As a person who teaches students with special educational
needs, I see learned helplessness all the time. Learned helplessness occurs when an
individual has seen himself fail at something or perform poorly for so long that he
eventually believes he is powerless to do something.
I have
no identified this in young females at a higher rate than in the past. When I was a
young woman it was common for women to not know how to do something and turn certain
aspects over to men, such as repairing a car.
Females in
generations when I was a teenager were much more domicile than they are today. I am
55. Society expected them to do poorly in math and science. (My mother was a scientist,
so that blew it away for me).
Today's focus has been to
bring everyone up to par educationally and there was a focused movement of teaching
females to progress in science and math.
I no longer see it
as a gender issue but instead I see it as an issue that is common among students who
have experienced failure when they had tried and not succeeded so they believe they can
not do things and have learned to be helpless.
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