Today I read of a “resignation” at Harvard that really was a “firing—” apparently a simmering issue that was swept under the rug during last year’s scrutiny of Harvard’s president after his unsupported biased remarks about women in science. Apparently, Summers is feeling less controversial these days, and therefore felt it was time to let the axe fall. While it was spun as a resignation, Harvard’s own newspaper “scooped the big boys” and revealed what they say really happened. (http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/the_crimson_whips_the_big_bo.php)
I find it interesting that what started out last year as a fierce debate about the abilities of women in science has died down to a barely-audible whisper. In fact, the tide has turned, in some respects, with the recent revelations that boys are rapidly falling behind girls at all levels of education. It used to be that girls led the race until high school, where various forms of social pressure and discrimination helped reverse things. Today, it appears that this is no longer true. Now schools are going to be asked to examine teaching methods to see why boys are no longer succeeding in school the way they did before. (The Trouble With Boys - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com)
What do these two stories have to do with each other? Interestingly, in a non-scientific poll at her university, my daughter and her classmates found that despite the larger percentage of women pursuing their particular major, that the amount of university teaching placements still were going, in overwhelming numbers to men. It is almost as it was happening on purpose. (Can that be?)
As I have said before, educational success should not be based on gender, and assumption about either are wrong. The fact is that, in our “one size fits all” society we are swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other, teaching-method wise, dropping methods that may have worked for some students in the past, for new methods that work for other students today. It seems logical that, eventually, someone is going to say, Let’s teach each child in the way he needs to learn!
Which brings me back to Harvard, Lawrence Summers, and his remarks about females have some sort of genetic inability to excel in the sciences. It is time to put his beliefs to rest. Not because I said so, not because girls seems to be pulling ahead of boys in school, and not because as one pundit said, our “corsets are too tight.” It is time to put this thinking aside because, not only is it counterproductive, it is wrong. Scientifically wrong. And the study has been released that shows it.
The December 2005 issue of American Psychologist contains an article entitled “Sex Difference in Intrinsic Aptitude for Math and Science?: A Critical Review.” (PsycARTICLES - American Psychologist - Vol 60, Iss 9)The abstract, verbatim:
“Are there innate cognitive differences that make males superiour to females in mathematics and science? Males superiority is not substantiated in studies of infant perception and reasoning about objects and their relationships, nor in developmental studies of numerical and geometric reasoning, nor by SAT-M scores, which have been demonstrated to overestimate the abilities of boys relative to girls. Gender imbalance on science faculties are not due to innate cognitive abilities.”
The study results are well written, with impressive references. One can only hope that it will help shift the focus away from genetic inabilities toward gaps and failures in both society and the educational system.
And here is the most interesting tidbit about this critical review – it is written by Elizabeth S. Spelke, from the Psychology Department at, you guessed it, Harvard. I certainly hope she is not next on the “resignation” list.
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