Via lucianne.com [sorry no links to the articles in the WSJ or Science -- both require subscriptions]From the City Journal article, The Wall Street Journal, it should be noted, had no difficulty grasping the two main findings of the Science study: that “girls and boys have roughly the same average scores on state math tests,” as Keith J. Winstein reported on July 25, but that “boys more often excelled or failed.” That the New York Times, in an article over twice as long as the Journal’s, couldn’t manage to squeeze in a reference to the fact that boys outperformed girls at the top end of the curve should put its readers on notice: trust nothing you read here.Talk about a reverse English on logic! Thinking like that above gives me a headache.
From the NYT article, The study also analyzed the gender gap on the math section of the SAT. Rather than proving boys’ superior talent for math, the study found, the difference is probably attributable to a skewed pool of test takers. The SAT is taken primarily by seniors bound for college, and since more girls than boys go to college, about 100,000 more girls than boys take the test, including lower-achieving girls who bring down the girls’ average score.
From the article in the Science Section of the NYT, “Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but now they’ll be so intimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may institute quota systems,” Dr. Sommers said. “In sports, they had to eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IX parity. It’ll be devastating to American science if every male-dominated field has to be calibrated to women’s level of interest.Affirmative action or quotas or whatever you want to call it, aren't intended to do anybody any good. The intention is to substitute "fairness" for excellence. I, for one, don't want to drive across a bridge built by affirmative action engineers no matter their sex, their pigmentation or their sexual orientation. Even the concept is ludicrous.
Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork. The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of either sex?
What infuriates me the most about this conversation is that society assigns a much higher value to male dominated pursuits than female ones and we, instead of telling them to get lost, buy into it and whine and cry and demand concessions ala the military and police and fire departments (and now science and math programs), so we can play let's pretend.
It's insulting and degrading and we ought to stop it right now.
2 comments:
What infuriates me the most about this conversation is that society assigns a much higher value to male dominated pursuits ...
It is true that society assigns a much higher monetary value to pursuits that are male dominated.
Whether one should be infuriated by that fact is another matter.
Most female dominated pursuits come under the heading of doing what comes naturally; in other words, there isn't a whole lot of rigorous training required to become, say, a kindergarten teacher.
In contrast, most (if not all) pursuits that are male dominated and for which society provides greater economic reward either require intensive training, or pose arduous working conditions.
Now, the question remains as to why some -- but not all -- professions remain male dominated, in the complete absence of any barriers to female entry.
In the area of math and engineering, it is more than a matter of being able to do arithmetic. Girls by and large may be as adept as boys at math, but aptitude in the absence of inclination is worthless.
For example, my daughter is getting either the highest, or close thereto, grades in her math classes.
She loathes the subject, and can't wait to be shot of it. She is utterly disinclined to use the math she has learned, and resolutely resists anything like mathematical analysis.
A few years ago I tutored a high school senior in physics; her performance there was a blemish on an otherwise stellar GPA. Turns out that while she had memorized the formulae cold, her ability to analyze a system so as to apply the correct principles was remarkable by its near absence.
Most women I have known, either through disinclination or disability, are like that. They don't think mathematically, and are utterly at sea when faced with even simple mechanical problems.
Male brains are far more likely to excel at systemizing. Female brains are not.
NB: I am using the terms "women" and "men" as statistical entities. Given groups of 1000 men and 1000 women, far more men will be adept at systemizing and analysis.
Can't do anything in the hard sciences or bona-fide engineering disciplines without them.
Skipper, you have beautifully made my case for me.
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