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This is a reprint of a story I found on a ning group created to post stories for upper elementary Montessori students. It was written by Lena Wood. I also found this great site that has .pdf’s of geometry stories written by high school students as part of their geometry class. These will surely light a fire in Bear as I’m sure she will want to write some of her own as soon as she is finished reading all of them!
The history of women in mathematics and geometry is far too brief and certainly lacking much in detail. I did some research on Hypatia, an early Greek mathematician and philosopher, to bring some balance to all the stories we tall about Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, etc.
So far we’ve heard about Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes…all very important scholars in the history of geometry. But where are all the women?
Well, there aren’t that many women scholars that we know of from ancient times, because women and girls were not encouraged to study in school. Instead, they were expected to stay at home with their mothers and learn to cook and sew and help the family. Also, many of the early, early writings from long ago have been destroyed or lost. 2,000 years is a long time to keep a paprus scroll preserved!
But, there was one girl that we know of, a very smart and feisty girl who lived in the bustling city of Alexandria in the fourth century CE. Her name is Hypatia (Hy-pay-sha), and this is her story.
The city of Alexandria is located in the northern tip of Egypt, right where the Nile River meets the Mediterranean Sea. This was an important city in the history of Egypt, established by Alexander the Great. It was known around the region as a city of scholarship and trade and people came from all over the Fertile Crescent to study in Alexandria’s famous libraries. This was one of the few places in the world that had such a richness of books.
Hypatia was born in the city of Alexandria around the year 370 CE. Her father, Theon, was a well-known scholar and professor at the university. More importantly, he was different from other citizens of Alexandria, because he believed that his daughter should be educated in just the same manner as boys.
So, Theon taught his daughter all that he knew. Not only did she learn spinning and weaving and cooking from her mother, but she also learned how to swim, spear fish, ride horses and row a boat. Even more important to our story, she learned how to read and write. Her father taught her poetry, mathematics, and what was called natural philosophy—the study of plants and animals.
But her favorite subject of all was arithmetic and geometry. There is a story that one day she walked into her father’s study and saw him working on a scroll filled with numbers. She was so impressed by the beauty of this new language that she decided she was going to be a mathematician.
Hypatia learned quickly, and soon knew all that her father could teach her. She knew about numbers and lines, triangles and squares. She learned about astronomy and could predict the movement of the planets through the sky, and the time of sunrise and sunset.
The word spread quickly of Hypatia’s intelligence, and she began to teach her own students. Aspiring scholars from all over would come to Alexandria to study with her. One of her students, Synesius, developed an astrolabe, an instrument that helps sailors to navigate. The astrolabe measure’s the angle between the sun and the horizon, and from this, the sailors could determine their latitude and find true north.
Maybe you’d like to explore more about the history of astrolabes…
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Sweet Pea has decided he wants to be an astronaut. This week he wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to not cancel the space shuttle program. He doesn’t want to wait 4+ years for the Orion Missions to launch. Bear has decided she wants to work for NASA as well. Maybe doing something with Math. She’s not quite sure yet.
We had the pre-launch, online NASA TV Education channel running in the background on our computer most of the day. Sweet Pea had fun with our space matching nomenclature card set with figurines that we bought from the Montessori Swap group on Yahoo.
We read several books about the space program, including The International Space Station (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2),
We did a little extra math at this fun website call playkidsgames.com where the answers to your questions launch a shuttle…all animated-cartoon style, but very fun, none the less.
We talked about Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride, specifically their notable accomplishments. We also talked about Rick Husband and how he and his wife were home educators; about the fact that he pre-recorded bible study lessons so that he would be part of this study with his children even while he was in space. And we talked about the tragedies that have and can happen in the Space Program.
Sweet Pea wasn’t so sure he wanted to be an astronaut anymore.
That was until he saw the actual launch of Atlantis today.
He’s promised he’s going to study hard in math in science and–at least for today–he’s saving his money to go to space camp someday.
Bear just isn’t sure what she wants to be when she grows up. I told her she had plenty of time to figure out what gifts God has given her that she might like to use and that God might want her to use. I’m looking into getting her some of Sally Ride’s Science and Math career books, just in case. She loves to read and I’m sure she’ll enjoy them. And I am one of those women who was impacted by educators that didn’t really believe that women had a place in math and science (NOTE: I DID NOT hear that at home–my parents both encouraged my study of math and science–despite the fact that I lost interest after junior high). So I guess I have a need to over compensate a bit when it comes to allowing all doors to be opened for my daughter into all areas of study–especially math and science.
We’ll be following up on Monday by reading this article on Obama’s plan for the space program, as well as a few of the links further down on that specific page. And I guess I’ll be making some three part cards this weekend!
But I would like to know, what do your children want to be when they grow up? And how old are they now?
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I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while. That being said, I will be writing soon about how we manage to stay true to our beliefs about the age of our Earth AND keep in step with Maria Montessori’s materials relative to some of the more “dated,” montessori materials that don’t reflect our beliefs.
As a bit of a sneak peak, check out Answers in Genesis and their “God’s Design for Science,” series…..more to come soon. But for now, know that WE LOVE IT.
