eee, Winnie!
So everybody remembers Danica McKellar as one of the authors of the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem, right? Oh -- from The Wonder Years? Okay, then!
Either way, my second-favorite REAL LIFE physicist (I admit I have the world's biggest crush on Neil DeGrasse Tyson) is launching a book and website to convince middle-school aged girls that, yea verily, Math Doesn't Suck. Words cannot express how much I want to hug her for this.
The moral bankruptcy of the bizarre, insular universe we've abandoned teenage girls into in this culture worries the shit out of me. I think it particularly freaks me out because I was sort of interestingly sheltered as a teenager -- I went to nationally-ranked public schools in a university town that's famous for its ferocious protectiveness of education, and all the popular girls in my school were in my honors classes -- and were mostly type-A chicks and highly competitive about their grades. Apparently that's pretty rare, in the grand scheme of things. But it does give me hope, because it's more proof to me that teenagers aren't crazy, unmanageable beasts, but do tend to do the things they think they're *expected* to do. I mean, yes, sure, teenage rebellion -- but at the same time, in a healthy environment, teenagers are trying to figure out how to get validated, how to be looked at as real and important and somebody. They learn how to do that from the adult-run world around them, so yeah, my thing has always been, why isn't the adult-run world INNUNDATING girls with the message that women are real and important because of what they do, what they can create and produce and perform?
Oh, right -- because for "adult-run" read "adult-male-run," and assume that the ultimate subconscious goal isn't to raise real and important women, but to supply men with a giant captive herd of obedient young women whose first emotional priority is being visually pleasing and sexually available to men. What the hell good are they if they're spending all their time doing *math,* for Christ's sake?
Well, anyway. For whatever weird reason, we always believe things that are in print or on television more than we believe what actual people say to us, so I think this book is a good thing, the next step past good parenting (which you can hope for but never really count on) and good teaching (which I'm all for, but with the teacher shortages going on all over the country, too often schools have no choice but to take what they can get). More girl-targeted media that doesn't insult my values and stunt girls' intellectual development? Hell, yeah.
Either way, my second-favorite REAL LIFE physicist (I admit I have the world's biggest crush on Neil DeGrasse Tyson) is launching a book and website to convince middle-school aged girls that, yea verily, Math Doesn't Suck. Words cannot express how much I want to hug her for this.
The moral bankruptcy of the bizarre, insular universe we've abandoned teenage girls into in this culture worries the shit out of me. I think it particularly freaks me out because I was sort of interestingly sheltered as a teenager -- I went to nationally-ranked public schools in a university town that's famous for its ferocious protectiveness of education, and all the popular girls in my school were in my honors classes -- and were mostly type-A chicks and highly competitive about their grades. Apparently that's pretty rare, in the grand scheme of things. But it does give me hope, because it's more proof to me that teenagers aren't crazy, unmanageable beasts, but do tend to do the things they think they're *expected* to do. I mean, yes, sure, teenage rebellion -- but at the same time, in a healthy environment, teenagers are trying to figure out how to get validated, how to be looked at as real and important and somebody. They learn how to do that from the adult-run world around them, so yeah, my thing has always been, why isn't the adult-run world INNUNDATING girls with the message that women are real and important because of what they do, what they can create and produce and perform?
Oh, right -- because for "adult-run" read "adult-male-run," and assume that the ultimate subconscious goal isn't to raise real and important women, but to supply men with a giant captive herd of obedient young women whose first emotional priority is being visually pleasing and sexually available to men. What the hell good are they if they're spending all their time doing *math,* for Christ's sake?
Well, anyway. For whatever weird reason, we always believe things that are in print or on television more than we believe what actual people say to us, so I think this book is a good thing, the next step past good parenting (which you can hope for but never really count on) and good teaching (which I'm all for, but with the teacher shortages going on all over the country, too often schools have no choice but to take what they can get). More girl-targeted media that doesn't insult my values and stunt girls' intellectual development? Hell, yeah.