Tiny Treasury

As a mom of two young daughters, I am very sensitive to this notion of the connection between females and the fields of math and science.

I was a math girl - math team, math minor, attended the NC School of Science and Mathematics. But I was acutely aware that this wasn’t encouraged. I guess I realized this for the first time when my friends thought I should “play dumb” during a math competition. I had just bested my “steady” at try-outs and that was viewed as a death sentence. I could do okay at math, they said, just don’t embarrass the boys.

By the time that I enrolled in college (at an all women’s college), I was struggling to remember why I liked math. I enrolled as a history major and tested into Calculus (we were required to take one math class). During Calculus, my professor, Dorothy Preston, took me aside one day and gave me a pat on the back. I was, she told me, good at this. Next semester, I took Calculus 2, then Calculus 3… you get the picture.

I am now a tax attorney, a field that is hardly proliferated with women. And (gulp) I like math - despite the stereotypes, despite the Barbies that were programmed to say “Math is hard!” (remember those?).

I am so glad that I didn’t just become a statistic, another girl that gave up math in junior high, when in wasn’t cool anymore. My senior college thesis was a report on the connections between girls and math/science - and the ages at which interest and retention in those subjects decreased. It is very clearly in junior high and my “attitude surveys” in the local schools showed that girls perceived math to be fun and easy until puberty. What changed at that age? The coolness factor. The number of girls interested in math after that plummeted.

It is, then, encouraging and refreshing, to see someone willing to take center stage and be a good role model for girls who are interested in math. Huge kudos to brainy (and beautiful) Danica McKellar for choosing to transform her celebrity into something positive instead of taking the dumb party girl route favored by such embarrassments as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.

Danica’s book, “Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without breaking a nail or losing your mind” goes on sale this week. If you know a middle school aged girl, I hope that you’ll consider preordering it.

Positive role models for girls in Hollywood these days are far and few between. I hope that this inspires girls to take a second look at math - and what success and math can mean (there’s a link on Danica’s web site where she discusses the correllation between math and the arts).

math, girls, Danica McKellar