Quote:
Originally Posted by LoSconosciuto";p="
The research does not suggest that women are stupid or inferior. In this one area, there is apparently a difference in how the genders "see" things, and that visual ability gives men the edge.
|
My wife is up in arms over this one, and she has an interesting perspective. She says there obviously are differences between men and women, but is it a difference in natural ability or a difference in learning styles? If classes cater to male learning styles, women will of course perform more poorly.
Further, she says that testing men and women ignores the effect of a lifetime of social pressure that discourages women from excelling in math and science, starting with "math isn't cool" and including the nature of many science classes (experiments, such as rocketry, designed to appeal to boys more than girls) and the nature of adolescent boys and girls (boys tending to be loud, assertive and dominating; women tending to be thoughtful but quiet).
She says if you really want to discover whether there is a natural gender gap in the sciences, first you have to cancel out those other effects. That means starting in elementary school with female-friendly science curriculum.
Her example of an ideal physics class: A single lecture but two different labs, each covering the same material but tailored to different learning styles. Crudely, one lab might teach how color vision works by studying camouflage on tanks while the other does the same thing by studying patterns in clothing. Let each child choose which lab they will attend. She figures each lab would probably be 80-90 percent one gender.