Math is for girls too
One of the childhood memories I wish I could forget is the nasty and Functions and Calculus teacher that I had in high school. He hated girls, and he made no bones about it at all. I had gone through all of the math courses that I needed in order to take his courses, I had gotten “A”s in all of them, so I knew that I could do the work.
The first day of class he announced that he felt that girls should not be in his class; that they were taking up the seats that boys should be in. He declared that he would flunk any and every girl in his class. He would not bother to check their tests or homework, he would automatically put an “F” on everything. Every girl except me dropped out immediately. I decided I would stick it out – after all, I was good in math!
True to his word, he tried to flunk me out. He gave me “F”s on everything, even when my answers were the same as all of the other guys. When I went to the school counselor to complain, they said that he told them that I was weak in my algebra and told them to put me back into an algebra class. I had already HAD three years of algebra and gotten straight “A”s in them all! I knew that I did not need any algebra help. Even going to the principal of the school was no good – he suggested that I drop the class and get some algebra tutoring! For crying out loud, I had been tutoring others in algebra!
I know that this scenario is very unlikely to occur in this day and age. I often find myself wishing that I could find that creep and show him how I went on to college and took every math course the college had to offer and got straight “A”s in all of them!
Kids today are so lucky – they are not faced with kind of discrimination anymore, and if they find that they DO need help, it is easy to get both algebra 1 and algebra 2 help over the Internet with a free online algebra tutor.