I'm a math professor, a white male, I was something of a child prodigy, and I was enormously blessed with math coaches who went far out of their way to help me.
I agree wholeheartedly that opportunities need to be made more available to everyone:
- Roughly 80-85% of those who get their Ph.D.s in math are male. That's a depressing statistic, and we need to do better.
- Nearly all Americans who get their Ph.D.s in math are white. African-Americans and Latino/a Americans are underrepresented. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, so are Asian-Americans. (There are many Asians in math, but usually they grew up in Asia and only came to the US for university or grad school.) Here, too, we must do better.
That said, your comment strikes me as rather nihilistic. Because opportunities aren't equally available to everyone, they shouldn't be made available to anyone?
Most people aren't like Urschel: most students won't go on to love math or excel in it, no matter how many opportunities they have. But some people will. Those people are spread across ethnicities, across genders, across socioeconomic groups, all over the world. We need to do a better job of finding and nurturing talent from diverse sources. And we need to make individual mentoring more widely available, not less.
Have I misunderstood you? Am I saying things you disagree with?
I really only disagree with your characterization of my point: "Because opportunities aren't equally available to everyone, they shouldn't be made available to anyone?"
I'm not saying opportunities shouldn't be made available to anyone, just that a stronger mentorship system than we already have in scientific higher-education is likely to reinforce the trend of white-male dominance that we already have, rather than temper it.
I agree wholeheartedly that opportunities need to be made more available to everyone:
- Roughly 80-85% of those who get their Ph.D.s in math are male. That's a depressing statistic, and we need to do better.
- Nearly all Americans who get their Ph.D.s in math are white. African-Americans and Latino/a Americans are underrepresented. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, so are Asian-Americans. (There are many Asians in math, but usually they grew up in Asia and only came to the US for university or grad school.) Here, too, we must do better.
That said, your comment strikes me as rather nihilistic. Because opportunities aren't equally available to everyone, they shouldn't be made available to anyone?
Most people aren't like Urschel: most students won't go on to love math or excel in it, no matter how many opportunities they have. But some people will. Those people are spread across ethnicities, across genders, across socioeconomic groups, all over the world. We need to do a better job of finding and nurturing talent from diverse sources. And we need to make individual mentoring more widely available, not less.
Have I misunderstood you? Am I saying things you disagree with?