Slashdot Mirror
Winnie Wrote a Math Book
SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. 'Math Doesn't Suck' is done in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a 'refliprocal', because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."
I don't think one book, even if it looks like the rest of the teen girl trash rags, is going to overcome a decades of social pressure to avoid being seen as "nerdy." What we really need is to have high schools that don't go out of their way to reinforce the perception that going to state for ****ball is the pinnacle of achievement.
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
If it ain't 90% Greek then it isn't a math book.
Actually this is a good idea the problem is that today there are reports that boys are trailing girls academically. Part of the reason is if they make an All girls school or make programs that are designed to help girls they do so sometimes at the expense of the education of the boys. But if such programs or All boy public schools are made then there is a community cry. Boys and Girls think differently, they need to be taught differently.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...that a book aimed at increasing numeracy has horoscopes? What next? Feng Shui in geography texts?
You're looking at this backward. Girls are told they're supposed to aspire to beauty above all else. The idea here is to show them that you can have that without giving up intelligence.
A single voice isn't going to tell girls that they shouldn't want to be pretty. One well-spoken voice might convince a few that they can be pretty and smart.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Hard and doesn't suck are two different things. Unless you are talking about basic math, it generally is hard. The only class I ever dropped at Uni was a math class.* I thought I was failing but the teacher was actually grading on a curve. She said I was one of the top students. Key word being 'She'. In fact almost all of my math teachers have been women.
It's almost degrading to women that people keep bringing this stuff up. Condescending might be the right word. Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
I get the same feeling everytime I see a story about how some person is the first X to do Y. I get an image of them being patted on the head and someone saying, 'Gee, you're a hero to X people every where, it only took all of recorded history for you Xers to get off your fat lazy assess and do Y, but golly, you finally did, great job. Now go find some other dubious achievement you Xers haven't got around too yet and be the first in that too.'.
Still, Winnie was hot and I always knew she had brains.
---
*I didn't need the credit and wanted to keep my grade point at the honors level. CS was put in with the Natural Sciences like interior decorating, who all seemed to graduate Summa Cum Laude, which blew out the GPA for everyone else.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Myself, I wouldn't say that being feminine in this highly traditional sense is an innately bad thing, but that other role options should be presented and accepted by people at a young age so they can decide for themselves how to identify.
I don't know. It seems her target audience is the teen girl who'd be into magazines about makeup and boys. I think she's trying to show these girls that they can be into makeup and boys and still be good at math. I think she's blurring the roles by adding a component that is normally kept out those roles.
Clearly the book is not for everyone but I like the nontraditional approach.
There's nothing wrong with being a home maker. Kids are enough work that they can keep two parents busy. The problem with early feminism is that they treated women badly who wanted to raise their own children.
If cooking dinner makes you inferior that's issues that are in your head and have no real bearing on reality. Look at all the famous chefs, nobody thinks they are inferior for cooking!
On the other hand I think if I were to have kids, I would want them to be raised by a mother who is educated and knowledgeable. It can be extremely beneficial to introduce children to science at an early age, they seem to really take to it if presented properly. And we all know that public school alone just does not cut it for giving a kid the education they need to succeed. Parents that have the ability and will to home tutor their kids in addition to going to school are going to have kids who have a competitive edge when it comes time to enroll in college or get a job.
Also staying home does not mean you need to be stupid, just like having a paying job doesn't make you intelligent.
The Economist had an interesting article on women in the work place, and that companies are learning that women's careers tend to be non-linear, and that this non-linearity can be a barrier to upper management. And the ability for many of us to telecommute 1 or more days a week is having a dramatic impact on improving the wage inequality between men and women, because it is keeps women from having to choose between career and family.
Things are moving in a positive direction, but that said, books that encourage young girls to be interested in math, science, and technology are beneficial because as we move to a society where it is possible for both parents to work. We will find that it may become impossible for most single income families to live at an income level they are comfortable with. Women may have no choice but to join the work force and establish long term careers in addition to having a family. That's the dark side of all this progress and equality.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's almost degrading to women that people keep bringing this stuff up. Condescending might be the right word. Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
In Engineering at a university down the road from Harvard, my only female engineering/math/physics teacher was for Statics. She was also one of the early lead engineers for the Big Dig (a marvel of engineering, despite its flaws).
The thing with Colin Powell is that you expect either rambling bluster a la most politicians (he's more of a statesman though), or a James Earl Jones bass voice. Instead, he has this nice tenor voice delivering complete sentences. It's a rarity in the human race, especially with government and military figures, to have a voice and demeanor that gives the appearance of thoughtfulness. It's why people would vote for him if he ran for public office.
lets create a dumbed down, silly math book with purposely misspelled words just so we can appeal to little girls.
How insulting to girls.
Lets make a similar math book for all the boys who aren't interested in math. It should feature GI Joe's using math to kill each other, aliens, and anything gross or violent. For the older boys lets throw in some soft core porn to get their eyes on the page (males are after all more visual, right?).
Come on! This is rediculous. While I applaud her good intentions, I have to wonder why such a thing was not necessary for girls like her to be interested in math? I am all for making learning fun, and math books are about as dull and boring as it gets, but I see no reason why it has to be dumbed down and made gender specific.
My 9 year old girl is great at math, without this.
There are better ways to get kids to learn. Or, rather, to not turn them off to learning, since they start off wanting to learn and then we destroy that desire later on.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
But maybe this book can show them that by knowing math and being well-educated can make you a *BETTER* homemaker. I try to get this concept across in my freshman college algebra course I teach.
-Doing taxes
-Understanding mortgages (not getting screwed by a baloon payment ARM)
-Not getting ripped off by sales prices and percentages
-Budgets (again, percentages and ratios)
-Understanding the world and the media (statistics)
-Etc
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Who is the target audience for this book? Kids who are already into math will be embarrassed/disgusted with the teen mag layout, and kids who aren't won't read a math book even if their parents buy it for them and say "look, this actress you may have seen on Nick at Nite wrote a math book!" I think just about anyone would wince at the "breaking a nail" cliche in the title, although I suspect Ms. McKellar's not to blame.
Many of these kinds of efforts look like they were produced by someone who is more concerned with being on record with supporting women going into science and math than actually having a real effect. That's why we end up with textbooks crammed with mini-biographies of Sophie Germain and Ada Lovelace that nobody will actually read and that anyone with enough brainpower to do basic algebra will recognize as tacit admissions that a woman mathematician is an odd duck indeed.
McKellar looks like her heart is in the right place - she's presumably wealthy and is a professional actress, and yet she still devoted serious time and energy to studying math. Presumably she wants others to share her enthusiasm for an interesting and potentially lucrative field of endeavor. But I very much doubt that she was "turned on" to math by a book like this. I imagine that her supportive family and the confidence boost that came from being a TV star helped overcome the anti-math stigma.
Of course, as much as the stereotypical mathematician is not feminine, he's not particularly masculine either, not an effeminate man precisely, probably more of a modern-day eunuch. Certainly no young men go into mathematics to impress their peers, so I think a more important question would be why young women are more influenced by "peer pressure" than young men.
Is it low self-esteem? Women think they can't get ahead except by being "cheerleader" types? Or high self-esteem? Women think they *can* become cheerleader types if they wear uncomfortable enough clothing and enough makeup, while nerdy guys figure they couldn't make the football team in a million years?
Wait, you mean this book is targeted at girls who read fashion magazines? So the context is predefined? Namely the context of talking to girls who like this sort of thing? Oh...well I guess we should just assume shes being condescending, or ignorant, instead of realizing that she is a girlie girl hottie with a frigginErds-Bacon number who might have some personal experience and investment in getting more girls like her to become feminine intellectuals!
This book doesn't make the assumption that it emancipates anyone. It tries to use a damn effective vehicle for communicating material that is often not desirable to consume. If you think I'm wrong, how do you explain the high number of women who purchase fashion magazines who at the same time blame the media for the false image they have to live up to. Thats a magic trick in and of itself, getting people to pay to hate themselves, to be fed tailored insecurities.
Maybe Danica McKellar put some of her UCLA brains to work and found a vehicle that she could co opt to educate and empower these girls.
You know, you may not like it, but there is a class of women out there who are effectively super women. Beautiful, intellectual, empowered, employed in high paying and influential positions, and raising kids. Its just that most MEN, and I use that term referring to genetic makeup, can't handle the realities of being with them. Their pathetic mirror to female insecurity creates this never ending fountain of emasculated feelings. Or, even worse, the hubris laden egos of most technically proficient males can't cope with the fact that their mate can equal, or best them, in an aspect he uses to define himself in.
Thats why you people come up with terms like this:]
Myself, I wouldn't say that being feminine in this highly traditional sense is an innately bad thing, but that other role options should be presented and accepted by people at a young age so they can decide for themselves how to identify.
You NEED to feel at some point in a female's life cycle that they are vulnerable for no other reason than they are female. That a female couldn't possible see the forest for the trees and separate content from context. The worst part is, your closet superiority complex is what is giving you the biggest problem relating to people.
The reality of the matter is its called Marketing 101. Get someone to PURCHASE the book for their daughter, thinking its a good idea. I don't know about you, but many young people don't go out and purchase any raw math text books when they weren't required or directed to. I think someone with a Degree in Mathematics from UCLA could figure this out and perhaps work around it.
Just a thought. Or you can continue on with the asinine idea that every demographic variant needs to be presented with every option represented in every light for every possible socio-economic combination of factors in order to validate itself.
It's a funny post, but it also illustrates one of the core problems with recruiting girls into math and engineering: a lot of them aren't interested. My sisters don't care about getting into a really intensive job because they know that they're going to get married and become homemakers. It's not that there's a problem if they do differently, it's that they've chosen that path to happiness. How many girls like my sisters are skewing the results of math/engineering studies?
I just had an urge to rewrite this from the other perspective:
It's a funny post, but it also illustrates one of the core problems with recruiting boys into math and engineering: a lot of them aren't interested. My brothers don't care about getting into a really intensive job because they know they're going to get married and become homemakers. It's not that there's a problem if they do differently, it's just that they've chosen that path to happiness. How many boys like my brothers are skewing the results of math/engineering studies?
(If you're too culturally ingrained to picture a man as a homemaker, you can insert "permanent English grad student" in the above paragraph.)
Maybe your sisters aren't interested because they never thought it was cool to be? See, that's kind of what the book is trying to address. There are a number of people who believe that more women would be interested in math and science if they encountered more books like Danica McKellar's and fewer books like The Rules or some of the schlock I've had sent to me by relatives of friends. (Seriously, it takes a lot of nerve to send your 20-year-old nephew a book to give to his female friends which directs them that the only true Christian woman is the wife who unquestioningly follows her husband's orders and stays at home and realizes that when he isn't speaking to her, it's her fault. That was an eye-opening book for me. I felt for that woman's daughters, who had absolutely no interest in math and science or anthing aside from finding a husband. It might possibly have been related to their upbringing.)
And there are a lot of men who aren't interested in math or science either when you ask it like that, but if it has to do with something they do, it's more interesting.
And that's why I really don't like the way feminism is going. It's incredibly frustrating to have my peers think less of me when they find out that I don't actually want to have a career; I want to have some sort of part-time job to help out financially and mainly take care of the house and kids. Just because I can be a highly successful something-or-other and make lots of money and spend all of my time in some office doing the same basic thing for years and years doesn't mean I want to. I'd rather be poorer and happier.
*scratches head*
Odd. I've worked with women in my tech field for 22 years. I treat them with respect and have never had any trouble. Nobody in my area has any trouble with the women, except for one blatherskite who was fond of discussing their secondary sexual characteristics. He crashed and burned.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The best math always is. It's hard, gives you a headache, you lose sleep trying to figure it out. But once you do you are astonished at how elegant it is and how it all fits together so beautifully. And it doesn't matter in the slightest what anatomy you have between your legs, or what your 23rd chromosome pair looks like.
I object to the word "mathematics" being debased to elementary-school arithmetic. But that's another matter.
...laura
Which bothers me just as much, honestly. I know a guy who would love nothing more than to find a nice career-woman to marry and raise a family for. It's all so depressingly hypocritical. Women are supposed to be allowed to have whatever career they want and be able to support themselves and be independent, but men aren't supposed to be allowed to take care of the home and family and be dependent on all these women who'd rather not spend their time raising children.
Some women are obnoxious. Some men are obnoxious. Asshole behavior is not bound by gender.
The two female developers I work with periodically are quite competent, and neither has told me their life story.