Blog-IT-o ergo sum

	9/5/2003

History Revisited in Math Class (Is there nothing sacred?)

While helping my son with his 8th grade geometry, I could not help but notice a small "historical interest story" which was placed as an insert next to the coordinate pairs problem we were working on -- No doubt as a response to the objective of getting more girls interested in math. This is from the Merril textbook Geometry - Applications and Concepts copyright 1995 by Glencoe/McGraw Hill. For those students who are not too focused on their math homework and are so inclined to broaden their knowledge of history, the insert reads:

"Hypatia - First woman known to have made a significant contribution to mathematics. She produced commentaries on the works of Ptolemy and others. She taught at the famous Library of Alexandria....

...Because Hypatia was important and respected among scholars of the era she became the target of criticism from fanatics who equated science to paganism. In March of AD 415, she was brutally murdered by an angry mob. Soon after her death the Library of Alexandria was destroyed and the Dark Ages began."

With attempts like this to set the historical record straight, is it any wonder that some of these unsuspecting math students might end up as adults possessing a vague notion that the Dark Ages began directly as the result of a successful smart woman being murdered by a crazed band of misogynists and pagan haters? (Sneaking this stuff into math textbooks is particularly dangerous as those who are good at math and might have the free time to read it, may go on to technical educations severly underdeveloped in notions of history --- with only hazy recollections of key "facts" they chanced across in their math books.)

It is also worth noting that left deftly unsaid is that these murderous anti-science fanatics were directly associated with leadership of the early Christian church. This skillful omission is probably what got the book cleared past the textbook review board at Caldwell Academy, whose school motto is Soli Deo Gloria.

6:42:49 PM

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