Repost: Larry Summers, Math, and Violence
In light of the fact that Cal State is still committed to firing its nonviolent math teachers (the state attorney general has weighed in, supporting the dismissal, and Kearney-Brown is planning to pursue legal action), I thought I’d dredge up an old quip on the relationship between mathematical talents and a propensity towards violence.
In his talk, according to several participants, Summers also used as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral parenting. Yet she treated them almost like dolls, naming one of them “daddy truck,” and one “baby truck.”
What I’m curious about is the unspoken assumption that if girls can be demonstrated to be more nurturing than boys, then they obviously can’t be expected to be as good at math. Because the ability to do math can only be developed by skewering bunnies and kittens on your pencil, and then dancing in a shower of cute-baby-animal blood while reciting your multiplication tables.
J-Dog wrote:
My daughter and her rugby team will be more than happy to nurture Mr. Summers. While he is recovering in the ECU, he can contemplate on the fortunate circumstance that she doesn’t still play fast-pitch softball. Those lightweight composite bats they use these days allows her to generate a simply tremendous bat-speed.
Posted 06 Mar 2020 at 8:25 am ¶
Cherish wrote:
I find it ironic that the Unabomber was allowed to work for the state of CA but not Kearney-Brown.
Posted 06 Mar 2020 at 9:23 am ¶
Kim wrote:
I want to frame this and hang it on my wall.
Posted 06 Mar 2020 at 11:33 am ¶
Hob wrote:
Daddy truck and baby truck? What about mommy truck? Clearly this means Summers’s daughter (representing all women) feels that children should be raised by single men.
Posted 06 Mar 2020 at 12:17 pm ¶
Patrick wrote:
I have a 40+ gay friend who recalls his toy trucks with fondness: He used to pretend that his trucks met and went on dates and such…
Posted 06 Mar 2020 at 3:23 pm ¶
delagar wrote:
My daughter (representing all women) was given dolls by fond grandparents and various relatives. She never played with them, (now, at 9, she tells me that she thought they were creepy, since they didn’t have “snouts”) though she did, as a toddler, from time to time, wrap one of her many, many dinosaurs up in the blankets that came with the dolls and cuddle it tenderly. “Good allosaurus,” she would croon. “Good baby!”
Posted 06 Mar 2020 at 4:23 pm ¶