Comment by jvvw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jvvw | Hacker News Reader

I've taught maths at a few universities and until recently taught computing at a university, teaching algorithms etc (and am female if that is relevant!). I ended up recently at a talk at the university where they were talking about decolonising the computing curriculum.

One of the thing that I felt hadn't been taken into account was that as lecturers we are qualified to teaching computing/maths not to teach history/social sciences. I really didn't feel like I should be teaching history when I stopped learning history at school aged 15. The course I was teaching covered Turing machines and I'd feel very weird suddenly diverting into discussing that Turing was gay (but he's also a white male just to complicate things...). It all felt like a massive distraction from actually trying to teach the materials better.

I have to admit that when I was a student, it never really bothered me at all that all theorems were named after men (perhaps Noether got in there somewhere, but I really can't think of anybody else). They just felt like names to me and I was interested in the maths not the history. It had much more of an impact on me seeing female lecturers teaching and doing research.

Not arguing that you’re wrong, but as a (counter / data)-point, both me and my friend were… relieved (for lack of a better word) when the convention of referring to things as master / slave in computing changed to primary / replica, etc. We are both from one of the countries where the slave trade was most active. It wasn’t something we would complain about out loud, it did not affect our work or productivity in any way. In fact we would have been content / happy to continue using the previous names. But it still felt good / noteworthy to not have to see them continuously, all day long. So sometimes providing that kind of context, or changing names of things to make everyone more comfortable, is a small thing but much appreciated by the minorities involved. I’m not sure it’s necessary to take it to the extent that you’re facing however :)

Thanks for sharing that, it's much more common to see opinions from people based on what they think others feel.

That word pairing evoked a bad history and was based on that particular definition of the word "master." Do you feel differently about other uses of the word on its own based on different meanings? I'm thinking of Git using "master," some switching to using "main," but also usage based on knowledge or skill mastery, like "Master's degree" or Frontend Masters. https://frontendmasters.com/

No in this case it was just the pearling. :) otherwise we do use master without a second thought in all the forms of the examples you gave.

Thanks for contributing your experience. I think it's important that the guidelines ought to consider the actual reported experiences and attitudes of the students whom they're trying to show sensitivity to. If as in your case they generally do nothing much, then it does feel like a waste of effort.

It is a generous assumption that the intention of these guidelines is to improve.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Do you think the authors have some ulterior motive other than improving mathematics education?

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