Sorry, I missed this.
I have to agree with most of what you say. I went to ETHS, Evanston Township HS. ETHS was in the top high schools in the country scholastically even compared to private schools. In spite of that, it was never cool to be on the math team or chess team (I know I was in both).
American culture is driven by Hollywood. Or is Hollywood a reflection of what we are? I don't even know anymore. You cannot instill in a child what is cool or what is not. It is the nature vs nurture thing again.
The only way to make these things "cool" for kids is to talk to them about it in an interesting way. I play the following game with my daughter. It is called "Race to 20." You start at zero, and you then take turns adding either 1 or 2 to the last number. So if you go first, you can say 1 or you can say 2. Say you say 1. Then the next player takes a turn and he can say either 2 or 3 and so on until the person that says 20 wins. The reason I played this game with her is to teach her the concepts of induction and working backwards. I showed her that if you say 17, you cannot lose, because if the other person says 18 or 19, you can always name 20. So the goal is to name 17. But then, the same applies to 14. If you name 14, by the same argument that you used to name 17, you must win the game. This goes all the way down to the first number you must name to guarantee a win. This argument lies at the heart of mathematics.
I am now teaching her how to make markets in options, without her knowing it. She doesn't know that is what she is doing because we call the game PUCK (for Put, Underlying Call and Strike.) First I tell her the "rules" of the game,
U = C - P + K
C = U + P - K
P = C - U + K
otherwise known as Put-Call parity, the basis of all option trading (MMing). I tell her what the values of U and K is always. I then tell her what she did in the C, and she has to give me what she did in P, or vice versa, by using the "rules" above. We call this converting, which is what it is and it sets the stage for Reversal and Coversions, the heart and soul of all options trading.
She loooves playing these games. She has no idea she is learning some of the deepest concepts in mathematics and trading.
Quote from lolatency:
Nitro, it is not a raising children issue. In public school these days, there are special programs like "math for girls". Furthermore, the government structure really encourages girls and offers zero incentive for men.
Let me put it this way: In the 80s and early 90s, in school, it was "cool" for boys to compete and try to do math problems as fast as possible in class. By the time I hit high school, doing math was not cool. There was no competition. Competition was shunned, and girls took over. Girls don't give two shits about fighting to be the best. They want to be happy in a smurf village of no competition and everyone gets B+s in every class.
The more socialist school gets, the dumber guys get. Recall, even in Soviet Russia, they gave medals and much recognition to top performers and relied on in-school competition, not socialism. In the US, the socialism runs rampant and the men are becoming like those dejected monkeys you see in the zoo who have no interest in their caged life whatsoever.