Linda Gojak, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, told me that she wasn't aware of many situations outside of the classroom where a "competitive, timed environment" was used for math.

"Too often the focus is on getting the right answer and getting it quickly—the process and thinking used to get an answer is just as important," says Gojak, director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education, Teaching and Technology at Ohio's John Carroll University. "How often do you need to solve the exact same problem twice? The ability to adapt the reasoning used to solve one problem to a new situation is a key characteristic of students who are proficient in mathematics."

While the Utah study still needs to be replicated, it does pose some interesting questions for educators to consider—particularly those who are busy looking to explain and respond to differences in the ways boys and girls perform in school. But it's also important not to generalize about either group, said Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist and the author of the book "Pink Brain, Blue Brain," in which she builds a case that gender differences in children are influenced heavily by social factors and that it's shortsighted and potentially harmful to attribute them to biological hard-wiring.

"There's a lot of individual difference in competitiveness among boys and girls; it's not an absolute gender difference," Eliot told me. "It's yet another dimension that teachers need to be sensitive to. As far as competition as a motivator, I don't think we should cut it out of the classroom entirely."

The challenge for teachers, Eliot said, is to offer multiple opportunities and venues for students both to test their skills and have opportunities to excel, balancing the competitive with the collaborative. "Both of these are key skills for later in life," Eliot said. "You have to compete to get the job, but later you have to be able to collaborate with your co-workers."

Economist Joseph Price shared a similar sentiment, saying he hoped his study would encourage educators to see competition "as one of a large set of tools used to encourage student effort." He's in the middle of expanding his study to more than 30 elementary, middle and high schools in Utah. In the meantime, he's hopeful that teachers will let go of the notion that competition in and of itself is a deterrent to girls' learning. "Any concern (teachers) might have that competition will put girls at a disadvantage, that concern should be short-lived," Price told me. "Once girls acclimate to these situations they should do very well."

It's tough for me to judge the effectiveness of those high-speed, high-pressure math drills back in elementary school. But I do have to wonder how my performance, and the performance of other learners like me, might have been different if my teacher had put down the stopwatch—or at the very least, dropped that dreaded whistle.

This post also appears at The Educated Reporter, an Atlantic partner site.