Top 5 Myths About Girls, Math and Science

This article is based on information from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Research on Gender in Science and Engineering (GSE) program. It helps explain why I am donating the Greenscaper Inside Plants Science Lab. The plan is for it to go to ten different public and private educational institutions to help teach science to young girls and boys.

I'm by no means a science head, but more of a do-it-yourselfer. Even I understand capillary action. The houseplant community, which is dominated by women, seems to have little or no understanding of this basic principal of physics.

Use of the term self-watering, clay pots with saucers along with finger poking to measure soil moisture are significant indicators of a lack of science education in the houseplant and container gardening community.

Evidently, the problem starts along about the 8th grade when girls drop out of science. Sadly, the older women in the houseplant community are testimony to this educational failure. Unfortunately they are the authors of most of the books about houseplants.

Myth 1: From the time they start school, most girls are less interested in science than boys are.

Reality: In elementary school about as many girls as boys have positive attitudes toward science. A recent study of fourth graders showed that 66 percent of girls and 68 percent of boys reported liking science. But something else starts happening in elementary school. By second grade, when students (both boys and girls) are asked to draw a scientist, most portray a white male in a lab coat. Any woman scientist they draw looks severe and not very happy.

The persistence of the stereotypes start to turn girls off, and by eighth grade, boys are twice as interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) careers as girls are. The female attrition continues throughout high school, college and even the work force. Women with STEM higher education degrees are twice as likely to leave a scientific or engineering job as men with comparable STEM degrees.

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e-mail Bob Hyland
bobhyland[AT]insideplantslive [dot]org