Girls and Physics. It's too hard for them. ?

foxie48

Glorianny I read the Times article when I saw you had posted it. It was written by Flora Carr, a young writer and journalist but not anyone with any particular experience in education. It was a personal view without any academic underpinning. George Duoblys, the physics teacher she quotes, is similarly expressing a personal view, do look him up he writes a bit of a blog, he taught for three and a half years in London then quit teaching. There's lots of articles written about this school but I think they carry more weight when they are written by people with experience of education and teaching. John Bald has written about the school, I didn't post a link because I noticed he is a member of the Conservative Education Society and therefore, would be viewed as biased but he does has an impressive CV and a wealth of experience. He does, however, describe a very different experience of visiting the school though.

Regardless of who wrote it did you not think it was relevant that in 2018 a physics teacher questioned her methods for science and then in 2022 she's saying that girls don't want to do physics? Isn't it remotely possible that there is a problem there?

As far as teaching maths goes it is a subject that cannot be taught by rote. Especially to girls. I should know. I was a good girl at school who was taught traditionally. I learned to chant my tables. Unfortunately I thought they were some sort of magic spell. It all worked very well until maths became more difficult and I was swamped. I didn't know what was wrong until I trained as a teacher and realised I had never developed any real concept of numbers. I had just been manipulating the symbols. And that's the danger of teaching by rote.

I suspect that's the reason Birbalsingh blocked me on Twitter

No other views allowed or considered.
That's worrying, shutting down debate.

Callistemon21

^Personally I don't think it will make much difference on a local level. Parents usually vote with their feet, and I can't see any parent removing their child from a school where their child feels happy and fulfilled in their learning^.

I agree with that statement but she was speaking as the appointed adviser to the Government on social mobility. She is ill-informed, her statements were incorrect and consequently she would appear not to be the best person to be advising the government on education as a means to social mobility, especially for girls.

That's my issue too Callistemon, not how good her school is.

foxie48

Glorianny I read the Times article when I saw you had posted it. It was written by Flora Carr, a young writer and journalist but not anyone with any particular experience in education. It was a personal view without any academic underpinning. George Duoblys, the physics teacher she quotes, is similarly expressing a personal view, do look him up he writes a bit of a blog, he taught for three and a half years in London then quit teaching. There's lots of articles written about this school but I think they carry more weight when they are written by people with experience of education and teaching. John Bald has written about the school, I didn't post a link because I noticed he is a member of the Conservative Education Society and therefore, would be viewed as biased but he does has an impressive CV and a wealth of experience. He does, however, describe a very different experience of visiting the school though.

foxie As you mentioned John Bald, I'll just say that his CV is mainly a lie. I know that for a fact because I worked with him many years ago and I've followed his rants and attempts to embellish his CV. I've crossed swords with him on a number of occasions and I suspect that's the reason Birbalsingh blocked me on Twitter. There's a little clique behind efforts to make education more as they would like and he's in the thick of it. I won't say more because it could identify me, but I can't take anything the man says seriously - Conservative or not.

X post

Personally I don't think it will make much difference on a local level. Parents usually vote with their feet, and I can't see any parent removing their child from a school where their child feels happy and fulfilled in their learning.

I agree with that statement but she was speaking as the appointed adviser to the Government on social mobility. She is ill-informed, her statements were incorrect and consequently she would appear not to be the best person to be advising the government on education as a means to social mobility, especially for girls.

Never been a teacher. Wouldn't know.

You like the red pen approach to teaching volver.

What we do know is that the Headmistress Commissioner for Social Mobility was clumsy and misguided in what she said and how she said it, she got her facts wrong, that she is spending far too much time trying to justify herself, ( though it is a bank holiday and school is out and has been for 4 days ), and that she will think carefully say just as many unevidenced and wrong things if she thinks it advances her own ideas and position in future.

There, fixed it for you.

George Duoblys is similarly expressing a personal view, do look him up he writes a bit of a blog, he taught for three and a half years in London then quit teaching.
What a brilliant teacher Grorge will make now! Been through the wringer of self discovery both in and out of teaching, and realised that the importance lies in the little things, the every day small changes we can make.

There's lots of articles written about this school but I think they carry more weight when they are written by people with experience of education and teaching. And that is often the trouble. We none of us have taught in that school, though we sort of get the ethos, we none of us have been called in to inspect it, we none of us know minute details about preparing its budget and subsequent expenditure and so on.
What we do know is that the Headmistress was clumsy and misguided in what she said and how she said it, she got her facts wrong, that she is spending far too much time trying to justify herself, (though it is a bank holiday and school is out), and that she will think carefully in future.
Personally I don't think it will make much difference on a local level. Parents usually vote with their feet, and I can't see any parent removing their child from a school where their child feels happy and fulfilled in their learning.

casual, not causal. If only I'd paid more attention to the poetry.

Comments this morning from Polly McKenzie, outgoing chief exec of Demos, the independent, British cross-party think tank. Number 4. Read number 4.

Here’s what annoys me about the Birbalsingh row, in ascending order.
1. What she said about girls not liking hard maths is unevidenced, inaccurate and unhelpful.

2. She holds an important role as the country’s Social Mobility Commissioner and she turned up to Parliamentary Select Committee so unprepared she was happy to make unevidenced, inaccurate and unhelpful claims.

3. When criticised for her controversial comments she didn’t pause to look at the complex evidence, she launched a reduction ad absurdem attack: disparity doesn’t always mean discrimination. Of course not! But her job is to sift out the evidence about when it is and isn’t.

But here’s the one that angers me most: 4. That the incentives in our public and media lives mean this causal attitude to evidence and complexity is rewarded - with visibility, with cheerleaders, with jobs, with power.

Glorianny I read the Times article when I saw you had posted it. It was written by Flora Carr, a young writer and journalist but not anyone with any particular experience in education. It was a personal view without any academic underpinning. George Duoblys, the physics teacher she quotes, is similarly expressing a personal view, do look him up he writes a bit of a blog, he taught for three and a half years in London then quit teaching. There's lots of articles written about this school but I think they carry more weight when they are written by people with experience of education and teaching. John Bald has written about the school, I didn't post a link because I noticed he is a member of the Conservative Education Society and therefore, would be viewed as biased but he does has an impressive CV and a wealth of experience. He does, however, describe a very different experience of visiting the school though.

I gave up maths at school when I was 14 and didn’t do GCE. I loathed so called maths. In fact what we did was arithmetic and I know now that I would really have enjoyed proper maths.
For reasons I am not going into my maths teaching between the ages of 6 and 10 was virtually non existent.
I went back to night school when I was 40 to do maths. By that stage I was a chartered taxation practitioner and thought I ought to get the qualification, The tutor was brilliant, we started with basics and went through everything. I enjoyed it so much, got an A in the exam, then went in to do A level. I started an OU degree but sadly didn’t finish it because life got in the way - but what I did learn is that different people learn in different ways, and often really clever people who are brilliant at maths really struggle to see where other people don’t understand something. Quite often I am afraid that it is the teachers that fail.
Also maths does seem to bring out the testosterone in men, doing OU made me realise this. There was a lot of aggression involved and I found I was hesitant in replying to questions which men would leap in to answer. But I did discover that I really liked pure maths.

No problem if girls are not interested but those that do want to understand the flow of energy through our society, regularly do well and the top A level scorer is often a girl!! Ask the exam boards.

MavisCabbage

Exactly. The speed with which some women will attack a successful woman who says something controversial is shocking. Misogyny comes from women as well as men.
I may well not like or agree with everything Katharine Birbalsingh has done- but she has done a lot of good and earned the respect of many of her pupils.
It upsets me that we have a hierarchy of school subjects with Maths and Physics right at the top. Why?

I'm not attacking her. I'm questioning her statements and her methods. Of course you can regulate children and impose discipline especially if they are in smaller groups. Of course you can teach them to pass exams. The question is is this really education? And her failure to encourage and develop girls participation in maths and physics shows a weakness in her approach. Instead of addressing that weakness she is blaming the girls themselves. I posted a link to a Time article earlier on this thread. It was written in 2018 and in it a physics teacher questioned the suitability of her regime in teaching physics. But apparently she thinks girls are to blame. Isn't that mysoginistic?

What's happened to common sense?

Somebody who is well known in a certain field, who is admired by many, says something ridiculous about another area entirely, and were not supposed to tell her she's wrong? And when we do, we get told it's misogyny, and mob rule, and witch hunts?

How can that be acceptable? What kind of world is that?

It's fascism, and anti intellectualism, that's what it is. And it's a slippery slope.

The speed with which some women will attack a successful woman who says something controversial is shocking
I think posters are disagreeing with her views not attacking her because she is a woman.

Misogyny:
dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

That's why Eng.Lang. is an essential subject at least up to GCSE level.

Misogyny? How dare you.

I'll stand up to anybody who talks rubbish, man or woman, successful or not. And rubbish it is.

It upsets me that we have a hierarchy of school subjects with Maths and Physics right at the top. Why?

I think it's Mathematics and English Language which are the two most essential subjects up to GCSE level.
They are the two subjects everyone needs to learn to a reasonable level in order to cope with everyday life.

Without a grounding in those two subjects then learning other subjects is rather difficult too.

Exactly. The speed with which some women will attack a successful woman who says something controversial is shocking. Misogyny comes from women as well as men.
I may well not like or agree with everything Katharine Birbalsingh has done- but she has done a lot of good and earned the respect of many of her pupils.
It upsets me that we have a hierarchy of school subjects with Maths and Physics right at the top. Why?

???

The statuary funding for Brent was Brent £5,065.93, I can't find out what the free school allocation for the Michaela school was but it was a set up amount not representative of the funding for following years. I think it's important to recognise that starting a school from scratch is not the same as funding a school that is already in operation. FWIW I DO NOT support free schools, I'd rather see extra money going into existing schools but neither do I support comparing apples with pears.

Crikey

I was always good at maths at school and chose physics as an option for science.
Sadly I dropped the subject after 6 lessons after the teacher strung up a boy with ropes and a pulley and hung him from the high lab ceiling for talking. Will never forget him screaming and crying as the ropes caused burns to his underarms and groin where he struggled. Parents complained but were told it was grammar school and to move him to a comprehensive if they were unhappy.
Have a mental block now about electricity and anything to do with physics. This was in the 60s when teachers could get away with doing these things