> ---------- > From: Bill Stewart[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 2:52 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Ethnomathematics > > At 05:41 PM 02/24/2003 -0800, Tim May wrote: > >Seriously, this flap is old news. I remember about a dozen years ago > >when some feminista professor was teaching "female-oriented physics." > >Actually, she was _advocating_ the teaching of female-oriented physics. > > Was she an actual physics professor, talking about her own field, > or some sort of literature/philosophy/sociology/politics professor? > The latter type are definitely old news, but as long as they spend their > time > trying to convince female physics and mathematics professors to > think about new ways to structure or teach their curriculum, that's fine. > > It's when they start dissing physics and math as "hostile to women" > and thereby discouraging young women from going into the field > that they really cause problems (as opposed to old boring sexist white > male > professors > discouraging women from going into the field, which was the old problem.) > > Actually doing a female-oriented physics or teaching curriculum is fine, > if somebody can do a good job of it. After all, most of these fields > consist of real mathematics, exposure to real materials and their > behaviour, > sets of metaphors for understanding how the math and behaviour are > related, > and various levels of abstraction and concrete examples to interest > students. > > The math is the math, and the materials either will or won't cooperate, > but if feminist approaches can provide a set of metaphors or abstractions > that help students (or at least female-culture-oriented students) > understand how the math relates to the real world, then great! > And if they can find a set of examples or problems that are less > male-oriented than > guns, rocketships, pushing pool cues into objects of various hardness and > softness, or football > and if this helps female students be more interested in the problems, > or gives them examples that are more familiar to them, then great! > There's certainly no shortage of boring textbooks out there, > and if women who understand math and physics and communications can > overcome > Sturgeon's Law and the textbook publishers' mafia or teacher selection > committees, > then more power to them, and otherwise, well, the other 90% will be more > gender-balanced. > I don't know if this is what Tim was refering to, but it's of interest: http://www.physics.iastate.edu/per/docs/ref5.pdf
Shows how changing the examples used in physics exams changes the responses of male and female students. Peter
