Posted on 06/08/2010 5:53:41 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry’s Law. The official title of this legislation is “Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering,” but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard.
This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the White House science adviser to oversee regular “workshops to enhance gender equity.” At the workshops, to be attended by researchers who receive federal money and by the heads of science and engineering departments at universities, participants would be given before-and-after “attitudinal surveys” and would take part in “interactive discussions or other activities that increase the awareness of the existence of gender bias.”
I’m all in favor of women fulfilling their potential in science, but I feel compelled, at the risk of being shipped off to one of these workshops, to ask a couple of questions:
1) Would it be safe during the “interactive discussions” for someone to mention the new evidence supporting Dr. Summers’s controversial hypothesis about differences in the sexes’ aptitude for math and science?
2) How could these workshops reconcile the “existence of gender bias” with careful studies that show that female scientists fare as well as, if not better than, their male counterparts in receiving academic promotions and research grants?
Each of these questions is complicated enough to warrant a column, so I’ll take them one at a time, starting this week with the issue of sex differences.
When Dr. Summers raised the issue to fellow economists and other researchers at a conference in 2005, his hypothesis was caricatured in the press as a revival of the old notion that “girls can’t do math.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How do they expect to get more girls into science when both boys and girls are being taught that emotion is the same as reason?
I don’t really have time for lengthy articles this morning, but working in a tech field myself (software dev) I can personally attest to very few women being capable of the math, 3d-thinking and logic to be more than moderately successful.
In before the Thomas Dolby video.
I have one girl who is a “feeling” type person.
She wants to do some kind of therapy. Occupational, Physical, or Respiratory.
The other girl is Math whiz. She would prefer to sit on a computer than almost anything else. That one wants to be an electrical engineer.
You can’t MAKE and kid, male or female into a math and science person. It’s there or it’s not and with females being the more “feeling” sex, most times, it’s just not there.
Which is why I went into medicine myself.
I overheard a couple of scientists discussing women the other day.
Dammit
It’s just not fair
and we must spend money to try and make it fair.
And while I’m at it, all little girls should play with toy soldiers and guns too
by law.
Secondly, what liberal feel good claptrap!
Reminds me of the big study on ‘gender bias’ against girls in school. The only evidence of this so called ‘bias’ was that they scored less well on standardized tests.
Despite scoring lower on tests of ‘academic ability’ girls on average got higher grades and more of them went on to college, and most of their teachers were women.
So the “bias” that girls faced in school was mostly FROM women, and was rather ineffective in that despite supposedly lower ‘academic ability’ they got higher grades and more went on to higher education. If that is bias, send some over here!
The women engineers I have worked with don’t last very long. One structural engineer was so unsure of herself I would give her somethng simple on Monday only to be told on Friday she couldn’t figure something out. She would not wet her pants if her pants were on fire without thinking about it for a day.
Back in Missouri, the saying used to be that at the University of Missouri - Rolla (the big science/tech/engineering school), there are tons of women, just not very many of them.
I graduated from an engineering school. I can still remember every girl that attended the school.
Very good comment, thanks.
Me too. Three of them in the entire Civil program. They were the first 3 with jobs, the black woman first to get hired.
“Right now, scientists are developing a better “TOMATO””. - Right Now - Van Halen
Jeepers, wasn’t Title IX enough?
Public school is mostly unbearable for little boys. They are biologically wired to be independent and hands-on. Fortunately, some teachers are taking the initiative to put variations in the lessons despite the tight federal and state curriculum.
An attractive girl attending Caltech can expect to be continuously courted by 10000 men on an hourly basis.
"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto, you're beautiful."
Coddling the little dears ‘independence’ and ‘hands on’ tendencies sounds like typical “education” reform.
They used to be a LOT more strict, regimented and disciplined. And education has declined from those times as academic rigor has steadily given way to making sure the poor little dears are not at all inconvenienced or made uncomfortable by the pace of the lesson plan and making sure their self esteem is high and that their impulses are catered to.
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