If you listen to nursery rhymes and old wives’ tales, girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice,” and, oh, boys are better at math.

Or are they?

According to a new study released by the University of Chicago, girls’ anxiety about math may stem from the women who are their earliest teachers.

While women are gaining in math achievement, they still trail men, and the question of why has sparked controversy. The new research, which studied first- and second-graders, pointed out that female elementary school teachers who are nervous about their own math capabilities may be projecting this image to their female students.

Sian L. Beilock, associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, along with her colleagues, studied 52 boys and 65 girls enrolled in classes taught by 17 different women.

Ninety percent of all U.S. elementary school teachers are women, as were all of the teachers included in the study.

While student math ability wasn’t related to teacher math anxiety at the beginning of the school year, the researchers reported that by the end of the year, the more anxious teachers were about their own math skills, the more likely their female students – but not the boys – were to agree that “boys are good at math and girls are good at reading.”

Longtime Tahlequah educator Isabel Baker said she learned a thing or two during her early years of teaching math.

“I hope, as an elementary teacher, that I was a good math teacher of boys and girls,” said Baker.

“However, I will admit that I learned more than they did the first year or two of my teaching math.”

Baker confessed she worked twice as hard during that time since she “wasn’t as good in math as the other subjects.”

“Teachers are so much smarter and better-trained now that I was when I started teaching,” said Baker.

“I’m sure they are doing everything possible to break the stereotype that girls aren’t as good as boys in math.”

Beilock, who studies how anxiety and stress affect performance, noted other research indicated elementary education majors at the college level have the highest levels of math anxiety, which prompted the study.

After seeing the results, researchers recommended that the math requirements for obtaining an elementary education teaching degree be rethought.

“If the next generation of teachers – especially elementary school teachers – is going to teach their students effectively, more care needs to be taken to develop both strong math skills and positive math attitudes in these educators,” wrote the researchers.

Local resident Lori Jumper will tell you straight out that she “sucks at math.”

“But I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that I’m a girl,” she said.

“I have three daughters, and they don’t do well at math, either. Well, at least geometry.”

After learning about the research findings, and giving it more thought, Jumper said she’s probably better at math than she gives herself credit for.

“I mean, I can figure percentages in my head, and things like that, so maybe I did learn somewhere just to think I wasn’t good at it,” she said.

Baker said she believes there’s another issue involved when it comes to female math performance. “Some girls don’t like to speak up and give answers, for fear of boys and others thinking they think they are smarter than they are,” said Baker.

“Many years ago as a student myself, I didn’t want my classmates to think I was smart. I will never forget my mother’s words when she thought I was getting too big for my britches: ‘Izzy, it is really nice to be smart, little lady, but it is a whole lot smarter to be nice.’”