to benefit women more than men at this point...in the average elementary school, kids sit all day and learn to regurgitate information.
But research on learning styles indicates that more boys than girls are active/spatial learners who learn experimentally by doing, and less by reading/talking about it.
There is a reason that so many BOYS are taking ritalin or something similar these days, versus GIRLS, and it's not because the girls are being discriminated against. In fact, I would suggest that as female-dominated as the first 12 years of education are, it's entirely likely that boys are more likely to experience discrimination in the classroom than girls are as boys are forced to act like girls...
I have worked in a male-dominated profession for years, and my thought is this...either you have the chops for it or you don't. It hasn't bothered me to be one of the only women in my field, and if a guy has a problem wtih it, that's his problem.
I am quite tired, frankly, of women attempting to force accomodations that aren't reasonable. FFS...I have two kids, one male and one female. And I believed, firmly, until I had kids that nuture was the sole reason for the differences between men and women. I didn't buy baby dolls and barbies for my daughter because I didn't want her to feel that being a mommy was her only option or set that up as some sort of goal for her. We bought her doctor kits and briefcases and learning toys...Guess what? She still craved those dolls and babies and cuddly stuffed animals. And we bought my son plenty of stuffed animals and other things besides cars and soldiers and little jets, but guess what he was drawn to practically from birth?
Men and women are different, but that doesn't mean we aren't equal. It means we have different strengths. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have every opportunity to go into the hard sciences, adn that we shouldn't aggressively attack discrmination when we see it, but it does mean that the equality of women in the society cannot necessarily be measured by putting numbers on a paper and trying to fill quotas of women in certain fields, and then repressing men in order to accomplish that.
I do not support different standards for men and women in the same field, and I do not support forcing discrimination against men to ensure that women aren't discriminated against.
I think the crucial thing is here:
Quote:
If men do have a slight advantage in math ability, is the difference really biological, or are exceptional girls and women intimidated by cultural stereotypes and discouraged from cultivating their talents from an early age?
''If I had to guess, the real reason for the lack of women in the upper strata is that there's a comfort zone when you walk into a classroom and see a certain number of people like you," said Aronson, the New York University professor.
Female physicists and engineers almost always live their entire professional lives outside that comfort zone. Aronson and his colleagues have shown that many of the performance differences between men and women, and among races, can be erased with minor adjustments that influence test-takers' confidence.
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So what? Is life supposed to be easy and comfortable? The fact of the matter is that fewer women choose the hard sciences or construction work or law enforcement. Those that do choose these fields are going to have to, in some degree, accomodate the cultures of these fields and learn to fit.
And who needs to see people who look like them in order to know that you are doing the job you were mean to do? I never did.
Catz