From the same extract:
\begin{quote}
“Women can’t do science, because their brains aren’t made for it,” Lucille Feynman declared to her eight-year-old daughter Joan. The news was a huge blow to the little girl’s ambitions which, at the time in 1935, were firmly set on following her brother Richard into a life scientific. “I remember sitting in a chair and weeping,” she recalls.
[...]
The path of Joan’s life would be changed significantly one night when Richard woke her up and told her to get dressed and follow him out into the street. He took her away from the house and the street lights and out onto a wide open golf course nearby with a big dark sky above them. “I can still remember in my mind’s eye the green lights dancing in the sky”, Joan recalls of the flickering northern lights Richard had lead her outside to witness. “He told me that it was an aurora and no one knew what caused it exactly.”
In that moment, she was hooked. And whilst the doubts about a woman’s abilities to undertake a career in science, planted in her by Lucille, remained, Joan’s interest in science continued to be fuelled by Richard’s progress through university. Before he’d left home, her brother had made a deal with her that whilst away at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying for his bachelor’s degree, he would answer any science question that she sent him.
“For quite a while we had a notebook which went back and forth, and he sent me a problem in maths and I sent the answer,” remembers Joan of that time. Then for her fourteenth birthday, he gave her the book ‘Astronomy’ by Robert Horace Baker. “It was a book people studied at college,” she remembers. “And he’d pasted my name in it. I was so excited.”
Somewhat daunted by the advanced level of the book, Joan wrote to Richard to ask how she should read it. He replied that she should start at the beginning and read until she didn’t understand, and then start at the beginning again. And each time she’d get a little further.
“So I did,” says Joan, “and I got a little further each time. And then one day there was a figure in the book of a spectrum and underneath it said ‘the relative strengths of the Mg+ absorption line at 4,481 angstroms… of Stellar Atmospheres from the work of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’.” The caption was a revelation to Joan. Cecilia was a woman’s name, and the hyphenated family name indicated she was married. It was proof that a married woman was capable of doing science.
\end{quote}
I also find this little excerpt about how she encouraged scientific thinking in her children inspiring:
> [...] Joan was determined to instil a sense of curiosity and wonder in her own children.
> Her son Charles remembers one occasion when, at the age of about six, he asked her about her job as a scientist. In response Joan handed him a spoon. “Drop it on the table,” she said. Charles let it fall. “Why did it fall? Why didn’t it float up to the ceiling?” asked Joan. It had never occurred to Charles that there was a whyinvolved. “Because of gravity,” she continued. “A spoon will always fall, a hot-air balloon will always rise.” Charles dropped the spoon again and again until she made him stop. The boy had no idea what gravity was, but the idea of “why?” kept rattling around in his head.
This is a great example of what people mean when they say "representation matters". Humans benefit greatly from existence proofs that people similar themselves are capable of doing X.
People often say that others, usually children, require physical similarity (sex, skin colour) to be inspired. This I find very sad and highly contradictory to my own schooling.
I mean all people are broadly similar. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin has been inspirational to me too, but we have little in common physically or socially.
Of course if a I'm wrong people should be up in arms about primary schools not having teachers representative of the broader population - success can be predicted at that point with a high degree of certainty, I gather.
Mothers are only one potential source of erroneous beliefs about one's inability to achieve something based on some personal characteristic. Surely, we should strive to prevent people from spreading these erroneous beliefs. But existence proofs to the contrary are a very effective, scalable counter-measure. We cannot entirely eradicate ignorance, but we can provide innoculations to prevent others from being harmed by it.
> People often say that others, usually children, require physical similarity (sex, skin colour) to be inspired.
Representation is not always about physical similarity. It is equally important (often more) for intangible characteristics like class, sexual orientation, religion, wealth, etc.
> This I find very sad and highly contradictory to my own schooling.
I find it sad too, but reality is that people are different and our experiences are different. These differences are precisely what makes each individual's contributions to society unique and valuable. But those differences are also a source of perceived limitations.
We are primates and learn by mirroring. If you never see a member of your tribe swim across the river, there's probably a good reason (maybe crocodiles) even if you don't see it (they hide under the surface). So we naturally, wisely avoid behaviors that we don't see people like us engaging in.
This is true even when we define our own tribe based on less tangible attributes.
> Of course if a I'm wrong people should be up in arms about primary schools not having teachers representative of the broader population
That only matters to the degree that kids aspire to be teachers. And, fortunately, the average kid gets enough different teachers and there is enough diversity among them that each kid will likely have a teacher at some point that they identify with.
A single existence proof is sufficient to open the door.
Yes, teachers talk a lot about the lack of diversity too. If you spend a little time with some of them you'll find out. The teachers I know around the world genuinely want the best for their kids.
> I also find this little excerpt about how she encouraged scientific thinking in her children inspiring:
I have an almost 5yo daughter that since she was barely 2 started asked "why?" about almost anything. I promised myself that I would never leave a question unanswered, to not hinder/limit her natural curiosity. Let's see how this will turn out!
I'm not sure it has been successful, they never really exhausted my ability to answer but I fear it may have sucked out some of the magic - not having answers might be 'better' to some extent if your aim is to foster curiosity and personal goal fulfillment.
My kids are awesome and definitely have some intrigue; but perhaps endeavour to not provide answers!
Both bits are quite nice.
I love the idea of coming up with endless possibilities, labeling realistic ones and why (important) but enjoying the flights of fancy for what they are too!
"Why yes kiddo, I would love to ride a Rainbow-unicornDragon-with-tentacles to work!"....
Sorry, this isn't directly related to the overall discussion but I got so excited by my thoughts that I wanted to share.
So much fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb6vDACwxWU
Longer version:
Kids are natural scientists, heh.
> [A] thought crossed her mind. “Richard is pretty smart, and if I tell him about an interesting problem, he’ll find the answer before I do and take all the fun out of it for me.” So Joan decided to strike a deal with him. “I said, Look, I don’t want us to compete, so let’s divide up physics between us. I’ll take auroras and you take the rest of the Universe. And he said OK!”
[1] https://findingada.com/shop/a-passion-for-science-stories-of...