Smrt Lernins

A new study shows that negative stereotypes about learning can impact, not just the students’ performance, but their actual ability to learn.

If you want to know why I don’t find it amusing to perpetuate negative stereotypes about girls and math, this pretty much sums it up:

“(The present study) points to the importance of creating environments that reduce the impact of stereotype threat during mathematical skill acquisition by women,” the authors concluded in their PNAS article. “If creating such an environment is not done, the learning deficits that result could well be cumulative, causing problems that continually worsen as development proceeds.

When you portray girls as being bad at math, you might actually be making them bad at math.

It’s not just math and it’s not just girls, of course, but that girls and math was the chosen example for this article is pretty telling. Do people really think we’re in a post-sexist society, where female-deprecating humor is suddenly, magically, not harmful?

First world problems alert: my internet has been down for almost a week* and, with homeschool starting on Monday, I’m starting to panic a little. Two of Captain Science’s classes (computer programming and science) and one he and Tank are sharing (art) are online. We still have some pieces of curricula to order. We need to sign up for the homeschool soccer league. We might sign up for classes at a local co-op (since we aren’t hosting one this semester, a nice respite). We need more consistent internet for this kind of stuff!

Officer Daddyman made a rather irritable comment to me the other night, being a bit tired of hearing me carry on about how inconvenienced I am, about people having survived just fine before the internet. Of course, the same could be said for, say, refrigeration (did I mention our fridge was also on the fritz?) and telephones (oh yeah, same electrical storm that fried our internet killed our phones) and electric lights (our house gremlin has been blowing those like crazy, too) and air conditioning (thankfully, this still works, though with 100 degree outside temperatures, it’s not making too much of a dent in the heat). Once you’ve become accustomed to and built certain facets of your life around access to those things, however, having them suddenly take flight into the wimbly ether is rather…fraktastic. Can’t put it more eloquently or eruditely (or less geekily) than that.

More than the resources, however, I miss the “s word.” Socialization. We usually worry about our kids getting enough, but as a in-the-home-all-day Mama (because I don’t like that whole “work at home” vs. “stay at home” thing…all mamas work), I often pine for some adult time. Chatting online with Patchfire and The Mama and my other homeschooling (and non-homeschooling) mama friends is an important part of my life. It’s a way of swapping ideas and just generally staying sane. It’s lonely at 11pm when Daddyman is at work and I want the house to stay quiet (so no phone calls), but I can’t talk to someone online, read any news, listen to any new music, etc.

*sigh* Hopefully, we’ll have internet by Monday, because how on earth can I go without blogging about our first day of school? Oh internet! I don’t know how to quit you.

*I’m swiping a little wireless from my grandmother while drinking a glass of wine.