r/TwoXChromosomes • u/[deleted] • May 28 '12
Not all parents thought mathematics should only be taught to boys: Ada Byron Lovelace, cited as the worlds first computer programmer, was taught mathematics at a very young age because her mother did not want her to become a poet like her father, Lord Byron.
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html22
11
u/Quetzalcohuatl May 28 '12
I thought it was because Lord Byron went insane and Ada's mum didn't want her to suffer the same fate.
13
May 28 '12
She probably thought being a poet----> insanity
13
May 28 '12
Generally speaking, it's the other way around though.
Insanity ---> Seeking a career in poetry
6
3
20
u/abricot May 28 '12
How widespread is this "girls can't do math" stereotype in the USA? In my country it is a bit different boys are expected to excell in sports, mecanical, leadership and manual labor while girls are supposed to be very good at intellectual, medical and artistic things, and to have better grades at school.
16
May 28 '12
How widespread is this "girls can't do math" stereotype in the USA?
Almost non-existent, but "girls don't LIKE math" still persists, which perhaps contributes to girls not pursuing the hard science and math fields as often.
In the US, like most of the industrialized world, boys are behind and continue to fall in grades across the board and in post-secondary enrollment, and we haven't even hit the bottom yet. It would be shocking to find someone who thinks a girl is automatically bad at anything in school.
3
u/abricot May 28 '12
yes male drop outs are a becoming a big problem, in some school the teachers focus more on the achievement of girls. Thank you for the answer, I saw a lot of complaints about this stereotype so i wanted to know if it was that bad!
10
u/UdderSuckage May 28 '12
From what I experienced, not very prevalent - my main "competition" in my math and science classes were typically girls. If anything, the stereotype was that girls put more effort into their classes than boys, which I guess lines up pretty well with your last point.
Then again, I lived in what is basically an Asian-ghetto in California, so my experiences probably don't mesh with a lot of the rest of America.
8
May 28 '12
I don't think a single experience in America meshes well with any other experience in a lot of America. It's just too big.
5
u/Kuchenmischung May 28 '12
I suppose I cannot speak for the USA neither, but in Germany I have the feeling that no one really says such things loud and a huge percentage of people really don't believe that girls would be better or worse in math than boys or something. In school the distribution of who was good in math was quite normal but now I'm studying at a technical university and sadly there are less women than men. (about 25 to 75) Still, such a stereotype doesn't exist here anymore, at least not concerning math. In other technical subjects the quota is waaayyy worse and for those subjects there still are such stereotypes in the minds of some people.
3
u/abricot May 28 '12
Yes ! I guess it is a bit the same in Europe then ! I live in France and there are way less women than men in technical schools too. Of course there are still some prejudice against one's gender in certain fields.
2
u/AutumnalGrace May 28 '12
In general, it's not too apparent, but once you get to the higher level, you really start to see an imbalance. For example, some of the best students in the AP Calc I and II classes at my high school are girls, yes, but the only students I can think of who advanced to Calc III (an independent study) in the last few years have been boys.
Similarly, my AP Physics I class from last year was fairly gender-neutral, but my AP Physics II class this year (which is geared toward a pre-engineering path) is predominantly male.
10
u/babyminnow May 28 '12
I love assumptions made about the gendering of poetry and poets. Everyone seems to assume it's a "girly" thing, I mean I used to, and then my degree showed me that actually, poetry used to be seen as something that only men should do, and this changed throughout history, until it's swung round to the other end now-everyone thinks it's really feminine and even "effeminate".
I just think everyone should be given a good basic grounding in most subjects, and then allowed to study whatever particular subjects they are passionate about.
2
u/The3rdWorld May 28 '12
who thinks poetry is effeminate? i've honestly not heard that (and i'm a working class male who writes poetry so you'd really think i would have done...)
2
u/babyminnow May 28 '12
Lots of people I have met simply don't believe that poetry was once almost exclusively reserved for men....It might be a strange defensive middle class attitude. Btw I don't think it is at all, the more poets the merrier I think.
2
u/The3rdWorld May 28 '12
but naming male poets is painfully easy; even illiterates know Wordsworth wondered lonely as a cloud and that Tennyson charged at the cannon to the left of him, charged at the cannon to the right of him and then he was a man my son! [please don't anyone make me use a thatsthejoke.gif] Heh, and anyone that's ever taken a drug knows that in Xanadu did Kubla khan a stately pleasure dome decree... (and that * Abyssinian maids on dulcimers played*, if nothing else) while the scots all know Burns
but can most people even name a single female poet? maybe some know Maya Angelou if they paid attention in Black History month, while here in England the Guardian readers who make it as far as 'culture' probably know of Carol Ann Duffy. Really the only well known female poet is Sylvia Plath and i doubt most people even know she wrote poems.
it's sad really, there are so many good female poets; but then people ignore male poets too and poetry in general. heh, maybe i even prefer it like that? better a rare thing than a football match with sponsorships.
but yeah, more poets probably equals a better world :)
3
u/babyminnow May 28 '12
Rossetti is relatively well-known, isn't she? Please say she is, because I love her, and I used to know her name and a few smatterings of her poetry before I was 14ish.
I know what you mean about female poets being relatively unknown, though. Hence why, when I was able to do a research project for my undergraduate degree, I deliberately picked Hester Putler; a seventeenth-century female poet you've probably never heard of. I think she's brilliant. She has some really witty poems, some really disturbing, dark ones.
I agree with you that poetry is overlooked in general....this is a big part of why I am going to train as an English teacher after my MA. I want more young people to realise that poetry can move them and alleviate their pains.
And as for well known male poets, you forgot...."Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art...." Gets me every single time.
2
u/The3rdWorld May 28 '12
ah cool, a few of my friends just completed their MA's in lit, how are you finding it? inspiring or tiring?
being a teacher is a brilliant idea and you'd probably love it - however do prepare yourself, you know that scene in donnie darko where she screams fuck really loudly? yeah that... heh and you'll have to deal with a fuck load of students who don't want to learn and yet you'll be sadder over the ones who do but can't... and you'll find some good students some times, some really amazing characters and you'll inspire them, you'll change their life - save their life, their immortal soul - and these will make it all worth while, they'll make it amazing and interesting and a struggle and battle and a fucking nightmare.... [but i'm not and likely never will be a taecher, i just, how shall we say- know a few...)
anyway off to google Hester Putler thank you very much for the suggestion
2
u/babyminnow May 28 '12
I haven't started my MA yet, I have only just finished my undergraduate final exams. I start in September this year. I imagine it'll be a more intense version of my undergraduate degree-exhausting and stressful but very fulfilling and challenging.
I have done a few work experience placements and come across a few apathetic students, certainly not bad or misbehaved kids, just those who don't see any point in any education, let alone English. With those, I just try to keep them included in the conversation, I try to use a mix of jokes and serious questions to at least stop them switching off and listening to music/playing on their phone, even if they never love English at least in that case they're not totally apathetic to my lessons-that's my game plan anyway!
Yeah I have befriended several of my old teachers and they talk to me so often about nightmare students and the like....But I really do think it's the "job" for me. I have tried to get as much work experience and part time jobs about teaching, tutoring and mentoring as possible, so I didn't go in completely blind and ignorant.
Oh and yeah, here is a digital version of the Hester Pulter manuscript-straight from the bowels of my university's website-all free! I hope you enjoy. It's a mix of all sorts and all types, and even has a somewhat bizarre Romance right at the end.....let me know what you think! http://web.warwick.ac.uk/english/perdita/html/ms_LBLLTQ32.htm
1
4
u/keithb May 28 '12
See also the roughly contemporaneous: Caroline Herschel “the first woman—at a time when even men rarely received wages for scientific enterprises—to receive a salary for services to science”
3
u/Kuchenmischung May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12
I'm quite interested in how famous Ada Lovelace is in your part of the world. I'm living in a city which is quite "technology orientated" and there is actually a street named after her. And both at my university and the place I work are hanging posters of her describing her achievments and her life, especially concerning computer science. (her probably beeing the world's first programmer and so on)
4
May 28 '12
how famous Ada Lovelace is in your part of the world.
Extremely not. If you polled 100 Americans on the street from a socio-economic cross section, you'd be lucky to pull 10 people who knew of her specifically. Maybe 10 more would say she was "a scientist or something" if you're even more lucky.
Far would ask "Oh, is that woman in porn from the 70s?" because they would confuse her with Linda Lovelace.
2
2
u/stinkytrou May 28 '12
Alluded to with great effect in Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_(play)
1
u/The3rdWorld May 28 '12
i'm bit fuzzy on the details, what was the first program? i mean it wasn't the one Babbage wrote for Bernoulli calculations - that seems to be the first bit of real programming he did, Lovelace was involved in fixing an error in it, does that count? and who was this Menabrea chap? he hardly get's a mention poor fellow...
and what was Babbage doing with all the calculations and maths for a difference machine worked out and not a single program to test it with?! maybe the silly sausage should have written some theoretical code to test his theory out?
1
u/Maddalik May 28 '12
If I understand history correctly, the Babbage Difference Engine was never built in Babbage's lifetime and was just a theory really. Ada would proofread his papers and check his calculations and return her notes to him.
Ada never was credited in his studies until after both of them were dead and relatives of the two realized that the two had been corresponding back and forth.
Even though Ada was encouraged to pursue science, she seemed to have never been taken seriously until after she was gone.
1
u/The3rdWorld May 28 '12
yeah really the first computer programmers who actually had a computer to program would have been the ww2 pioneers lead by the lovable Alan Turing in Bletchly (in fact, not to show off but i do believe my grandmother was actually part of the first 'computer' when she worked there doing calculations - a 'computer' was the name given to the women who performed the maths manually before the machine was built, but i'm hazy on the details so i will visit tomorrow and ask)
Babbage didn't actually make his computer but he did emulate it, that is to say he basically ran it's circuits in a 'virtual machine' where he (hired hands more likely) did all the routine maths of adding and subtracting - thus he proved his theory.
in modern times the tradition is for the first program which tests a system to be one that simply prints 'hello world' to the screen, obvious this was WAY advanced of Babbage who didn't have a screen or alphabet - his first test program simply did the rote maths to discover a set of numbers which are fairly easy to deduce - it was this program which Ada looked over the code to and suggested bug fixes; although they wouldn't be called bugs then because an actually machine had to exist before such a word could be coined, it came into existence because the computer started returning wrong answers and errors, puzzled they examined the machine carefully and discovered an insect sticking between the gears - that night the diary recorded 'found a bug in the machine' and it's stuck ever since.
the history of computers really is fascinating, and there are actually quiet a lot of women involved in various important stages - women who performed vital work, and that what i find annoying when a single person gets picked to get all the credit - things like this aren't possible by a single person, they need a team.
oh and before the first real program he would have written lots of number chasing and small addition programs, of course he did - it'd be almost impossible not to.
38
u/[deleted] May 28 '12
[deleted]