>
> Dr S. Bowler, Editor, Astronomy & Geophysics,
> the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society wrote:
>
> They are aiming for one on every school
> board, emulating, I believe, an approach developed by fundamentalist
> religious groups.
Scary!
I was once asked to go to my old school, which is in the same local
region
as one of the
the newspapers
which carries my weekly science column. The intention
was
to go an give a talk to encourage women to go into science.
This wouldn't have been a first for me; I had been a helper on a WISE
bus
(Women Into Science and Engineering) some years before.
But then I reflected on the soul destroying experiences I have had as a
woman engineer. Science has given me much, but the price has been very
high. Did I really want to <directly> encourage girls to follow the same
path? (I stress the <directly>.)
I can't answer this question at the moment.
Jenny Gristock
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/prpk1/index.html
Ian Russel wrote:
>>At least we should confess to them the awful truth, that
>the most successful scientists study the textbooks and listen to
>their teachers in order to be able to prove them wrong!
Ah, Ian, thank you! There's a column in that one!
>Such "science" might then stand some chance of being regarded as
>cool. But as long as we remain so formal about it, I think there's no
>chance. Passion is caught, not taught. That must mean it's OK for
science
>communicators to have it!
Passion is not 'cool' in engineering. Not the engineering departments I
have worked in, anyway. In these very-nearly all-male environments,
where
women usually end up thinking of themselves as 'exceptions' (see Flis
Henwood's research on the subject), passion is usually written off as
'hysteria'.
But
I suppose we need both reason and passion to get anything done.
Jenny
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