From: blohman@coastside.net
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 20:55:59 -0800
Message-Id: <199711130455.UAA15586@poseidon.coastside.net>
To: "Pinhole Listserv" <pinhole@exploratorium.edu>
Subject: Re: Pinhole Daily Digest
This is an interesting discussion and I have to weigh in because you
mentioned the genetic aspect and sex. I think that it is very easy to
become muddled in our thinking in this area. We need to be quite sure about
what we do and don't know:
we do know that academic ability is partially genetic
we don't know how much is genetic or whether that is really knowable
we certainly don't know if interests are genetic
we don't know how sex relates to interests and academic ability
We don't know much!!
As teachers we have a responsibility to know that we don't treat everyone
equally. We don't even approach it. We vary our responses totally on the
individual student. It doesn't matter as much which sex has their hand up
in my classroom as which person. There are many students who don't need to
be called on in class. They need something altogether different. They need
a special look or a quiet comment to let them know that you know that they
are there and that you care (I know that I am skating close to corny but its
true) about what they are doing. Please notice that I didn't say anything
about sex here. It should not be the first, second or even third thing that
we think about. If we understood more about what causes the inequities then
we could address them but at this time I think that we can do more harm than
good by trying too hard to 'fix' things.
I have 2 daughters and a son. One daughter is a Senior at Caltech majoring
in Geology and the other daughter is a Sophomore Chemistry major at
Berkeley. I have no idea why they are both in physical sciences. I think
that its because my husband and I didn't get in their way and neither did
their teachers. We didn't expect their interests to lie in one narrow area.
We taught them that all areas of knowledge are worthwhile and so they could
travel in the direction that interested them most at the time. My son is
still in high school looking around.
All middle-aged women in mathematics or science can tell stories of the
discouragement that they received from family, teachers, and/or society. A
great deal of energy went into keeping us in the right places. We have only
begun to free girls; let's not speculate on where their interests or
abilities lie until we have real facts. Social change is not fast, it
requires generations. I refuse to believe that we must in any way damage or
limit young men in order to liberate young women.
At 11:03 PM 11/11/97 -0800, you wrote:
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: 11 Nov 1997 10:45:08 U
>From: Linda Shore <lindas@isaac.exploratorium.edu>
>Subject: Re: Pinhole Daily Digest
>
>Sure. Anyone who wants to send my e-mail regarding girls and science
>to other folks is welcome to do so. I'm flattered!
>
>Linda Shore
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: 11 Nov 1997 14:49:52 U
>From: Steven Eiger <eiger@montana.edu>
>Subject: Re: Pinhole Daily Digest
>
>Linda and others,
>
>I enjoyed your letter, and certainly would not argue with any part, as it
>is all fact. I just wonder what our response ought to be. My response has
>been to try and treat everyone equally. Some might argue that this will
>not do, as young boys seem to beg for more attention; and hence equal
>treatment may result in unequal treatment by other measures. I personally
>believe that genetics plays a far larger role than most people are willing
>to believe. This stems out of my interest in those bizarre twin studies
>which, to me, underlined the power of genes in determining behaviour; and
>the efforts of a handful of feminist women friends who were either
>scientists or mathemeticians and desperately tried to get their young
>daughters to take a more mechanical outlook on life, and failed. They all
>eventually learned to laugh at this, and to appreciate the creativity of
>their girl's play within a different mode. Likewise my son never would
>touch a rag doll, even at 6 months old. Thus I believe that it may be that
>women are not attracted to engineering, and that if we never reach parity
>there it is just fine. On the other hand I have seen a strong push to get
>women involved in my field, physiology and cellular biology, and at least
>thru the post-doctoral level, this has been a tremendous success. This
>strongly argues that women must have been discouraged in the past, and they
>just needed encouragement. I think that we ought to focus our attention on
>encouraging women to try for scientific fields, and ensure that they are
>paid equally, and generally try to be as fair as possible. But when after
>this is all done and there still is a paucity of women engineers, we should
>let it lie and say well there are also few men in nursing. The pay issue
>is not trivial for in some countries women make up most of the doctors, and
>the pay is low for them; we ought to pay people fairly; are doctors paid
>well here because they were men? I may be motivated to write this because
>of my son who is about to start school next year; I do not want him to be
>discriminated against for his sex. what if a large portion of what we are
>seeing now is genetic, we do something social to try and counteract this,
>and end up with a truly screwed up generation. I believe we ought to know
>more about all this before we proceed with any major social engineering
>experiments; or what will we say to the parents of the shy boys in the
>class. While there may be some differences in general, there will always
>be a tremendous overlap between the sexes in terms of shyness, interest,
>trying to please, etc. My suspicion is that teachers have treated both
>sexes fairly equally for a few years now, the equal acceptance by both
>sexes to our medical school here argues for that, and that the real
>problems lie in those damn TV shows or whatever is driving popular culture
>at present. The studies which show that if girls are treated differently,
>different outcomes occur are no doubt good, but they never ask what was the
>cost to the boys in the class, how did they turn out. We must choose a path
>which is acceptable to parents of all children. Studies may show that the
>little boys can handle or improve with a little bit of discrimination, but
>they haven't been done yet. Maybe the answer is single sex education for
>all. Steve Eiger
>
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: 11 Nov 1997 15:47:46 U
>From: suzanna@seismo.berkeley.edu (Suzy Loper)
>Subject: Gender and science
>
>I'm writing to express my disagreement with some of the views presented in
>Steven Eiger's response to Linda's letter about gender and science. (so
>the quotes below are from Mr. Eiger's letter)
>
>> (...) My suspicion is that teachers have treated both
>>sexes fairly equally for a few years now, the equal acceptance by both
>>sexes to our medical school here argues for that, and that the real
>>problems lie in those damn TV shows or whatever is driving popular culture
>>at present.
>
>I disagree, although in my case it is also just a suspicion and not based
>on evidence: but I know for a fact that I myself am not successful at
>treating both sexes equally, and that an outside observer to my science
>classroom could probably often find qualitative and quantitative
>differences in the ways I interact with boys and girls. This despite the
>fact that I am a woman, and that I am hyper-conscious of gender issues in
>science having graduated from college as the only woman physics major in my
>year. So I hypothesize that if I am not succeeding at eliminating gender
>bias from my classroom, other less hyper-sensitive people who claim they
>are are probably fooling themselves. I think the writer's point about
>"those damn TV shows" is a good one, and the problem is that we as teachers
>are not immune to the influences of popular culture. When someone refers
>to their doctor or a physicist they know and I say "Oh, what did HE say?"
>without being told it is a he, I could kick myself -- but hey, I was raised
>in this society too, and it's a long process to rid yourself of internal
>sexism and stereotypes.
>
>
>> (...) Thus I believe that it may be that
>>women are not attracted to engineering, and that if we never reach parity
>>there it is just fine. On the other hand I have seen a strong push to get
>>women involved in my field, physiology and cellular biology, and at least
>>thru the post-doctoral level, this has been a tremendous success. This
>>strongly argues that women must have been discouraged in the past, and they
>>just needed encouragement. I think that we ought to focus our attention on
>>encouraging women to try for scientific fields, and ensure that they are
>>paid equally, and generally try to be as fair as possible. But when after
>>this is all done and there still is a paucity of women engineers, we should
>>let it lie and say well there are also few men in nursing.
>
>Whether or not there are biological differences between men and women which
>affect their interests, the writer's experience in his own field
>(physiology) makes me wonder why he thinks engineering might be different.
>It's not "just fine" to never reach parity in engineering if we haven't
>eliminated the biases and roadblocks which are preventing women from
>entering this field. I might also argue that the reasons there are fewer
>men in nursing are pretty different than the reasons there are fewer women
>in engineering, so I don't think the first imbalance makes the second
>imbalance OK. I do agree that it is important for boys to see that nursing
>is an option available to them, just as it is important for girls to see
>that engineering is an option available to them,
>
>
> >I may be motivated to write this because
>>of my son who is about to start school next year; I do not want him to be
>>discriminated against for his sex. What if a large portion of what we are
>>seeing now is genetic, we do something social to try and counteract this,
>>and end up with a truly screwed up generation. I believe we ought to know
>>more about all this before we proceed with any major social engineering
>>experiments; or what will we say to the parents of the shy boys in the
>>class.
>
>I can understand the writer's concern, especially since he is a parent of a
>boy. And I recognize that "changes" designed to foster girls' interests
>may inadvertently affect boys: for example, in my own classroom when six
>boys and zero girls have their hands raised, and I've just called on three
>boys in a row, I will sometimes say, "I'd like to hear from some girls
>now," and I will ignore the boys or ask them to put their hands down, and
>wait for some girls to raise their hands. Now if one of those six boys who
>had their hand up was a very shy boy who usually doesn't speak in class, my
>little gender-biased intervention will have discriminated against him.
> But I have to say that we are so far from parity in most of the
>sciences, and the kinds of "social engineering" which are being practiced
>are so mild-mannered (e.g., providing female mentors for high school or
>college-aged women interested in the sciences), that I really don't think
>we are anywhere near having to worry about this. If MIT decided that from
>now on 80% of their admitted students would be female, and only 20% male,
>until gender parity was reached in engineering and physical sciences, maybe
>there would be cause for alarm. But I don't think we're there.
>
>
>Now that my tirade is over, I'd like to say that I appreciated the writer's
>thoughts, and think these are very healthy issues to have on the table,
>because I'm sure there are a lot of people who share his views.
>
>Suzy Loper
>
>
>
>
>- --
>Suzy Loper
>suzanna@seismo.berkeley.edu
>suzyl@socrates.berkeley.edu (not functional yet)
>
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: 11 Nov 1997 20:15:53 U
>From: Ian Bleakney <bleekers@ousd.k12.ca.us>
>Subject: Re: Gender and science
>
>This is a posting in response to Steve, Linda and Suzy's discussions on
>gender in science and science classrooms.
>
>I am a high school science instructor and definitely am conscious of the
>fact that the young men and women in my classroom do not receive equal
>treatment from me. This is even despite my extreme caution in this
>area.
>
>Steve Eiger was really making two arguments to account for the gender
>inequities in science in his posting - both the "nature" argument
>(genetic predisposition) and the "nurture" argument (Schools, TV etc).
>It is my belief that it is a little of both that gives us what we have
>today - gads of male engineers and physicists and a lot of female nurses
>and biologists. There is little or nothing we can do about the genetic
>differences between the sexes, but I believe there is a role to be
>played in shaping the environment we provide for our children. I am
>interested in learning about more ideas!
>
>It should also be noted that racial differences on this gender issue
>exist as well. For example, the African American females in my classes
>are quite confident and outspoken (to make a vast generalization). They
>are just as likely (if not more so) to answer a question in class or
>dominate group work.
>
>I am happy we are having this discussion.
>
>
>
>Ian Bleakney
>Oakland
>
>
>
>
>