Ask these Naplan test questions standardized by your 10-year-old and listen to their answers.
When the holidays are over, Daddy’s uncle (my great-uncle) comes from Italy for a visit.
This sentence contains an error in the use of a
An uppercase letter.
B. a comma.
C. an apostrophe.
D. square brackets.
Anna opens a savings account. She deposited $ 4 in the first week. She then deposits twice as much money per week as she did the week before.
The total amount of money in the account is
A. always strange.
B. always balanced.
C. sometimes odd and sometimes even.
Many 10-year-olds will answer “I am not an English girl” or “I am not a math girl” when faced with these questions. In other contexts, I have heard children as young as 10 years old say “I am not a sports girl”. For my book, Ten-ager – What your daughter needs you to know about the transition from child to teenager, I sought the advice of 500 Australian 10-year-old girls, 1,600 mothers and 100 5-year-old teachers, and I often listened to the girls they tell me what they’re not good at, as if they’ve made up their minds at 10.
You can hear psychologist Karen Young, the founder of the website Hey Sigmund, shudder when she says, “We don’t even know what they are capable of at age 10! They are being placed in these environments where, instead of being playful, they become competitive. “
And even when they are told that tests are not competitive, they are. They are sending signals to children that they are below average or not where they should be. “Even though teachers and parents say, ‘This is great, you did a great job and we are very proud of you’, they are looking around at others,” she says. And if they feel, even in a small group of four or five friends, that they sit in the bottom positions, the message is clear. “I am not a smart girl.” “I’m not as athletic as my friends.” “I will not be doing math / science in high school.”
They put a limit on their potential, and many of them take that to the 6th and 7th years. “We don’t even know what they’ll look like at 10,” says Karen Young. “Their brains are still developing.”
In this project, I chased so many rabbits in so many holes: the girls’ passion for their pets; his love of cooking; how they wanted to make the world a better place; your struggle to find lasting friends; what they see when they look in the mirror; the encrypted messages on the digital wallpaper that fills their lives; the first provisional steps of independence; the brutality delivered by Covid-19; the anguish of depression, self-mutilation and eating disorders; the search for self-esteem and the monster that body image sometimes presents. But what got me in the pit of my stomach was how 10 year olds are determining what they see as their future path … in the fifth year!
Many of them are authors of their own stories. They stop trying on a particular subject. They withdrew from the hockey team. They decide that the science club is not for them – it is for the “science girls”.
“I can’t do math.”
“I am not good at sports.”
“I can never finish homework on time.”
“I worry about schoolwork because I’m not good at it.”
“I suck at school stuff.”
“I worry about not being able to go to high school because I’m not smart enough.”
None of them say that they are not good at being kind, or empathetic, or playing an instrument, or sewing, or debating, or owning a pet, or any other talent that can be just as important, if not more important, than a 5th grade math test.
“My daughter thinks that because she is not getting an A at school, she is not smart,” wrote a mother to me. “I find that sad.” Another says: “She can’t even ride a bike and now she won’t try anymore”. Another: “She gave up the sport because she has a high standard and doesn’t believe it is good”. And yet another: “She will not make the most of her talents because she is afraid of making mistakes or looking foolish”.
And so on – the fear that girls will qualify at 10 and 11 years old.
Professor Susan Sawyer, president of the International Adolescent Health Association, says that these limitations may be the result of gender views on what boys and girls should or can do in families. But the potential is also being limited by what, at this age, girls internalize.
“This is often very unconscious, but we take into account the values around us and the feedback we receive as being successful or not,” she says.
This can affect the confidence we have in engaging in tasks – like math. And our confidence and expectations will define how “brave” we will be in terms of future engagement.
The tendency of girls – and often inadvertently, of their parents – to put a limit on their talents frustrates educators throughout our nation. Korowa Anglican Girls’ School principal in Melbourne, Helen Carmody, sees this journey, for many girls, as part of their search for identity. They accept messages from people around them, and this can quickly deliver very closed options to them. Carmody, and almost everyone else interviewed, raises the question of whether we should praise our children too much. “I think parents tell them a lot of what they are good at. You know, instead of rewarding them for the work they do, or the challenges they face, or the things they try, there is that whole thing of constant praise, ”she says.
It looks like this: “Oh, what a beautiful work of art, but you are a wonderful artist.” Instead of: “You worked so hard. You should be proud of that; it took 10 hours. “
Author Rebecca Sparrow says: “This idea of ’you are amazing’ and ‘see how amazing you are’ – this message I think is problematic. And when you have this message, I think you may have less space to understand [others]. “
Matt Macoustra, deputy chief (operations) at Barker College in Sydney, says that if you ask a girl why she says “she is not a math person”, she will say, “Because I am not good at it”. Sometimes he sees the penny drop when he explains that perseverance can change that. “And it seems to be much more prevalent with young women than with boys,” he says.
Girls could sometimes internalize criticism and take the test result personally, instead of seeing it as “a mark on the page”. He provides this analogy: if a boy knew that he made a mistake in football, he would think that he did not kick the ball well in that specific match; it wouldn’t become a problem about him as a person. A girl, however, would probably take the error personally.
Educators say that if a child has decided that he can or cannot do something, it is difficult to change that mentality. This has led some schools to cross disciplines – for example, to include art in science or technology in mathematics. “So learning comes together so you can see the application of what you are doing and think less about the things that are being compartmentalized along the subject lines,” said an educator. Another explains the initial focus of entrepreneurship, in which children are encouraged to create a product, launch it, sell it and create a business plan. The idea, from beginning to end, is to open closed minds.
Miami high school principal Susan Dalton says schools need to be strategic with their schedules, to provide girls with a mix of experiences so they don’t restrict their interests and skills too soon. “Schools have control over how they can help not classify girls at that age,” she says.
But constant work must be done to ensure that girls continue to “reach for the stars”, leave their comfort zones and be part of a “culture of inclusion”. It works best when parents and the school get involved. So what advice would Dalton give to parents whose daughters are hesitant to continue with activities in which they do not earn?
To hear more than to speak. Keep the lines of communication open. And don’t use our daughters to make your own dreams come true.
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This is an edited excerpt from Ten-ager – What your daughter needs you to know about the transition from child to teenager, by Madonna King (Hachette, $ 32.95)