Generalizing (New Blogger Initiation Post 2)

As part of the New Blogger Initiation, here's my second post. This time the prompt I got was to respond to an xkcd comic. If you aren't familiar with xkcd, check it out: it's one of my favorites. The particular comic I was prompted to respond to was this one (titled, "How it Works"):

I like this comic because I see it happen a lot. I think it's pretty obvious these days when this sort of thing leads to sex stereotyping (as in the comic). As a teacher, particularly of math (the language of precision), I think it is very important for me to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen in my classroom. Or in any other classroom for that matter. One person having or not having a particular ability has very little to do with anyone else's ability, even if the two share a commonality (e.g. sex, age, gender, hair color). It's important that I impress upon my students a way of thinking that encourages them to see where connections exist between two things and where they don't exist.