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Mission Possible
Famed Female Astronauts Helping Gifted Girls Reach for the Stars By Kim Byrum Skinner
Ride believes the seeds of inadequacy are planted early. Unintentional or not.
"Teachers with even the very, very best of intentions can go into a mixed-gender class and, without realizing it, encourage the boys more than the girls," says Ride, a recent U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame inductee (the first woman so honored) whose historic flight "broke perhaps the world's highest glass ceiling," according to former mission commander Robert Crippen.
"Boys, especially in middle school years, they're right out there," says Ride. "Their hands are waving. They want to answer the question whether they know the answer or not. Girls have quite a different response and generally will not raise their hands if they've got any doubt."
The U.S. Department of Education reports that among high school students who don't take math or science their senior year, women are more likely than men to say they did so either because others advised them they didn't need those courses or because they disliked the subject matter.
"A good teacher can give a student a real boost," Ride says. "A negative teacher, a teacher who gives a student a negative experience, can knock them out of that subject forever. To me, the most damage that a poor teacher or parent can do is suggesting to, let's say, a girl, that science is not for her, or that it's 'OK' not to be good in math."
Sullivan agrees. "We know some things about the kinds of games kids play on themselves when they're in middle school," she says. "Show alertness to that. If you single out a girl to give an answer or to lead something and you get crap and garbage and sneers from the boys, don't tolerate that."
The solution? Gender-blind parenting via conscious, daily self-monitoring.
"I think the most important role [my parents] played, besides being great role models, was in encouraging me to do what I wanted to do, and encouraging me to pursue what I wanted to pursue as far as I could," Ride says. "They were always saying, 'OK, now what do you want to do next?'"
"The one core element that Sally and I share is identical," Sullivan adds. "It was absolutely, always, completely, unambiguously clear to me that if I was interested, it was always valid. It was always fair. There's not some list of 'You can't be interested in this.' If someone else claims you shouldn't be interested in that, that's wrong. They don't get to tell you that."