Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I think you notion of safeguarding your investment is an interesting perspective on why one might act differently in order to reduce the impacts of societal biases. It makes me wonder, when I am teaching a class what behaviors are students intentionally demonstrating to protect themselves from different biases. This seems critically important to really getting to know your students for who they actually are and giving them the space to be themselves. Thanks!

Thanks for sharing your experience! I don’t know much about the educational systems in other countries and have lived in the U.S. my entire life so it’s nice to get different perspectives. I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your friend. Much like was expressed in the article about the book The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam, sometimes unconscious messages are sent unknowingly. Which I of course hope was the case for that instructor. The classroom should definitely be open to student’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas. And all students should feel safe speaking freely!

I agree with Amy on your point that a person’s demographic features shouldn’t be considered in engineering design. Be careful not to fall prey to the thinking that engineering is nothing but a technical specialization that solves problems in a vacuum. If the solution to an engineering problem is going to somehow affect people, then a good design will take into account those factors about the people it will affect, in order to tailor it to them precisely. Factors like cost, accessibility, ease of use, etc. all affect who can benefit from a given solution.

Renu,
That Unknowing exercise sounds really interesting! It comes as no surprise that it comes from Eastern philosophy. It also reminds me of the idea of divergent thinking that we saw in class a few weeks ago, imagining additional possibilities for what an object could be or what it could mean.
I also really appreciate you talking about how Tolerance is not enough, precisely because of the definition you quoted. To tolerate is a necessary step, but it is by no means a desirable end result.

Great post Cody! I really enjoyed watching the video clip which is definitely a sharp reality of the direction society is taking. Definitely drives home the point in that we should connect with people on a different level. I agree a lot of emphasize is placed on the first categories you listed (gender and race). I really like that you point out instead we should learn more about the individual. Everyone’s comments reminded of the quote, “Don’t be so quick to judge. You only see what I chose to show you.” I also like that you talked about unity in the classroom. Bringing everyone on-board to the common purpose of the classroom.

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That would be interesting.

Since posting, I found an explanation that nails the answer, I think. Intersectional feminism.
http://helensatheistblogs.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-i-no-longer-identify-as-feminist.html

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Perfectly understandable. I was joking about disagreeing with my lived experience.

Hi Ben — I’m not going to be able to read up on the feminist you note before class tonight but want to quickly say: 1) I absolutely do not disagree with your lived experience (or anyone else’s for that matter) and 2) completely respect your service in the skeptical / atheist movement and 3) the debate you hosted at UK sounds really cool.

Wow! Hot topic here. I would have to agree with Cody on this one. I was unaware of the prominence of this stereotype until I read your blog post. Of the many math teachers/professors I’ve had over the past 20 years or so, I think two have been male. So, I guess if someone asked me to guess which gender is better at math, I would have to say female. Could this be a regional stereotype? Or, being a male, maybe I was honestly just blind to it?

And these experiences can happen without detracting from the material of the class. I am one to meet with my students one-on-one and know as much of their story as they will share with me. I also do not feel the need to do any personal explorations in front of the class at large, and am absolutely against policy that requires such interactions.

Also, just as there are those that are affected by pronoun usage in their learning experience, there are those that feel unwelcome by being forced to participate in such constructs. As you’ll see in my other comment responses, to each their own in how they facilitate their classroom–that I fully support. However, administrative overreach to enact such policies universally are out of line.

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