As many of you loyal readers once again know, the class I'm teaching is Math and Science Methods, an elementary education course. We are now done with math (aww) and moving on to science. On Tuesday, we started with an interesting discussion about science education--the students' recollections of science, their associations with it, and so on.
A few notable highlights. On the whole these are relatively science-savvy students. One attended an elementary school near the Pacific Ocean in which the curriculum was based around marine science. Another had thoughts of going to medical school. A third took organic chemistry last fall--it's a notoriously hardcore science course, but one which she took (and I quote from the questionnaire I handed out at the beginning of the semester) "for fun." Others took AP Biology, have good memories of hunting for rocks, and so on. And when I asked them whether they had ever felt in any way that science was off-limits to them because of their gender (all the students enrolled in this class are women), they almost unanimously said they had not. I was pleased, if surprised. "That's very good to hear," I told them. "I don't know that the answer would've been the same in my generation."
And yet. A little later I asked them to tell me the first image that popped into their heads when I said a certain word. The word, you'll not be shocked to learn, was scientist. And here were the results. "My brother," said one student. "Bill Nye the Science Guy standing in a lab," said another. The rest all admitted to seeing a figure in a white coat in a laboratory. What kind of figure? Male or female? Male, they admitted, one after the other. Did anyone visualize a woman? I asked. Hesitation all around, then somewhat embarrassed shakes of the head. It may not have been the answer they wanted to give, but it was the truth: in this group of bright, well educated women, many of whom had a strong science background, all of whom attended a college that had a long history of empowering women and fighting stereotypes, every single one thought of a generic "scientist" as a male.
And one more thing. I'd assigned them to take some time to design two paper airplanes and bring them to class: one that would fly far, and one that would fly for a long time (distance for the first, duration aloft for the second). The purpose in part was to have them do the testing and questioning that's so central to science: what if I fold this wing up a bit more? what if I add some tape here? what throwing motion seems ideal? We would have a fly-off, I told them, after which valuable prizes (might) be awarded. (We did have the fly-off, by the way--see the picture below. The miserable weather cleared just enough to enable us to throw the planes off the balcony of the Old Observatory--one of the original buildings at Vassar and not so incidentally the building that served as the laboratory and office of the great astronomer Maria Mitchell, one of the finest scientists of her generation.)
Now, a comment here. I grew up making paper airplanes. I am sure I single-handedly destroyed dozens of trees in the process of making something that would fly, and fly well. (In my case I was less interested in distance than in duration aloft: the planes' ability to do loop-the-loops, arcs, and other tricks.) Most of my friends, as I look back, were into paper airplanes too. I don't remember girls getting involved much, if at all. Certainly my sister had little interest. Neither did my girl cousins. When I went on to become a classroom teacher, the trend continued. In nearly all my years at various grade levels, a group of kids started making whole fleets of paper airplanes at some point during the year. The group was almost always exclusively boys. Once in a while a girl would join in briefly, and was usually welcomed, but didn't stay for long. The only girls over the years who spent much time making and flying the planes were the few who usually sought out boys, rather than girls, as playmates. So I suspected that most of the young women in this college class had little experience with paper planes, and that's another reason why I assigned this as a task.
"So!" I said on Tuesday. "Did you enjoy the process?"
There was much grimacing and wrinkling of noses.
"I take it that means NO," I said. "How many of you spent much time as kids making paper airplanes?"
No hands went up. A few admitted that they had made an occasional plane, but added that their interest level had been low and their frustration level had been lower still. "Hmm," I said. "Now I wonder why that would be?"
One student raised her hand. "Paper airplanes are really a boy thing," she said, and then, realizing that we had once again stumbled into the tangled thicket of gender politics, added quickly, "I mean, I hate to stereotype, but..."
"No, no, go ahead," I said. "We're better off hearing the stereotypes than pretending they don't exist. We can always address them once they're on the table."
"All right," she said, nodding. "See, I went to these websites for information, and they were all, just, I don't know, written for boys. They were, like, 'Here's a great plane to throw at your teacher,' and I..." Her voice trailed off.
"And you never had the inclination to throw a plane at your teacher," I supplied. (Hoping it was true since I was a stationary target.)
"That's right," she said. "And one of the planes they said was best had directions, about 35 steps, and I got to about the twentieth step and it wasn't working, so..." She shrugged, leaving no doubt that while frustration might be a motivating force for some things, enduring all that agony for a $%^$% paper airplane wasn't worthwhile.
"I did the same thing," contributed another student. "I wanted to do my best, but it was so complicated and I found it really frustrating when I couldn't follow the directions. They even had a VIDEO on the website I looked at, and that didn't help either."
"Girls in my school didn't make paper airplanes," the young woman beside her remarked. "We made fortunetellers instead. You know, those things where you--" She pushed her fingers back and forth, miming the motion of turning a fortuneteller this way and that. "Boys sometimes used them," she added, "but the girls made them for the boys who wanted them."
"FORTUNETELLERS!!!" the rest of the class chorused, and then went off into a babble of individual conversations recalling the halcyon days of elementary school folding sessions. "Fortunetellers! They were so cool..." Evidently they had all made fortunetellers, and frequently at that. I, on the other hand, can't remember ever having made one. (I think I tried once and it was too frustrating. Hmm.)
"Yeah, it IS a boy thing," another student commented. "I showed my boyfriend the assignment and I didn't care all that much about it one way or the other, but he was SO EXCITED...."
So I suppose there's good news and bad news on the involving-girls-in-science front. These young women have good associations with science, mostly, and they believe they would be welcomed into the field if they were so inclined. Maria would be proud. Another piece of good news: science is about much more than paper airplanes. Now if we could only populate some of those stereotypically "scientific" white lab coats with women as well as with men...
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