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Most of the comments (so far) are focusing primarily on the details of the Harvey Mudd example instead of the much broader, more important theme of mathbabe's p
by cs702 15y ago
Most of the comments (so far) are focusing primarily on the details of the Harvey Mudd example instead of the much broader, more important theme of mathbabe's post: She wants educators to think seriously about the selection process for young nerds and how this process is currently biased so as to weed out girls. She believes we can do much better.
She speaks from personal experience. On a different post on her blog, she writes, "when I and two other girls (and, as it happens, no boys) in the 6th grade did well enough to go into a special, advanced 7th grade algebra class, my (female) teacher brought us up to the front of the room and told the three of us 'I don’t see why you would challenge yourselves like this anyway since you are girls, and you won’t be needing math when you grow up.' I was the only one of the three of us to actually choose that class, and I was the only girl in the algebra class."[1]
No wonder she thinks we can do much better!
[1] http://mathbabe.org/2012/02/06/women-in-math/ http://mathbabe.org/2012/02/06/women-in-math/
- pyre 15y agoI think that speaks more to the general attitudes towards life of the teacher. The general premise is, "why challenge yourself when you coast through without putting in the effort?" It's wrapped up in sexism (girls don't need math), but boiled down to its base form, that's what she's telling those kids.
- cs702 15y agoAgree -- that's a good way to summarize what that teacher told mathbabe and the other two girls. Regardless, of the three girls, only mathbabe persisted with math; the other two were unfairly weeded out. The question is, is this type of weeding-out pervasive? Mathbabe clearly believes the answer is yes, and we should we doing something about it.
- pyre 15y agoI agree that those two girls were unfairly weeded out of math, and we need to prevent that. My point was that that teacher either needs to take a different attitude towards life, or get weeded out of the system herself. Why? Because her attitude will get impressed not just on girls attempting to enter predominantly male spaces, but upon all students that she interacts with.
- melarobi 15y agoMathbabe nailed a couple of key points on what people use to steer toward a career... knowledge the career exists, and belief they would be good at it. Most youth view their options in life based on what they see in their immediate social sphere. Having parents as mathemetician lets you know it's possible and probably also contributes to the belief that you could be good at it. If we want more women programmers/mathemeticians/etc, we need to show female examples earlier on to let girls know it is possible and weed out the fools in the education system who espouse girl brains don't work as analytically as boy brains. I bet a lot of girls don't go to mathcamp not because they think it's "uncool" but because they either don't know it exists or don't think they would be good enough.