10/01/22
Q&A: ‘No one told me maths was hard’
经过：Edwin Naidu
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Q&A: ‘No one told me maths was hard’
Colourful, sometimes controversial, but never dull. Mamokgethi Phakeng is one of South Africa’s best-known university heads and a brilliant mathematician to boot.
帕肯（Phakeng）于2002年成为第一位获得数学教育博士学位的黑人女性，她于2018年7月开始担任开普敦大学副校长的任期。
2021年10月，她被任命为第一个杰出的客座教授（BIVP）of the University of Bristol in England because of her “exceptional and inspirational” work in mathseducation。In 2019, Phakeng was awarded a doctorate of science from the university.
在这个角色中，她将与大学的学术界互动，参加公开讲座，并加强教育和研究两所大学之间的合作。
开普敦大学副校长Mamokgethi Phakeng教授。学分：开普敦大学。
帕肯（Phakeng）的名字有许多奖项，包括Order of the Baobab(Silver) from the South African Presidency in 2016 for her contribution to science on the international stage.
Childhood love of maths
Phakeng tellsscidev.netthat she developed a love for mathematics while growing up.
“I think I was in Grade 10 when my mother heard about a winter school in the area, and she sent me there. They were only doing mathematics,” she says.
“My school had a winter school for physics, a township school in Ga-Rankua. And it is here that they introduced us to geometry which sort of changed my mind about mathematics because suddenly it made sense.”
“After the holidays, I returned to Odi High School and was hooked on mathematics. It was something where I could predict how I was going to perform… So, I think that was the love that developed in this time. The teacher introduced the concepts that I grasped, the big idea and [I] gained confidence from there. I was 13.”
但是Phakeng说的第二件事,帮助她get into mathematics was the influence of her parents. Her dad was the country’s first blackbroadcaster, while her mum was a school teacher.
“My parents never talked about mathematics [being] hard. There was never a hierarchy of subjects at home. There was only the demand that you [had to] do well. My dad had a demand to be excellent,” she recalls.
Phakeng说保护她的恐惧aths. “Many children fear science because they’re told maths is tough. Many girls are scared of science because they’re told ‘girls don’t do maths. Whereas I didn’t know, so that naivety about mathematics helped.”
After matriculation, Phakeng enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Bophuthatswana (now the University of North-West). “I was performing well and feeling proud of myself,” she tellsscidev.net。
Motivating young people
Phakeng believes young people should be made aware of the benefits of maths such as logical thinking and making sense of things around us, as well as the careers available to mathematicians.
“Many girls are scared of science because they’re told ‘girls don’t do maths. Whereas I didn’t know, so that naivety about mathematics helped.”
Mamokgethi Phakeng, University of Cape Town
“许多年轻人认为数学不会与某些事物混合。我的意思是，我化妆并进行数学。所以，我对他们说是可能的。这就是您可以实现它的方式。她说：“每天，至少一个小时，您都会做数学以练习以前做过的事情。”
Her love for mathematics took her into a career in the non-governmental sector, working as a teacher in rural农场schools “with the most impoverished people” before she joined academia.
Now, a member of theboardof the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) in South Africa, girls and many others look up to her for inspiration. She is also a member of the board of the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator, a body that brings together different communities to jointly anticipate scientific and technological advancements and, based on them, develop inclusive and global solutions for a sustainable future.
她作为数学老师成功的秘密？“我有这样的理念，即如果您希望孩子在数学方面做得好，就必须让他们喜欢数学，并让他们喜欢数学，以便您如何教授它，以便即使您不在那里也可以做到这一点，”
她在学术机构中的旅程看到了她在UCT担任副校长角色之前，扮演着各种角色，被认为是非洲大陆上最好的职位。帕肯说，她作为B1科学家的评级是必要的，因为“当您是黑人非洲妇女时，假设您是平权行动的任命”。
According to the National Research Foundation of South Africa, a researcher withB1等级is one who “enjoys considerable international recognition for the high quality and impact of his or her recent research outputs, with some of them indicating that he or she is a leading international scholar in the field”.
“It’s been very important for me to tick every step, even to get the rating,” says Phakeng, because “there will always be doubting Thomases [who] question how capable you are… So, it’s essential that people can see what you have done. They can check your international reputation as a scholar, as a leader…thedataand evidence of leadership and scholarship is there to be seen. I felt that it’s essential to do that as a black African.”
This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
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Colourful, sometimes controversial, but never dull. Mamokgethi Phakeng is one of South Africa’s best-known university heads and a brilliant mathematician to boot.
帕肯（Phakeng）于2002年成为第一位获得数学教育博士学位的黑人女性，她于2018年7月开始担任开普敦大学副校长的任期。
2021年10月，她被任命为第一个杰出的客座教授（BIVP）of the University of Bristol in England because of her “exceptional and inspirational” work in mathseducation。In 2019, Phakeng was awarded a doctorate of science from the university.
在这个角色中，她将与大学的学术界互动，参加公开讲座，并加强教育和研究两所大学之间的合作。
开普敦大学副校长Mamokgethi Phakeng教授。学分：开普敦大学。
帕肯（Phakeng）的名字有许多奖项，包括Order of the Baobab(Silver) from the South African Presidency in 2016 for her contribution to science on the international stage.
Childhood love of maths
Phakeng tellsscidev.netthat she developed a love for mathematics while growing up.
“I think I was in Grade 10 when my mother heard about a winter school in the area, and she sent me there. They were only doing mathematics,” she says.
“My school had a winter school for physics, a township school in Ga-Rankua. And it is here that they introduced us to geometry which sort of changed my mind about mathematics because suddenly it made sense.”
“After the holidays, I returned to Odi High School and was hooked on mathematics. It was something where I could predict how I was going to perform… So, I think that was the love that developed in this time. The teacher introduced the concepts that I grasped, the big idea and [I] gained confidence from there. I was 13.”
但是Phakeng说的第二件事,帮助她get into mathematics was the influence of her parents. Her dad was the country’s first blackbroadcaster, while her mum was a school teacher.
“My parents never talked about mathematics [being] hard. There was never a hierarchy of subjects at home. There was only the demand that you [had to] do well. My dad had a demand to be excellent,” she recalls.
Phakeng说保护她的恐惧aths. “Many children fear science because they’re told maths is tough. Many girls are scared of science because they’re told ‘girls don’t do maths. Whereas I didn’t know, so that naivety about mathematics helped.”
After matriculation, Phakeng enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Bophuthatswana (now the University of North-West). “I was performing well and feeling proud of myself,” she tellsscidev.net。
Motivating young people
Phakeng believes young people should be made aware of the benefits of maths such as logical thinking and making sense of things around us, as well as the careers available to mathematicians.
“Many girls are scared of science because they’re told ‘girls don’t do maths. Whereas I didn’t know, so that naivety about mathematics helped.”
Mamokgethi Phakeng, University of Cape Town
“许多年轻人认为数学不会与某些事物混合。我的意思是，我化妆并进行数学。所以，我对他们说是可能的。这就是您可以实现它的方式。她说：“每天，至少一个小时，您都会做数学以练习以前做过的事情。”
Her love for mathematics took her into a career in the non-governmental sector, working as a teacher in rural农场schools “with the most impoverished people” before she joined academia.
Now, a member of theboardof the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) in South Africa, girls and many others look up to her for inspiration. She is also a member of the board of the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator, a body that brings together different communities to jointly anticipate scientific and technological advancements and, based on them, develop inclusive and global solutions for a sustainable future.
她作为数学老师成功的秘密？“我有这样的理念，即如果您希望孩子在数学方面做得好，就必须让他们喜欢数学，并让他们喜欢数学，以便您如何教授它，以便即使您不在那里也可以做到这一点，”
她在学术机构中的旅程看到了她在UCT担任副校长角色之前，扮演着各种角色，被认为是非洲大陆上最好的职位。帕肯说，她作为B1科学家的评级是必要的，因为“当您是黑人非洲妇女时，假设您是平权行动的任命”。
According to the National Research Foundation of South Africa, a researcher withB1等级is one who “enjoys considerable international recognition for the high quality and impact of his or her recent research outputs, with some of them indicating that he or she is a leading international scholar in the field”.
“It’s been very important for me to tick every step, even to get the rating,” says Phakeng, because “there will always be doubting Thomases [who] question how capable you are… So, it’s essential that people can see what you have done. They can check your international reputation as a scholar, as a leader…thedataand evidence of leadership and scholarship is there to be seen. I felt that it’s essential to do that as a black African.”
This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
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