From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Mattel Protest
Date: 7 Oct 92 03:56:03 GMT
Organization: University of Virginia

In article <1atigpINNsog@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> bafta@cats.ucsc.edu (Shari L Brooks) writes:
>
>In article <1992Oct5.165327.16115@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> 
>crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>
>>In article <BvnJnx.52y@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> 
>>dooley@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Kevin Dooley) writes:
>
>>>This is especially true with girls who are repeatedly told that
>>>they should not be good at math or science courses because their brains
>>>don't work that way.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Let's
>>>not permit marketing idiots to create yet another generation of math
>>>anxiety and women who believe that they are somehow inferior!
>
>>    Most kids who do badly in Math do so because it *is* hard, just
>>    as English is hard, Chemistry is hard, Social Studies is hard.
>>    Also, I hardly think that most girls are told that they should not
>>    be good at math.  If you want to change math anxiety,
>
>While I agree with the first statement (though I would have phrased it another 
>way) I must differ with the second.  Throughout high school I constantly had
>to put up with teachers giving me *shit* because I consistently outperformed
>the males in my math and science classes.  In one class I got a full grade
>lower than I deserved and when I asked why I was told, because I was a girl.
>[This was a math class, BTW]  In a biology class, I got the highest score in
>the class and my friend David had to be publicly humiliated by the teacher
>because he let a *girl* beat his score.  How could he do such a thing? -- the
>teacher asked him in class.

     Sorry your time in school was so rough because you were a girl.  However,
     my wife was also very good at math (as well as valedictorian), and she 
     informs me that she suffered no such discouragement and saw no such 
     discouragement leveled at the female salutatorian either.  
     Since I saw no such discrimination against girls who 
     happened to be good at math (or science) in my schools either, 
     my statement stands as written from the balance of our anecdotal 
     information.  Of the top three students in the senior class in
     my high school in my last two years, five out of six were 
     girls who excelled either in science or in math.  So from our sample
     it appears that seven out of eight girls who excel in math or science
     were not oppressed by the school system.  

     Surely, we should work to make sure that the eighth is not, 
     but picketing Barbie for making an accurate statement is probably not
     a marvelous first step.
     
>I also vaguely remember taking standardized tests on math & English skills,
>[California requires that these be administered every other year, or did when
>I was in school] and being told ahead of time that it was OK to do poorly
>on the math parts cuz girls usually didn't do as well as the boys.

     I suggest you contact the local school board with such outrageous
     behavior.  This is not the way to encourage the performance of
     either sex.

>So, I think that society does promulgate the stereotype, discouraging women
>to get involved in the sciences by both subtle and overt "math is not for
>you" messages to girls.
>    
>I don't think it's an organized plot or anything though...

     Sounds like an organized plot at the school you attended.  I suggest
     letters to the offending teachers if they still teach.  It might
     save such horrid behavior from the next girl who happens on them.

                            dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926