Kill the myth of "stupid"

For about a month now, I've been plugging away at a series called "Basic Physics", trying to go through a first year physics curriculum in a way that is understandable to people who aren't in STEM, and may not have even looked at 'math' in years. My mother has kindly been acting as one of the guinea pig for this experiment, reading through posts and giving me feedback on what is or isn't clear, is or isn't helpful. The last post on vector multiplication was particularly difficult for the both of us. It's hard to explain simply, and she really wanted to understand them in the same way she understood the trig section (after some rewrites at her suggestions). Every time we spoke and she said she still didn't get it, she would apologize "for being so stupid".

Now, stupid isn't a word I would use to describe my mother, and I sincerely doubt she has ever honestly been accused of that in her life. I reassured her that these were not easy topics, and pointed out that I had complained to her for at least 2.5 years now that my students, who nominally should walk into my classroom knowing this stuff, don't get it. I added a paragraph of encouragement at the top of the post, which seemed to help because I got this as a response:

ok I realized that I was trying too hard.

I get it now because I accept your math without trying to do it in my head every step.

Bring on the next chapter.

I called her up later in the day to thank her, because I realize that she probably hadn't been looking to learn this stuff before I asked for her help. She is a very gracious woman, and said she was always open to learning, but again apologized for being "stupid".

After we hung up, I realized that this is a refrain I have heard over and over when teaching: "I'm sorry I'm being so stupid". I've heard it from students in class, in office hours, in tutoring sessions back in college, and now from my mother. The general sentiment always seems to be that if they can't get it on the first go round, they are stupid and incapable rather than the reality that the topic is difficult. My students have gone so far as to tell me that I must be far more intelligent than them to understand this stuff.

There is an article in the New York Times today who headline was "Why do Americans Suck at Math?" and I can't help but think that the refrain of "I'm sorry I'm so stupid" and headlines like this are connected. Connected because they reinforce this idea that people "suck" at math in bulk. There is this weird perception that math is something only special people are good at, that you have to have some innate ability to do it and understand it. That people who are good at math look always use the Feynman method of problem solving: write the problem down, think about it, write down the solution. The idea that math people look at a new math topic and go "Oh, of course! Obviously this is true" and run off and use it seems to be weirdly pervasive, both consciously and unconsciously.

Of course, it would be lovely if this were true. I could have whole years of my life back if this were true. And of course it feels nice to be on the math people side of this, because it makes one feel smart and talented when in your work you frequently feel frustrated. It's like payback for the mockery, real or perceived, for being STEM types with all the cultural baggage that goes with it.

But I think it is also incredibly toxic. If math is something only special people can do, then why should ordinary people try? If we ignore or hide away our own struggles with understanding, we encourage this myth and scare people away who, even if they aren't in STEM, might enjoy seeing the beauty of it all. And it is beautiful. Being able to see the world with math and science at your back is awe inspiring, adding a whole new dimension to everything you can look at and experience.

I know very, very few people who haven't struggled to grasp every math and physics concept when they were first introduced. I think I've known two in my entire life. I was on the 'elevated' math track in school, which means I got all the way through AP Calc B in high school. And I still struggled and struggle with math. What my students (and my mother) never saw was me with wikipedia on my laptop and my calc book open as I desperately tried to understand different kinds of integrals, or tests for convergence. They never saw the early mornings, between classes and late nights in the physics lounge with scratch paper everywhere, chalk covered hands, asking anyone who entered the room, "Can you explain this? What is a [cross product, wave equation, probability density, etc]?" The extended arguments that eventually ended up with the stuffed monkey Harold on one of the professor's door in a plea for help. They will never know how much help I got from professors, from other students, from older students as I struggled to learn this stuff that I now seem so natural at. I'm not smarter than them. I was just persistent. When my students see me reduce a fraction on the board, or quickly do a cross product they assume it's just natural to me, like music is natural to my dad. What it really is is 7 years more experience and work.

Now, is there some natural inclination involved? Sure. But not nearly as much as people seem to think. Being good at anything, regardless of natural inclination, requires work above all else. My sister is more naturally inclined than I towards languages; she also studied more and is therefore far more fluent than I am (as in, actually fluent). No matter what your natural talent and inclination, if you never work at it, it will wither and dry up. And while you may never be a prodigy, hard work can get a person far in pretty much anything that's not sports.

People don't seem to believe me when it comes to math and science, so here's an analogy. I enjoy cooking. At this point in my life I am pretty good at it. I can make recipes up on the fly and nine times out of ten they work. I can tell if a cake is done by appearance and a light poke; I know if my steak is done to my liking by touch. Now, is there some natural inclination at work? Maybe. My mother is an excellent cook, and let me mess around in the kitchen at an early age. But mostly it's because I've been cooking for over half my life. Because I read cookbooks and watched masters and purposefully worked on my techniques, my understanding of the underlying food chemistry, the physics of different methods of cooking. Anything I am good at is maybe 5% natural talent, 95% work. Five percent alone gets you absolutely no where. Ninety five percent alone can get you pretty far.

This is something that we need to work on emphasizing more. We need to emphasize fewer Sheldon Coopers and Charlie Epps, boy geniuses grown up and solving MATH. We need to make it clear that what we do is not magic, not the result of some fluke of genetics that gave us special math powers. Something sparked an interest and we pursued it to the best of our abilities. We weren't destined to become mathematicians/physicists/chemists/what-have-you any more than non-STEM people were destined to be librarians/writers/bankers/secretaries/what-have-you. We chose to be what we are, and we worked hard to get here. Of course, this means admitting that we aren't special beings with math vision. But if we want to encourage people to engage with STEM, we need to kill this myth of "stupid".

Final stretch of the semester, running on fumes

It happens pretty much every semester, as Dear Husband pointed out to me this morning when I said I just wanted the semester to be over already. I start out the semester with plenty of energy to form new minds, until we reach the last few weeks when I start to feel depressed about their lack of commitment to learning, their lack of understanding, and how utterly horrible it is to grade 3000 final exams written by undergrads who may or may not understand that physics requires math, and therefore can't be fluffed out of.

Basically, I feel like this:

Can we be done now?

It's not a place I like to be. And usually, this feeling occurs between teaching. Once I'm actually in the classroom, the students  remind me why I love teaching, I get in the zone and I will happily teach for the hour+ that I'm given. 

But this semester, three out of four of my classes are duds.  The students are disengaged with learning. They don't ask questions. Lower admissions requirements on the part of the university mean that the level of mathematical literacy is astoundingly lower than I'm used to. Because we reinstated weekly in-class paper quizzes instead of online weekly quizzes we did last semester, I have to deal with a whole crop of students who never learned the importance of drawing diagrams for every problem, even if they can solve it without, and who fight me constantly for the 2-3 points I dock if they don't draw one. In the past, students have looked at it as "woohoo, 2-3 free points, yeah!"; this semester, I was told I was "teaching my philosophy, not physics". Nevermind that this is standard and still required of problems well into grad school. 

One class is not like this. One class is wonderful and a joy to teach.

But it's hard to make up for the three classes where I walk in and get less energized because the students just aren't there, mentally. 

In short, I can't wait for the semester to be over. 

Hellfire Preachers and Snarky Scientists

Every science blogger, tweeter (Twitterer?), and opinionator has been talking about the "Cosmos" reboot in the past couple of weeks. I've withheld comment because I was trying to sort through my feelings on it.

On the one hand, it is obviously well done. Tyson is a good science communicator and the special effects are marvelous.

I have two problems: the history sections, and the science community's gloating.

Dr. Tyson is no idiot. The science, as far as I can tell, is rock solid. Their history, where it isn't outright wrong, is highly deceptive. Tyson tries to soften it with small disclaimers, but a soft spoken phrase is hardly enough to dispel Seth MacFarlane's potent animation, which weirdly makes me think of Sunday School felt characters.

If it were just a conversation with scientists, I'd let it slide. But "Cosmos" is being set forth, and was designed as judging by the scripting, as a kind of science evangelism tool. Which I applaud. But it seriously undermines the credibility of the science message when the creators can't seem to be trusted to confer with a historian when writing the history of science. By distorting the most easily checked part of their program, it makes it far too easy for anyone already skeptical of its message to dismiss the rest, even if the rest is actually solid. It's a lot easier to check up on history than to check up on the science. If they couldn't do that right, they should have left it out, whether or not it was in Sagan's original.

The other thing is really getting my goat is the crowing going on in the public face of science, Twitter and blogs. A hashtag I've seen a little too much of is #CreationScience  and it's ilk.

I have a foot in both worlds. I am a faithful Christian who absolutely believes every word in the Apostle's Creed. I take seriously the Great Commision, even if I am particularly terrible at it. I am also a scientist. I think the universe began with the Big Bang, that life evolved on earth (and possibly elsewhere), that dinosaurs walked the earth long before humans and that geologists are perfectly right in the age estimates of the earth. Whenever I can, I try to correct people's misconceptions and make the case for SCIENCE.

So, dear fellow scientists, I say this with love as a sister in Science--who do you think you are going to win over by mockery?

You know that street corner preacher who yells at people who pass by that they are going to burn in Hell, with colorful descriptions of specific tortures? You know how annoying it is to run across these people? Has a single human being not already inclined to the preacher's theology ever repented and converted because they were yelled at?

Fellow scientists, you are that preacher. Every time you make a snarky comment about "Creationists" or "fundamentalists", you are just passing around a mean joke with your own clic. You want to know why 'they' are distrustful of science? Because this is what they see when they go on your twitter page, your blog, your facebook. They see sarcasm and mockery.

I am a old-earth-creationist/theist evolutionist who technically agrees with you and I feel hurt when I read those comments. Should I have a thicker skin? Sure. But making comments like that cuts deep, especially when coming from what I feel is 'my' community.

Do you think you are going to win over anyone by doing this? People on the fence are not likely to tilt to your side because you insulted them, and people who distrust you are going to run.

No one has changed their mind because they were insulted into it. Very rarely on anything that matters may they be discussed into it.

People are loved into change.

This is not likely to be a popular sentiment among you, my dispassionate brethren. You pride yourselves on logic and reason. But you are also deeply, deeply passionate about your research, your area of expertise, your hobbies. You are wonderful, caring people in real life. I rarely, in talking with you, am faced with the same vitriol that I find from you online.

Social media is a powerful tool. We could be using "Cosmos" to be reaching people who will never again set foot inside a science classroom. But if what they see coming from scientists is hatred, why would they want to change their views? Why would they want to associate themselves with you?

Don't be the annoying hellfire street corner preachers of science

Panic is Contagious

So yesterday, I was feeling pretty good about my qualifier. I had achieved a calm state of mind, and had accepted that whatever would happen would happen.

I went into school today to do a little studying without Penny trying to sit in my lap, and maybe ask some clarification on a point from one of my classmates. I found a bunch of them studying in the conference room after I had been there a little while, so I thought I'd sit down, listen to what they were discussing, etc.

I should not have done that. I'll do homework in a group, in undergrad there were a couple of people I could study with. I cannot study with my classmates at this point of the game. They are all just teetering on the edge of panic. It turns out that panic is contagious, even among scientist types.

Intellectually, even emotionally, I still feel good about my qualifier. By I feel physically panicked. I abandoned them at lunch time, came home and have been trying to re-achieve zen ever since. I changed my blog template so people could actually subscribe. I took Penny on a walk, and vented to my very patient mother. I watched "Avatar, the Last Airbender", and came up with a good theology post. And then another theology post to explain how I got a theology post out of Nickelodeon's anime-style show.

Still have not achieved physical calm. I'm hoping that my Thursday morning class does the trick, even if a good night's sleep doesn't. Otherwise, I don't know how I'm going to re-achieve calmness.

So, lesson learned. Panic is contagious. Do not hang out around panicking people.

It really gets my goat

I get angry at things. Not always the things other people get upset about, but I can get very irritated by things. And people. Particularly people being stupid. 

Stupid is the polite if inaccurate term for what irritates me. Anti-vaccine people annoy me because they utterly fail to understand what they are citing  and because they are killing children. My fellow Christians who like to discount scientific discoveries annoy me because they are being willfully ignorant and turning a blind eye to some really cook aspects of creation. My fellow scientists are currently annoying me by being willfully ignorant the other way. 

This is a thing that causes me low level irritation on a daily basis, but then I saw this blogpost from one of the science bloggers I follow. Two things bothered me about this post. One, he was basing his entire argument off some truly awful questions. Another is his exhibition of the worst habit of contemporary science writers (and writers in general) to broadly generalize about anyone they view as an 'enemy' in a manner that makes them seem irrational.  Things like this quotation are particularly irritating.

A professed belief in something like creationism is one of the essential markers of a particular brand of political conservatism. As a result, even people who know the scientific answer are prone to giving the answer they’re “supposed” to give as a member of a particular political affiliation. And the number of people who self-identify as political conservatives, like the number who deny the Big Bang and evolution, is pretty consistent over the last thirty years.

Note that the answers he is talking about are the true/false responses given to the statements "“The universe began with a huge explosion”  “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” 

Now I object to several things. One, the assumption that just because I believe in creation means I'm a right-wing nut job (I also object to my beliefs being co-opted by a political party, but that's a separate issue). Two, that there is one version of creationism. I also think true/false polls are terrible ways of gauging people's views.  

Attention non-religious science-types. The 'creationism' that you refer to so derisively is in fact Young Earth Creationism. This is a very narrow slice of people who believe that the universe was created and not just a random event. There are several flavors of creationism (main forms summarized here). If you went around and seriously interviewed a wide swath of Christians (since we are the 'creationists' everyone seems to want to poke), I'm willing to bet good money you would find most of them to be either Old Earth Creationists, or Theistic Evolutionists (I myself fall largely into the later category). But if you just straight up asked me "Are you a creationist?" I would probably answer yes.

I believe that the universe began with the Big Bang. I believe the the prima causa of the Big Bang was God. I believe that God used evolution to create the variety of life we have today, with a little nudging in the direction he wanted it to go. When it comes to the physics or the biology or the chemistry, I do not deny the scientific evidence or theories. I will argue for them with people who don't believe in the science. Why is science so threatened that I want to, and do, believe to know Who's behind the curtain?

Fellow scientists. You get mad as all get out when people deride your science without doing any research or learning beyond their own prejudices and maybe one newspaper article. Could you do other people the courtesy of not doing the same?