Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences

From: Jo Schaper (joschapern4ospam_at_2socketdot.no5net)
Date: 01/21/05 

Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:42:55 -0600

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

> In article <10uvoabjimevkac@corp.supernews.com>,
> Jo Schaper <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote:
<snip>
>
> Yup. Now think about quilters and tiling geometry.

I don't have to think about quilters. I *are* one... never saw my other
(quilting)grandma without a ruler, a piece of paper and a pencil. The
major calculation was whether or not the quilt frame would fit in the
living room and still allow people to move through it.
>
>>Maybe things went south when we dropped 'manual training' in favor of
>>computers and instant pre-prepared everything.
>
>
> Possibly. I don't think so. Things went south when people
> weren't taught to work. Look at kids these days. They're
> not allowed to play (which is the job of kids) without tons
> of constraints. I used to be able to tell if a person was
> a Democrat by learning if they ever had to work as kid :-).
> I found no exceptions back then; they never had to work.

Very similar to same thing. I had 19 year olds who apparently had never
been allowed in the kitchen except to use the microwave. Tried to use a
cooking analogy in explaining metamorphic rock, and just got blank
stares from half the class. Good thing this was at the 'rocks for jocks'
level, and only one or two were actually science majors. But maybe
that's part of the problem...Heck, even if you had to calculate how much
money to collect for your Girl Scout cookies, you found out what
arithmetic was for...

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