"How it works..."

I'm taking part in a new blogger initiation. Some really great people (<--list of names at bottom) are putting it on for 140+ people. Are they not awesome?!

Anyway, each week for a month they send us newbies some prompts we can use to write a post. Here's what I picked for this week:

5) Here’s a comic. Respond.:  http://xkcd.com/385/

"How It Works"

How could I resist this?!* I have a classroom of girls who don't suck at math.

How could I resist asking THEM to respond?!


Here're some highlights:

"Just because one girl does something wrong doesn't make all girls bad at math. Some girls are better at math than men. This is inaccurate because boys think they are better at everything and that makes boys stupid." 


"If the teacher is on the left and a student is on the right, this is unfair to both children, whether the kid was a male or female. :p"

"One person could be bad at something, but that doesn't mean that everyone like them is bad at it. Boys often think that they are better at EVERYTHING, but in reality, they're not."


"I AM A GIRL IN CALCULUS!!!!!!!"


"I'm so mad. That was so sexist we are all wonderful at math and we are females. Look at us, we are all in calculus class. This is unacceptable. >:0"


"This comic shows how people generalize about all women or girls instead of treating each one as an individual, in this case about their abilities in math. When the boy was wrong, it was just about him, not men in general.
Ignorant people!"


And my favorite response...

*My response: It's a centuries-old attitude... 

"She proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something worthwhile in the most rigorous and abstract of the sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree." - Carl Friedrich Gauss, about Sophie Germain [Emphasis mine]

Someday, we'll grow out of it. Norms change, but not overnight.

Also? This.