Math Anxiety Epidemic

What spreads faster then H1N1 in elementary schools now? According to an article in Business Week entitled Female Teachers Pass on Math Anxieties it is a fear of math.

The ABCTE founding board was adamant that our elementary teachers be well versed in math and we have many candidates who do not succeed because they cannot do well on the math portion of our exam. NCTQ has found considerable evidence that the math requirements for elementary teachers in our country are sub-par or non-existent. This means you can teach elementary students without having taken rigorous math classes.

The article covers a University of Chicago study that showed that if there is a female teacher leading the elementary class (and 90% of elementary teachers are female) and the teacher is anxious about teaching math, it will adversely affect female students. The students come to believe the stereotype that boys are better in math than girls.

The results are fairly intuitive but it is nice to have real data to demonstrate a huge problem in advancing STEM in this country. If you don’t start with elementary teachers and have an incredibly strong foundation of math knowledge in the early grades, you cannot recover. The anxiety is there and unless you eliminate the cause of the anxiety, we cannot create a love of math and science in all students.