A few years ago, researchers from the University of Provence asked two groups of primary-school students to recreate from memory a fairly complicated geometric design. For one group, they called it a “geometry” exercise; for the other group, it was a “drawing” exercise. In the first group, the girls did less well than the boys. In the second, free of the terrifying shadow of maths—and working, therefore, without prior expectation of failure—the girls did better than the boys.
