Comment by hdctambien | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hdctambien | Hacker News Reader

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A friend of mine is a 4th grade teacher. That means she teaches all subjects to her students, including Math.

She was an English major in college. She didn't take a math class her senior year of college. She took a CS Elective to fulfil her math requirement in college (that's where we met. The class met once a week and a different Grad student or Professor would give a talk about whatever project they were working on. Over the course of the semester we would have to write a page "report" about 3 of the talks we heard)

So, she graduated, then got a Masters in Education and then started teaching (among other subjects) Math to 9 year olds but she hadn't taken a math class in 6 years.

She not only didn't like math, but she actively avoided it for over half a decade and then she was tasked with teaching the basics to kids...

Part of the problem could be that there are lots of teachers like her, that don't even know how to do the math themselves.

This is probably tied to female "mathphobia" in some way, because in my experience males were the most competent math teachers. Gender biases notwithstanding, I can say there were three female teachers in my school career who influenced my math aptitude a great deal: my 1st/4th grade teacher (same woman), my sixth grade English/Computer teacher, my 10th grade Algebra 2 teacher.

What they all had in common was the ability to see my aptitude and find materials for me that I could benefit from. These teachers may not have been math whizzes, but they definitely weren't afraid to give their students material they weren't completely comfortable with themselves. They also encouraged me to do more difficult math and were very supportive in general. Their attitude carried me very far, even if they couldn't answer some of the more difficult questions I would ask. My calculus teacher was very good, but he was a gigantic asshole.

And in my experience, the best math teacher I ever had (Geometry!) was female. Lesson: Don't gender stereotype based on personal experience. Not only is it probably not relevant to others' experience, it's also not helpful.

Two data points, yours and mine, are hardly enough to draw a lesson from. Lesson: Don't jump to conclusions and teach others lessons based on your hurt feelings.

The majority of the comment was praising my female math teachers for caring enough to go outside their comfort zone to foster a love of mathematics. If more teachers in general had the temerity to venture into the unknown when educating their students, especially in math and science, we might not have serious gender gaps in most professional fields.

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