from day care. I don't know if I was making less than my colleagues, but I would have conceded a little money for the ability to attend to my family responsibilities.

lujlp, it must be discouraging to have to deal with the conceptually challenged fools at Pharyngula -- you are doing a great job, BTW.

"People are failing at math because it has become socially acceptable to "suck" at math. "

It's worse than that. There's a social stigma attached to being good at a technical discipline. I remember being at a friend-of-a-friend's party once (meaning that it was people outside of my social circle), and chatting with a few people about something -- might have been a movie, I don't recall, but it wasn't anything technical. And then one of them asked me what I do for a living, and I told them, and they said, "Really! I never would have guessed! You don't seem like an engineer!"

Cousin Dave,

You are right... it is worse than I previously described.

One thing I've also noticed when spending time with extremely intelligent people is that they can become extremely self aware when discussing "technical" topics in social settings... even with other very smart and technical people who are interested in the conversation. They become uncomfortable not because they dislike the subject, but because of the stigma associated with enjoying those topics.

By the time they have become adults it has already become ingrained that it is some sense socially unacceptable to be smart in public... even when everyone is having a good time and is engrossed in the subject.

I've been to social gatherings where the more numbers oriented people with an interest in finance will strike up a conversation dealing with investments and economics only to be given scolding looks from their spouses and significant others suggesting that such topics don't belong in a social get together (even though all of the people actually involved in the conversation were seemingly enjoying themselves).

Those same individuals have no qualms driving an entire dinner conversation around pop culture, reality television, and other topics that many more technical types would rather be water boarded than have to subject themselves to for hours... and yet those conversations don't receive the same kind of social sanction (primarily because the technical types are too polite to shut down conversations other people seem to enjoy).

Children who grow up in these environments get the message very quickly.

It is socially acceptable to become engrossed in trendy reality television... but building up expertise and knowledge is a venture that must be handled in secret and rarely if ever openly discussed.

This is a recipe for disaster.

it must be discouraging to have to deal with the conceptually challenged fools at Pharyngula

It can actually be fun if you approach it with the right attitude. Realize going in that you're not going to change anyone's mind, and take it as a badge of honor when they throw invective and profanity at you. (If they don't, you really need to step up your game.)

I wanted to drop in there and see what Luj posted, but the site seems to be down right now.

"Of course, the people we trust (?) with educating our children are, in my estimation, among the least math-literate. Until they get to middle school or high school and then it's too late."

Posted by: Sosij at February 6, 2014 5:43 PM

Agreed. The teaching is too regimented. I kept asking for what I needed - someone to interpret the concepts - but got that exactly twice until I went to college and happened upon a TA who was fluent in five languages and understood that I needed an interpreter. I have to understand the concepts, mostly because it drives me crazy not to, and partly because my mind grasps for big picture concepts, and does not do rote memorization easily. It was such a huge relief.

When I got to grad school, a grant from the school's learning disability office funded a tutor for my statistics class. My only requirement was that the tutor be a non-native English speaker. He was the sweetest, most patient guy (and Korean). I got an A- in the class, then focused on finance and econ while getting a graduate degree in policy. In law school I hit the comparative antitrust exam out of the ballpark. I've been reading The Calculus Diaries - my life could have been markedly different if that teacher or that book had been around when I was in middle school. It was awful to ask teachers questions about the concepts, year after year, and continually just be told what steps to perform.

Luj - lesbians of a certain era are especially big on processing.

I don't believe for one second that educators are "among the least math literate" within our population.

It could certainly be argued that some are not literate enough in mathematics... but "the least" suggests that they are way below average for the population at large.

To be quite frank most people tend to significantly overestimate their own mathematical literacy.

For example, most people believe that looking at average values for trends is in some sense the be all and end all of analysis.

They couldn't name a handful of distributions if their life depended on it (let alone tell you what those distributions suggest about the system under consideration)... and what's worse, they find even thinking about that kind of thing to be coma inducing.

If one were to sit a classroom full of children in front of an excellent mathematician I don't know that the results would be very different than what we already see.

Students tend to do poorly in math because they don't do the relevant work. Learning math isn't what happens when a teacher stands in front of you. Learning math is what happens when you work the problems and calculate the solutions.

This is one of the reasons why a popular phrase within physics circles is "shut up and calculate!"... you learn math by solving problems. A teacher should be able to solve the problems as well of course and be able to identify common misconceptions. If a student fails to sit down and work the math problems on their own then the responsibility falls upon them.

Out of curiosity I wonder how many adults here spend as much leisure time solving math problems and riddles as they do spending time reading for leisure.

Foisting the blame upon the educators is just scapegoating in my opinion.

People do not simply learn to read by being read to, they also need to read independently... similarly do not simply learn math by watching someone else solve problems on the board, they also need to solve math problems on their own. There is no way around that.

No one would accept an excuse from someone who is illiterate that they don't believe in the rote memorization of the alphabet and that they just need the "big picture concepts" of reading explained to them.

While it is certainly true that some people need more individualized instruction than others (for both reading and math depending upon the student) there are elements of both that just need to be memorized to make progress.

Amy,

Students in the United States are "falling behind" in math because of reasons outside of the educational sphere.

There exists a wrong headed idea that math is something you learn by watching someone stand up at a board and show you.

That is only 1 part of the process. The more important part of the process is working problems.

Just like you can't learn to read by having someone read to you.

I have no objection to the book you suggest, but it isn't going to do anything if someone fails to read it or actually solve problems.

Students who "fall behind" in math by and large do so by failing to do the work.

Education is about leading the horse to water... but you simply cannot make the horse drink.

"educators need to learn how to communicate with and educate the students"

Well then... this leads to a very interesting logical conundrum.

If the educators failed to learn how to communicate with and educate students... they can hardly be held primarily responsible for their failure.

Just like you are arguing that if students fail to learn how their multiplication tables they are not to be held responsible for their failure.

Those educators were at one point educated on how to educate students... and their educators were at one point educated on how to educate educators... etc...

The point is that individuals hold primary responsibility for learning how to become a functional member of society.

There are three groups responsible for successful education of children:

1 - Teachers
2 - Parents
3 - The children themselves

If any of those three fail the child will tend to do poorly in school.

The reason I am saying that teachers are being scapegoated is because the two other components (i.e. the parents and the children) are routinely ignored.

There is actually a very easy way to identify which children will do well in school and which ones will not.

Generally the students with involved parents who are concerned with their education will do well. This is true even in very adverse environments.

Why is this true?... because involved parents make sure their kids study and do their home work.

If you were to personally hand that book you recommend to an entire class of students who are failing at math I do not believe you would see much progress because those same students probably wouldn't bother to open the book.

Just to drive my point home:

"When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life."

The author of the very same book more or less corroborates what I've been saying.

When she decided that it was time for her to learn math she went back to school and was determined to master the subject.

It was her determination that enabled her to learn.

Before that she gave up and didn't do the necessary work.

My guess is that she sat in front of the problems and spent a great deal of time thinking about them and solving them.

That is how you become good at math... it takes work and determination when it doesn't come easy.