[00:00:00] Jo Boaler: The beliefs you hold about maths are actually in your hippocampus, a very mathematical part of the brain. And they intersect with your maths knowledge so that if you don't believe good things about yourself and about maths, it actually is inhibiting that mathematical part of the brain. And so what you believe will actually change how your brain is working, and that happens in every second of the day

[00:00:27] Vanessa Vakharia: Hi, I'm Vanessa Vakharia, aka The Math Guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that explores the root causes of math trauma, and the empowering ways we can heal from it.

Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist. But the scars that math class left on many of us definitely do. Oh, and don't worry, no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.

Okay, so this is the last episode of the season, and today's guest isn't actually going to be a full surprise because we released a little snip of our interview with her as a bonus ep before the season even started because there was all this drama regarding "the math wars". And yes, that's a thing which directly involved her. But today you're going to hear my full interview with the one and only Jo Boaler. You guys probably know that Jo Boaler is one of my longtime math education heroes and the most referenced person in my master's thesis called "Imagining a World where Paris Hilton Loves Math", which I published back in 2010, which actually goes to show you how long I've been a fan of hers for.

If you don't know who Jo Boaler is, I don't know what to say except for that when I asked Chat GPT who the most famous human in math education is, it said Jo Boaler. Today we talk about what she's most known for, making math education inclusive to absolutely everyone. But as it turns out, when trying to make math more accessible, academic bullying, online harassment and literal death threats are unfortunately part of the job description.

Math and gender

[00:02:03] Vanessa Vakharia: Jo, welcome to the podcast!

[00:02:08] Jo Boaler: Thank you Vanessa. I'm happy to be here. 

[00:02:10] Vanessa Vakharia: I am so excited. I'm so glad you're happy, I'm actually like, pee my pants excited. Um, I have to say, so I'm starting, I'm actually gonna start with just like a personal question I've been wanting to ask you since 2010, TBH, so

[00:02:22] Jo Boaler: Okay.

[00:02:23] Vanessa Vakharia: I actually, I, that's when I did my master's thesis. Looking back, you were the most quoted person in my thesis. And I was kind of like racking my brains, cause I think actually both of us now are doing, not like different work, but have like moved on to other things.

But at the time, like I remember when I was writing about it, I did it at UBC and everyone thought it was weird. Like everyone was like, what? You're doing a thesis about math education and feminist theory, like what does one have to do with the other? And I really think that at the time, you were one of the few people talking about gender and math. 

[00:02:54] Jo Boaler: Still am I think.

[00:02:56] Vanessa Vakharia: Well, so that's my question is, how much from then, 2010, so that's 13 years, do you think things have changed in terms of the discourse around that conversation?

[00:03:07] Jo Boaler: Great question. I don't think it's changed much at all, and I don't think people pay much attention to the fact that a very masculine version of maths is taught in schools, and we see the results of that as not many girls being interested and dropping out.

[00:03:26] Vanessa Vakharia: Wait, but you really think it hasn't changed that much?

[00:03:29] Jo Boaler: I, I haven't seen a lot of changes. I still don't see it talked about much. Maybe people's awareness is different because there's been more sharing of information about who goes through to maths, maybe.

[00:03:44] Vanessa Vakharia: Or maybe it's like, cause I even feel like when I think about it then, so first of all I feel like the term STEM didn't even exist, barely. Because I'm thinking about all the now, the girls in STEM stuff you see everywhere and it kind of seems 

[00:03:55] Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. 

[00:03:55] Vanessa Vakharia: Now we're saturated in it, like it's very common. Like we have International Day of Women and Girls in STEM. Like it's like a thing that happens. But maybe when we, maybe that's all kind of like a coverup, or it's like one of those, or, or you know what I mean, one of those things to be like, see we're doing something about it, we acknowledge it,

[00:04:10] Jo Boaler: Right, we have a day of the year when we all talk about it. Yeah. I mean, when I say I don't see it a lot, I am more referencing like the research that I see coming out. I don't see many people taking a, a gender perspective on maths education. There are some, but it's not really mainstream.

[00:04:31] Vanessa Vakharia: So can we talk about this, like when you say like, you know, we have a masculine version of math that is taught in schools. What does that mean?

[00:04:39] Jo Boaler: Well, it turns out most schools teach maths as a subject of right and wrong answers with little tiny questions. And for whatever reason, boys tend to be more willing to accept that version of maths, whereas girls are more likely to be sitting there thinking, but what is this idea connected to and where would we use this, and where is the deep conceptual understanding. So we don't offer that to kids in schools typically. I mean, obviously there's some amazing teachers who do, but typically we don't offer that and we see the result, which is a lot of women feel that maths is not for them. 

[00:05:22] Vanessa Vakharia: So do you think, I mean, my area of research is more around, uh, Hollywood and celebrity culture because I'm forever 21 years old and I hang out with teenagers. 

[00:05:29] Jo Boaler: Fair enough.

[00:05:30] Vanessa Vakharia: I you know, there are obviously so many pieces of the puzzle, right? Because we're really talking about environment and nurture and all of the different messaging kids get when it comes to who belongs and doesn't belong in math. Do you still get pushback from people being like, nope, like genetically boys are better at math?

[00:05:47] Jo Boaler: I don't hear people saying that, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who believe it. And I saw a very recent statistic that large amounts of the population, I don't know exactly what it was, maybe 80%, think you have a math brain or you don't. So, once they have that idea that some people just have this maths brain, usually you get these stereotypical biased views about who has maths brain layering into that.

And I cannot tell you how many parents have come up to me, I do lots of parent talks, saying, oh, I have these two children. And my son, he's just so gifted, he's amazing at maths, and my daughter really can't do it at all. And I think, hmm.

[00:06:38] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Well like lit, seriously, last week I literally got a phone call from a parent, cause I run a tutoring center, and they were like, I'm looking for a tutor for my daughter, she's getting an 80 in math, but it just doesn't come naturally, she has to work so hard. My son's getting a 65, but like, I'm not really worried about him. And I was like, okay, are you hearing the one, also, I, right? 

I also did literally a year ago, a radio interview, this is national Canadian radio, like this person is on air, and the guy said to me, because research does come out like this, trying to quote unquote prove that certain people have a math brain, and I think actually, still trying to prove that there is a gender difference or a sex difference. And he said, "I saw this article where they showed brain scans of young children and they showed that there was no difference when it came to math between boys and girls." And I was kind of like, okay, cool, but we don't need, like we don't need, we already know that. 

[00:07:27] Jo Boaler: Right. 

[00:07:27] Vanessa Vakharia: And then he goes, on air, "I wonder what happens after puberty though?" So I think it is, there is still some sort of impetus for someone to just try, uh uh, so like why?

[00:07:40] Jo Boaler: And it, even if it's not out there at the front of their mind, but it's somewhere deep in their mind, that's gonna play out. With their own children or with, if they're a teacher, with their classes of students. So it's so important that we get rid of these myths.

[00:07:57] Vanessa Vakharia: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:58] Jo Boaler: Keep doing these podcasts.

Limitless Minds

[00:08:00] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Speaking of ridiculous articles that don't prove anything, so much of your work is aimed at making otherwise, I think, inaccessible research accessible, through like your books, like Limitless Mind. I mean I personally felt so pushed out of the world of academia just simply because of the language and just being like, and also being like, I, I'm sure you feel like this someway, you're like, I'm doing all this research in a silo, but like the people who need to hear it are never gonna hear it, they're never gonna access it. 

And your book, Limitless Mind, really is about that, right? It is about, sorry, I just reread it so it's top of mind, about how no one's born with a math brain. Do you wanna tell us kind of, I know it's hard to summarize, but kind of what the main thesis of that is?

[00:08:40] Jo Boaler: Well, I talk about six key pieces of information in it, so I don't know if you want all six, but one of them is that our brains are constantly growing and changing and there's no such thing as a math brain because we're developing these pathways all the time. 

And another is how important it is to struggle in maths and that struggling, making mistakes is really important for your brain, it's when your brain's making connections and growing. 

And then having a growth mindset, believing in yourself, it turns out, will change how your brain is operating. So that's super important. 

And then the other things I talk about are seeing maths in different ways. I work with neuroscientists at Stanford and they talk about how when we see a math problem, there's five different pathways in the brain that light up. And what we really want is communication between those pathways. And that happens when we encounter maths in different ways. 

So if I see something with numbers and I also see it visually, that's gonna cause a connection between brain pathways. Or if I build with maths or do something with movement or write something about it, these are all different ways of encountering the ideas. And when we have, I like to call it a multi-dimensional maths experience, then kids are making those brain connections. 

But then the other two keys are about forgetting the idea that maths is about speed and, knowing that the highest mathematicians in the world are often those who are the slowest thinkers. So that's a terrible myth that holds a lot of people back, that you're supposed to be speedy with numbers. 

And I think the final key in the book is just about the importance of connecting with other people and other people's ideas and, I'm actually working on a new book now. I'm excited because it's a book about maths and I haven't written a book just about maths for a while. And it's called A Mathematical Diversity, and it's about the value of diversity in people and having different ideas and perspectives and backgrounds, and also diversity in math. So we see maths in all these different ways, and we embrace that diversity. 

[00:10:53] Vanessa Vakharia: I'm really, really excited about that. And it's a tangent I've been on a lot lately about part of the reason we don't actually have diversity of mathematicians is cause we have a lack of diversity of math, right? Like right now math is basically like, can you do mental math? Can you do it quickly? Can you do it accurately? Can you get the right answer?

[00:11:09] Jo Boaler: So true. Yeah, so true.

[00:11:10] Vanessa Vakharia: And we leave behind so many people that we actually need, like, also like who's solving climate change? The person with the fastest calculation? No. 

[00:11:17] Jo Boaler: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. That narrow math that's taught appeals to a narrow group of people. And that's what we see in the people who are working in maths.

Limiting beliefs

[00:11:27] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, something in, in the book though you talk about was the idea of limiting beliefs. And I have to say, I am a person who's very into like woo woo manifesting self-help, that's my whole jam. And, what I love though is that, so in, in like the self-help hippie witch world, we're always talking about limiting beliefs, but never ever from a scientific perspective.

Right? It's just like this idea, which actually seems quite rational, that if you have limiting beliefs and you think you'll never achieve something, then you probably won't. Right. You'll never take the, but you talk about it from a bit of a like scientific perspective. 

[00:12:02] Jo Boaler: Hmm. Yeah. 

[00:12:03] Vanessa Vakharia: Tell us a bit about that, like I, I want the gurus out there to be like, hello, like, you didn't make this up, it's real.

[00:12:10] Jo Boaler: Yeah. We know that if you don't believe in yourself, that actually changes how your brain operates. And some recent research from, uh, somebody who was a colleague at Stanford called Lang Chen, showed that the beliefs you hold about maths are actually in your hippocampus. And that's a very mathematical part of the brain. And they intersect with your maths knowledge so that if you don't believe good things about yourself and about maths, it actually is inhibiting that mathematical part of the brain.

And that's really important because a lot of people used to think, oh, well, we have these beliefs and they're over in some soggy part of the brain, and then there's a hard maths, it's in a different part of the brain. But they're right there together. And lots of evidence now that if you don't believe in yourself, your brain doesn't react well, particularly in times of struggle or times of something going wrong. And so what you believe will actually change how your brain is working, and that happens in every second of the day. So it's really, really impactful.

[00:13:21] Vanessa Vakharia: I feel like this is, sorry, now I'm having a personal moment and I've been talking about this with every podcast guest, and I'm just gonna bring it up again because I feel like every person puts a new lens. So I'm, I'm trying to sing this high note in this Pink Floyd song, okay, who cares, we don't need to get into it. The point is that some days I can do it and some days I can't. And my vocal teacher's always like, it's a mental thing and I'm like, but how? How can it be a mental thing how I physically sing? But I notice that sometimes if I'm not thinking about it and I'm not psyching myself out, I can hit that note.

So it's like, if you think about it, science aside, obviously science is important, but science aside, it's like, obviously if my mindset is affecting a physical note I can sing, of course it would affect whether or not you can absorb like math or perform.

[00:14:05] Jo Boaler: Of course. Yes. And they have, there are some studies I talk about in the book, you probably read them. Um, one of them I think is very powerful, where they worked with people who, they're cleaning staff of hotels, and they divided them into two groups. And one of the groups they told, you know this cleaning you do in this hotel satisfies the surgeon general's requirements for good exercise. The other group, they didn't tell that.

Little while later, those people they told that had lower blood pressure and had all of these different physical health benefits, of being told that the exercise they were doing was healthy. I mean, it's not just, uh, learning that these beliefs change, it changes like physical things in our body. I, I mean, I think we are only just beginning to understand all the different ways our beliefs change us.

[00:15:01] Vanessa Vakharia: Like I feel like, I'm even thinking of, what was that first self-help book? Like, do you remember, Think and Grow Rich? Remember like those types of books? 

[00:15:09] Jo Boaler: Yeah, yeah.

[00:15:10] Vanessa Vakharia: Not that I'm endorsing that, but I'm just like, I think it's so interesting how intuitively we can know something. We can know this idea that obviously your mindset or positive affirmations must be able to change the way we learn or you know, whatever. But we're so resistant to that. 

Pushback on progress

[00:15:28] Vanessa Vakharia: And I think, like, I'm going back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, like who is it serving to be resistant to those ideas?

[00:15:36] Jo Boaler: I don't know, who is it serving? I mean, that's some of the pushback I get. I was just reading it this this week.

[00:15:41] Vanessa Vakharia: Let's talk about it. 

[00:15:42] Jo Boaler: That "mindset doesn't work", uh, "mindset interventions show really no impact". But what happens in those studies that show no impact of things like mindset, is they go into schools, they give kids these messages, they then continue to teach in exactly the same way, giving the counter message that the kids have just heard, and then find it didn't have an impact. But when people take those ideas and actually thread them through teaching and have them change the way they teach, they have a massive impact for kids.

So I don't know though why people really want to stop change, and even stop that change. They're even trying to stop spreading of the idea that your beliefs matter.

[00:16:31] Vanessa Vakharia: But do you think this is a, like, keeping math belonging to a certain group? Like I

[00:16:35] Jo Boaler: I do. Absolutely. 

Academic bullying

[00:16:39] Jo Boaler: I mean, I'm, I'm one of the writers of a new framework for the state of California, and it came from a 20 person committee who met for a year bringing in lots of research, things we know about maths. And the big ideas are, let's have more kids go to higher levels. Let's stop pushing kids out of maths at an early age, that's one of them. And why don't we bring data into maths so kids can have conversations with the real world, with data, and teach maths with big ideas. 

You would not believe the pushback that we're getting to these ideas, and the biggest pushback is we are trying to stop elementary school tracking. That's the biggest point of pushback. And the people who are pushing back, almost entirely, maybe completely entirely, are the people who have been very successful in maths. And what I see happening is, you know, they've worked, they've worked out how to be successful in this system, they know how to get their own children to be successful and grease their way to a nice college place.

And here we are saying, let's make maths open to more kids. And they don't want it. Now, some people might say they want it and they don't think we are going about it the right way, but there's definitely a group of people who are basically opposed to the ideas of opening up maths to more students. 

[00:18:05] Vanessa Vakharia: This feels like the weirdest microcosm almost, even though it's not micro, like education is a huge thing, but 

[00:18:12] Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:13] Vanessa Vakharia: the entire pushback of every movement towards equity that's been happening since, 

[00:18:18] Jo Boaler: Yeah. 

[00:18:19] Vanessa Vakharia: And I wonder, I'm like, is this because we're so competitive, is that it? Is it because we think that if we let more people in, there won't be room? 

[00:18:26] Jo Boaler: It is, I think so. And you know, it only happens in maths. All of these things we are proposing are already in place in english, in history, in science, in every subject. 

[00:18:37] Vanessa Vakharia: It's true. 

[00:18:39] Jo Boaler: But, calculus, you know, is regarded as the sort of holy grail of maths, a high course. It is the only one of 38 AP courses that you need to have taken math in middle school to get to it. The only one that functions in that way. 

So maths has this special place. It's been built to be a very hierarchical, exclusive subject where only some people can go forward, and there are people who don't want it any other way. So making change turns out to be a huge battle. And then the people who don't want the change are very wealthy people, so they are able to do things to stop the change, like get the media to run stories. So it's a real battle, particularly for people who are fighting for equity.

I have a study actually, that I conducted 15 years ago now where maths teachers started teaching in the way I'm talking about. They didn't have barriers, all kids could go forward. They taught in this multi-dimensional way, amazing results. Many, many more of their kids were successful, inequities went away, black and brown kids did fantastically well. They hate this study. They hate it so much, that they have tried over the years, over and over again to try and say I made up the data, I've got to give them the data to show that I made up the data. They have just tried every way they can to attack it. 

And the study is in journals, they have contacted the journals to tell them to take down my papers. They are dead set to discredit that research, because you know what? They have this system that works and they say, well, only some kids are successful, that's just the way, you know, maths is hard, that's the way it is. But hey, somebody comes along and shows when we change the way we teach and group kids, turns out all sorts of kids are successful, and so that's a very threatening message.

[00:20:54] Vanessa Vakharia: I like, can't react cause I'm so mad and I'm like, okay, I don't wanna like swear just excessively, but I'm like, angry in so many ways, like I'm having a weird reaction to it cuz I feel like personally attacked even though, but I'm thinking about all the, because like, I am such an activist in my life. I'm also in a rock band where the women, especially women of color, are a minority. And I've been fighting for that for so long and it's like, yeah, that pushback is real. The idea that like, there are literal gatekeepers that will keep you out of festivals, that will keep you out, like it feels at times, and I don't know if this is how you feel, but at times I'm like, no, I'm going for it, like I'm gonna fight this fight, like we need to do something about it. And at other times I feel so small because I'm just like, I mean that's so fatiguing that someone is literally trying to,

[00:21:35] Jo Boaler: It is really hard work. It is fatiguing.

[00:21:37] Vanessa Vakharia: It is fatiguing, but you have to do it. But in terms of, and it's funny cause I was gonna bring this up, in your book Limitless Mind you're talking about, again, that was published in 2013, I think. 

[00:21:48] Jo Boaler: Limitless was published in 2019. 

[00:21:50] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay so four years ago you have people trying to take down your work and taking down this exact research, and let's fast forward to now.

[00:21:58] Jo Boaler: Oh, well that happened in 2012. 

[00:22:01] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh that's why I was thinking 

[00:22:03] Jo Boaler: Yeah that happened longer ago.

[00:22:05] Vanessa Vakharia: That's what I meant. Okay. So that reference to that was in 2012, so this is now a decade later.

[00:22:11] Jo Boaler: Yeah.

[00:22:11] Vanessa Vakharia: And what's going on?

[00:22:12] Jo Boaler: And they're still, still going after the same study. And here's the thing, one of the ways they tried to block this research is they accused me of academic misconduct. That's a very serious charge, and Stanford had to investigate it by law. I give them all of my data, everything. They go through all the data and they said there is no charge to answer to here, this is impeccable data, we are ending this investigation. And they've written this up, they've sent it out, there was nothing here, we were forced to investigate this, but we investigated, it is all clear. 

Still, they're coming after me saying there's something wrong with that data, because you know, it really can't be that these kids who were from low income homes and black and brown could be really successful in maths, I mean, so inconceivable.

[00:23:05] Vanessa Vakharia: Are you like, nervous something's gonna happen, or are you kind of like, no, these people are just fighting and, like, I get so, I have such internalized fear of people in quote unquote power and of men in general

[00:23:18] Jo Boaler: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, these last six months have made me fear for my safety.

[00:23:23] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, that's, okay, that's disgusting.

[00:23:26] Jo Boaler: I, I've, I've had numerous death threats in the last six months.

[00:23:30] Vanessa Vakharia: I'm so sorry.

[00:23:31] Jo Boaler: Yeah, it's, it's really awful.

[00:23:34] Vanessa Vakharia: And I'm so sorry, over math education, like,

[00:23:37] Jo Boaler: Over, yeah.

[00:23:38] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, but you know what this shows okay, number one, it is now everyone who's listening right now's goal to stand up and take these other people, we've got you, okay, it's gonna happen. But what this actually goes to show, I'm, I'm not even articulating this properly cause I have so many thoughts, but it goes to show kind of what we were saying earlier, that there is something so gatekeepy and elitist about math and like my theory, I have no proof to this, but my theory is just like it has always been held up as the standard of intellegence.

[00:24:09] Jo Boaler: Yeah, that's part, definitely part of it. And it's really a golden ticket for people's lives. That's the other

[00:24:16] Vanessa Vakharia: Like moneywise?

[00:24:17] Jo Boaler: That, yeah, like it helps them get into colleges, it helps them, well, that's the biggest one. 

[00:24:24] Vanessa Vakharia: The biggest one.

[00:24:25] Jo Boaler: The, the college, it's like I call it, cultural capital. It's like a particular form of capital. It's very powerful capital. And so they don't care about history and they're not gonna go after art classes. They care about maths. 

[00:24:38] Vanessa Vakharia: They care about math. I often say, you know, everyone's always like, why math anxiety? Like why don't we have history anxiety? Like whatever. And I'm like, because deep down everyone, I like how you put it though, like cultural capital I think is probably the best synopsis, but it's like kids know, adults know, we all know deep down that math says something about you.

[00:24:58] Jo Boaler: Well, kids believe that. I try and challenge the idea that if you are good at maths it's some special intelligence, so if you're not good at maths, then you haven't got intelligence. And I'm always saying to people, Hey, like, look at poets. How do, oh, stand up comedians stand up in front of a mic and just say all these super funny things off the top of the head. How is that not harder than math? It absolutely is, and lots of other things. I, I could list many things I find harder than maths.

[00:25:29] Vanessa Vakharia: A hundred percent. And also it's so interesting because I always say this, I'm like, the reason I think math education or any, any human who has a role of like educating kids when it comes to math, why it's so important is the idea that you can't do math is often the first limiting belief a child will form ever. It's the first time they're taught like there's actually something on this planet that you were born that you can't do. And then it's like sets up scaffolding for a lifetime of limiting beliefs. And then we're in the 

[00:25:57] Jo Boaler: Right. And then, you know, we help them with that belief by making maths be totally impenetrable from a young age by teaching them things in ways that kids don't understand. And so, yeah, you're absolutely right. That starts a belief, it's their first limiting belief. 

[00:26:14] Vanessa Vakharia: It's their first one. 

[00:26:15] Jo Boaler: It probably goes all over the place. 

[00:26:16] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah. And then the next thing you know, a guy dumps you and you're like, well, maybe I'm just not meant to be monogamous. Like I can't 

[00:26:21] Jo Boaler: Right. Right.

[00:26:24] Vanessa Vakharia: So what do we do here? Like, I just am like There are so many pieces to the puzzle, but you're in such an incredible position where you are actually trying to rewrite statewide standards.

[00:26:34] Jo Boaler: Actually, we are not rewriting the standards in California. It's a framework which talks about how to teach, how to teach, how to group kids. Um, so it's got lots of ideas about teaching in more exciting ways. It is bringing in more data, and talks about uplifting data and teaching a course in data science. But California is not able to change the standards at the moment, that has to be voted on. And other states are changing the standards, which is great, they're modernizing something that really needs modernizing, but we weren't able to do that. And if the framework causes this much controversy and pushback, I can't even imagine what trying to change standards will do.

[00:27:17] Vanessa Vakharia: Can I ask like maybe such a trite question, but can we do anything to support you? Like is there a, what can we do?

[00:27:24] Jo Boaler: You know, there are some awful articles coming out and there's one that I know is coming out because a journalist is trying to, she's basically funneling the views of these men who say I don't use data well, and she's writing an article about it, and I'm very unhappy about that. So when that comes out, we should all contact the Chronicle of Higher Education and tell them what we think of it.

[00:27:50] Vanessa Vakharia: Cannot wait. And honestly, we just need someone to make a good TikTok. Like TikTok holds way more weight than

[00:27:55] Jo Boaler: You're right,

[00:27:56] Vanessa Vakharia: this paper, I'm sorry. 

[00:27:57] Jo Boaler: I do think like, why is it that somebody is working to try and discredit me, why isn't a journalist looking at what is going on here? Who is trying to stop this framework, and why are they trying to stop it? Look at these people who are trying to stop it. They're all people who are very successful in math and most of the people who are actively trying to suppress me have their own products in direct instruction and time testing. So they just hate, hate my messages. And so somebody should be looking into that. Stop trying to discredit me and look at who these people are who are trying to stop change because that is a story.

[00:28:44] Vanessa Vakharia: That is a juicy story. That is a Netflix documentary. And, and this is making me think now too. I'm like, do we, so like we're talking about one journalist, we're talking about a group of people. Do you feel like you have a community of people that are doing the same work as you are doing? Are they being taken down in the same way?

[00:29:01] Jo Boaler: No, they're definitely, I mean, every mathematics educator I know in universities across the US and Canada and everywhere I know, they all are in agreement that we need these changes. It is not controversial. There is just a huge amount of research behind it. They pick on me for a couple of reasons. One is, I have this website, Youcubed, that millions of people come to, and books, and they see me influencing teachers. So a lot of academics are doing the same work, but they're a little bit more under the radar. 

And then the other reason they come after me is I have actual research that shows when we use these approaches, more students are successful. Now there's been other research that confirms that. But again, well, and what's really triggered them and kicked them off again in the last couple of years is not only am I this person who stands up for equity in maths and tries to make maths a different experience, but now I'm writing a framework. So that's really upset them. 

These things have all come together to mean that I am in the, crosshairs of their rifles right now.

[00:30:15] Vanessa Vakharia: I feel like again, I've mentioned a million times how into celebrity gossip I am, but like this is something celebrities deal with all the time, right? Once you're in the public eye and doing all these good things, like there are inevitably going to be haters, there's going to be this 

[00:30:27] Jo Boaler: Yeah, that's right. 

[00:30:28] Vanessa Vakharia: Not that that makes it any easier or any more acceptable, but you know how Lady Gaga has her Little Monsters, like that's her, like every, I do feel like I'm 12 right now, but I feel like, I feel like we need you to have like your groupie, like do they have a name? 

[00:30:45] Jo Boaler: Well, we have Youcubeians. They call themselves Youcubeians. 

[00:30:48] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. This is very cool.

[00:30:49] Jo Boaler: But then, there's the Boalevers

[00:30:52] Vanessa Vakharia: Stop. That's the one. That's the one. We're Canadian. Okay, so we have the Beliebers. I'm dead. 

[00:30:59] Jo Boaler: So 

[00:30:59] Vanessa Vakharia: We're getting shirts. Okay. How do you spell that? Be? Yeah. Okay. 

[00:31:03] Jo Boaler: So, so it's Boaler, like B O A L E, but with a V E R S on the end. Somebody turned up at a training I was giving, I think in New Mexico with those t-shirts on, saying I'm a Boalever. It's so great.

[00:31:16] Vanessa Vakharia: I am dead. I am a million percent making a cute crop. This is actually, for when this episode comes out. Okay, well no, but that's what we need. We need like a crew that is more powerful than these annoying people.

[00:31:28] Jo Boaler: And actually, you know these people who are trying to bring me down, they're 15 people, maybe 20, I don't know. And the people who know we need this change and support it are literally hundreds of thousands. But they don't know what's going on and they, these other people are working away every day to try and bring me down and use all of their money.

Other things they do is they sue school districts when they don't do what they want them to. They have a lot of money to devote to their campaigns. So, it's crazy because there's so few of them yet they're making things really difficult for people.

[00:32:09] Vanessa Vakharia: But this is how it always is with gatekeepers. It's like the clout, it's the power, it's the money, It's like, I mean, we've seen this in so many social movements. Like we can, you know, we just do what we do on the grassroots and, I feel like they're not on TikTok and I'm sorry, but we just know that that has the most social capital of all. We just need

[00:32:25] Jo Boaler: Yeah. No, I've been wondering. Maybe I need to start a TikTok account. 

[00:32:28] Vanessa Vakharia: A million percent. You need to start a TikTok.

[00:32:30] Jo Boaler: Maybe you can, you can help me with that.

[00:32:32] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God. It would be my absolute pride and joy. Okay. 

We got, we have, we actually do have to move on and wrap up, but I'm very excited about this new t-shirt idea. Like, imagine a fan actually like gets a tattoo. I'm not gonna be the one to do it. Don't worry. I'm not like that level, but like, Okay, now I'm freaking you out a bit. All right, let's go to the last, my last thing I wanted to say actually. 

How to inspire belief in students

[00:32:56] Vanessa Vakharia: One of the things, I actually think this is so hard to believe, speaking of believers um, is that you say that you really believe that every student can reach, high level mathematics. And know that's a bit of a, like a nebulous. Okay, so, which is, do you watch Ted lasso.

[00:33:13] Jo Boaler: Yes, I love!

[00:33:14] Vanessa Vakharia: Right. So it's like, you know how he is always just like, believe, believe, but so I think that's actually a hard thing for people to grasp. Like imagine I'm teaching a grade nine classroom, I have who's at a grade four math level, how do I embody that as a teacher and how do I, like, how do I push that forward?

[00:33:31] Jo Boaler: Well, certainly we've had kids in ninth grade at a fourth grade level who have gone on a totally different journey and come up and done amazing things. And one thing I like to do is share evidence that people have done that. One of the ones I share in the book, actually, in Limitless Mind, is called, he was called Nicholas Letchford, and in primary school he was so what they called severely disabled, they said he had a very low IQ and that he was the worst child they'd seen at the school for 20 years.

I know, just horrible things to say to parents. Anyway, really severely, like lots of learning disabilities, couldn't read, write, function in so many ways. He graduated a couple of years ago from Oxford University, which is in the UK, if you haven't heard of that one. Um, with a doctorate in Applied Mathematics. So, okay, that is the highest you can get to, there's nothing higher than that. And he was so far behind everybody, but his parents wouldn't give up on him, his mother's written a book about it. And they just kept going, they refused to accept these labels that people were putting on him. So yeah, I like to share with teachers stories of people. 

And I share them with kids too. When we ran a summer camp a few years ago, I showed them one of the kids who had half their brain removed, and now have gone on to do a master's degree and, uh, great professionals. And the kids were really struck by that. They were saying, if that girl with half a brain can do it, I know I can do it.

So we have to keep sharing with people, it doesn't matter where you are now. You've had different experiences and that's why you are in a different place. But that can change. And of course it changes with changing beliefs. The belief of the learner and the teacher need to be in line.

[00:35:34] Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, I find that evidence, like I failed grade 11 math twice before moving on and getting a 98 in grade 12 math, everyone, um, that's not the point. The point is even just telling that one anecdote, 

[00:35:47] Jo Boaler: That's fantastic. Yeah.

[00:35:48] Vanessa Vakharia: But I feel like it's almost like, for an educator, they feel like the whole weight of this is on them. Like you know, a parent's kind of like, well, how are you gonna get my kid up to speed? Like, what can we, that's not, that's not, doesn't seem fair. Right. If you're in a,

[00:36:00] Jo Boaler: Oh, so I have a new app. I'd love people to go look at it. It's called, and you know, I do a lot of work to try and encourage people to embrace struggle. So the app is called Struggly.

[00:36:12] Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, cute.

[00:36:13] Jo Boaler: dot com and it gives kids a different experience of maths and a lot of schools are now using it. Even in those situations where they're like remedial math for kids who aren't doing well, instead of all those speed calculation apps they're putting, they're giving them Struggly.

And kids are, one of the things I love about it, I mean, it's creative, beautiful maths, so that's important, but kids get badges for struggling and persisting and making mistakes. We celebrate mistakes. So whole different experience for kids. I mean, we, we try and get this experience out to kids in lots of ways through our website, Youcubed, through the books I've written, uh, through books for parents, the books for kids. But this app, I think will get it out in a, in a different way and to more people I think.

[00:37:04] Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and parents, like, you know, everyone's so overtaxed right? So it's nice for parents. The parents are always asking me like, what's an app? What's a website? So,

[00:37:11] Jo Boaler: Right! And parents are saying to me, we have like movie night every week where we have our favorite food and we watch a movie. And both of my kids in the last movie night said, can't we just stay on our Struggly app? So the kids are loving it, which is, really, and teachers also are having it in their classrooms and just saying, the kids don't wanna stop. That's what happens when you give kids a good maths experience.

[00:37:36] Vanessa Vakharia: I love. Also like, do you have merch because I'm imagining a little stuffy named Struggly and how cute that would be.

[00:37:42] Jo Boaler: That's right. Yeah. Not yet 

[00:37:44] Vanessa Vakharia: Merch line? 

[00:37:45] Jo Boaler: We're developing the merch, so, 

[00:37:47] Vanessa Vakharia: God. Okay.

[00:37:48] Jo Boaler: I will take this idea.

[00:37:48] Vanessa Vakharia: Please consult me. Okay. We, we have to move on to the final two questions we ask everyone, this has been the best 40 minutes of my life.

Q1

[00:37:55] Vanessa Vakharia: Okay. Final two questions. Number one, and I know you're gonna eyeroll, what is the one thing you'd like to see change about the way math is taught in schools? If you could just pick one thing.

[00:38:06] Jo Boaler: I would change the content that's taught.

[00:38:09] Vanessa Vakharia: Ooh, love. That's all you have to say.

[00:38:12] Jo Boaler: And there's lots of things I would change, but I'd start with that one.

[00:38:15] Vanessa Vakharia: Amazing. 

Q2

[00:38:15] Vanessa Vakharia: Number two, what do you say to someone who's like, but, Jo, I'm just not a math person.

[00:38:22] Jo Boaler: I shriek in horror and say "you can't say that!" And people say that all the time. And, I say to them, do you know that there's really no such thing as a maths person? That we have all this evidence now? Blind them with science.

[00:38:37] Vanessa Vakharia: Blind them with science. Okay. 

Outro

[00:38:39] Vanessa Vakharia: Tell us where we can find you. You've told us about Struggly, like where else can we find you.

[00:38:44] Jo Boaler: So youcubed.org, that's you and cubed dot org is the website that has lots and lots of resources on lots of free things. I have a free online class to change people's mindsets and beliefs, that is a little 15 minute class that people can take. And I dunno, I'm at Stanford, so you can always find, you can always email me at Stanford.

[00:39:10] Vanessa Vakharia: I've always wanted to visit Stanford. Maybe TikTok soon. Can't wait for that. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. All right. We are

[00:39:17] Jo Boaler: I'm also on Twitter and, and Instagram.

[00:39:21] Vanessa Vakharia: But what are your, what are your handles? You have to tell us.

[00:39:24] Jo Boaler: Instagram, Facebook, it's always Jo Boaler. The only one I'm missing really is TikTok

[00:39:30] Vanessa Vakharia: Well this, it's very obvious what has to happen. I can't wait to start the viral hashtag, I am a boalever. Stay tuned.

[00:39:36] Jo Boaler: Oh yeah.

[00:39:38] Vanessa Vakharia: And thank you so much. This has honestly been a highlight of my entire life. I'm not even saying that with hyperbole. 

[00:39:43] Jo Boaler: Yeah. This has been nice. This has been therapy for me.

[00:39:46] Vanessa Vakharia: Me too though. Okay, good. That's the point of the podcast, Math Therapy. 

[00:39:50] Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. 

[00:39:50] Vanessa Vakharia: It really is.

Well, wow. I mean, I actually expected this entire interview to be me gushing all over Jo and her being like, can you calm the F down? But it took a turn I didn't expect, I was absolutely shocked to hear that there was so much backlash in reaction to simply helping more people feel welcome in the world of math. Like what? 

On that note, Jo could use all of the support you have to offer. In fact, we all can when fighting oppressive systems that have been in power forever. Since the start of this podcast, we've been talking about the institutional barriers holding back math education from true reform. So I'm thankful to Jo for sharing her story, because this shows how those systems are upheld, and the personal toll it can take on those brave enough to try to change things.

But that's not gonna stop those of us who are determined to make everyone feel capable of math. So let's all remember to support one another, stick together and use our voices. Because as cheesy as it sounds, we really are stronger together, mathematically. That's a wrap for this season and I don't know how we're gonna top it, but I'm up for the challenge.

So if there's anyone you want to hear on the podcast or any topics you'd like me to dive deeper into, let me know. 

Episode outro

[00:41:03] Vanessa Vakharia: If something in this episode inspired you, please tweet us @maththerapy, and you can also follow me personally @themathguru on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. 

Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vakharia, it was created by me and Sabina Wex, and it's produced and edited by David Kochberg. Our theme music is by Goodnight Sunrise.

And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or just needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please, please, please share this podcast, and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use. Those things actually make such a big difference for us. I'm determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help, so spread the word. Until next time, peace, love, and pi.

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