Math

[sev]

I'm once again very grateful that I had only women teaching me math from fifth grade all the way through the end of high school.

Before all that, there was the male fourth grade teacher who did nothing when I was failing to learn long division. And after all that, there was the male calculus teacher my first year of college, who thoroughly killed my interest in taking any more math classes, despite a lingering interest in math. I got enough math under my belt for my science degree, though. And for that I can thank my teachers Ms. Jaramillo, Ms. Delman, Ms. Williams, Ms. Tom, Ms. Tello, and Ms. Benton.

Thank you for never, ever making me question whether or not I could.

(This post happened because I was reading a comments-thread over at Shapely Prose, on a post that happens to be about math, science, and/or statistics (depending on which way you cut it). And, as is so often the case, what ensued was a whole bunch of women posting their stories about the awful ways they were denied an education in math because of a teacher's assumption that "girls can't do math.")

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

My high-school physics teacher regularly bemoaned the day "they" started letting girls take physics.

[firecat]

I want to go to that comment thread but I am still so mad about my high school calculus teacher that I'd probably have a reaction stronger than I want to deal with right now.

(Note that the one woman math teacher I had did a really lousy job of teaching me math, mainly because we hated each other. But at least it was personal and not because of my sex chromosomes.)

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

You know, it never occurred to me that a male math teacher could be the factor. But in 7th grade I was bored silly with yet another year of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals, and I made some dumb mistakes as a consequence, and so it was decided I wasn't smart enough to take algebra in eighth grade like the other smart kids.

Fortunately, my mom pitched a fit and I ended up being able to take it self-paced, but I still had to take two years of math in one year in order to take calculus my senior year. And yes, it's the first time I had a male math teacher.

[tigman.livejournal.com]

Wow, Ms. Tom. I'm suddenly having flashbacks to taking "Computer Programming" on a Apple IIe.

[afro-dyte.livejournal.com]

I remember "figuring out" algebra in the 5th grade (never being exposed to it before), but I never started taking alegbra until 7th fucking grade. Need I say that my 5th grade teacher was a White man and Confederate sympathizer?

In any case, I highly doubt my situation would've been the same if my 3rd grade teacher, a Black woman, had seem me work out variables to an equation on the chalkboard without having a fucking idea what that meant.

But nigrahs is dumb and grlz can't do teh maths!

[afro-dyte.livejournal.com]

BTW, there's a post on my LJ about this ().