Who said Girls are Not Good at Math?

One of the things I always wanted to understand is the wonders of Math.

My algebra teacher said “try, try again, if at first you fail.
An understatement…like trying to teach Math to a whale.

Here is a poem I’ve penned (so to speak) which conveys the point I am trying to make for no reason than thanks from those fortunate old lads and lasses that never had ME in their math classes.

Is it true what they said, that girls don’t know math?

There was an old lady named Madge,

who didn’t get Math as a girl

as hard as she tried, the more her brain fried.

I’ll get this, I will,

if its the last thing I do, she said as she studied

and figured

in spite of the glaze on her eyes.

Don’t confuse me with squares and axioms or paradigms

paradoxes, place holders, equations or boxes.

Then one day a bit of “New Math” gave her some clues

where a pencil and paper would only confuse

It was grey matter that made a much better board

for figures and signs and all sorts of

Math Tricks.

Finally!  Eureka!  a breakthrough, Madge said

as she solved two plus two

and started to realize what she could do.

One more life time should master Madge’s math disaster.

Beginning all over without being reminded that

 “Girls are NOT good at Math.”


Posted

in

,

by

Comments

15 responses to “Who said Girls are Not Good at Math?”

  1. writersdream9 Avatar

    I’m not good at math. I know lots of girls who are!

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      I was a girl back in the dark ages…other girls did ok even back then but I was a very weird kid.

  2. Bushka Avatar

    Girls cab be brilliant at Maths…..Yes! My nemesis in Maths at High School were two delightful lasses…I still remember their names too…They were wizards…and I was no slouch. 😉

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      my offspring are good at math, but they didnt get it from me. they all love it, but I hated it and you wouldnt believe the score I got on my GRE.

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      hey Smiley, thanks. it just sort of begged to be written and then wrote itself.

  3. Kathy Avatar

    Love this. I hate math. My son is in 11th grade and is taking pre-calc. When I went to back to school night and his pre-calc teacher asked if anyone had any questions about the course syllabus for the year, my comment was “I never made it this far.”

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      I rather like it now, but it seems to function at some unreachable level of my brain. Sometimes I can see the answer but on paper it is impossible for me.

  4. BunKaryudo Avatar

    Your poem is funny and optimistic. I don’t know who said girls are bad at math, but it’s nonsense. It’s certainly not the case that boys are necessarily any better. When I was a boy, I was a math-free zone. I haven’t developed any new skills since then. New math, old math or middle-aged math — it makes no difference to me.

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      it was long ago, and you’re right…all of my family girls are excellent at math. I just had some kind of phobia 🙂

      1. BunKaryudo Avatar

        I don’t blame you at all because I felt exactly the same way. Whenever I opened a math textbook, all the little numbers seemed to scowl at me and shake their fists.

        I guess the politest way to put it is that numbers and I have never been close friends.

  5. oneta hayes Avatar

    Thumbs up, so cute!

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      thanks, glad you liked it

  6. LDG luciledegodoy Avatar

    It’s wonderful that you write about this. I think that math aversion is all related to who teaches and the methodology used. I had a horrible teacher when I concluded that I hated it and would never be good at it.

    1. Gradmama2011 Avatar

      I remember my teacher being mean as I sat trying to add up some numbers…she just didn’t like my sum 🙂

Leave a Reply to Gradmama2011 Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: