[Edu-sig] A Womens Perspective

[Arthur]

Paragraph One, of Lisa Randall's recent book "Warped Passages"

http://www.warpedpassages.com/

"""
When I was a young girl, I loved the play and intellectual games in math 
problems or in books like Alice in Wonderland.  But although reading was 
one of my favorite activities, books about science usually seemed more 
remote and less inviting to me - I never felt sufficiently engaged or 
challenged,  the tone often seemed condescending to readers, overly 
worshipful of scientists, or boring.
"""

It seems to me that enough issues that have been touched upon here are 
embedded in this simple paragraph, that it is worth citing here.

Women, math, women and , reading, condescension as anti-motivational, 
worshipful as anti-motivational.

Certainly Lisa Randall is not Joe Average.

It is also true that in my discourse with educators - about programming 
and such - -  my views are often quickly discounted on the grounds that 
I am not representative - presumably smarter than - their students.

And I always picture myself sitting in back of their class looking 
distracted, disinterested, and not very smart at all.

Which, in fact, is generally where I could be found, and the pose in 
which I could be found. But I was there, in that pose, perhaps precisely 
because I was correctly understanding the atmosphere. In fact, being smart.

Art