In schools today, it is standard procedure to not push boys.

That’s a pity.

I am surprised they have not started making them sew needle point samplers yet.

TheSitRep on July 25, 2008 at 10:17 AM

In my highschool days (schools were the only good thing in communism because nothing was optional) we, the girls, had to file a hammer from a block of metal, then make the handle…finish the product. Boys had to learn how to cook some things, and how to sew buttons on shirts. Girls had to learn math, like the boys did. Physical ed was separate and not equal. Sciences and humanities subject were totally equal.

I’m eternally thankful for that phase of my education.

Emilie H. on July 25, 2008 at 4:01 PM

Oh, and I was talking about standardized tests… you can’t really perform an experiment on a test…

Emilie H. on July 25, 2008 at 4:01 PM

If you teach physics as pure theory? Yep, pretty much all word problems…

IF however, you teach physics from an experimental practical viewpoint, kind of like I learned in the Navy… where you had to USE it and there was a concrete real answers?

Hmmm… just had an interesting thought… historicly Men were hunters, women gatherers (which is still pretty much true in how we shop)… The whole math everyday math concept teaches a bunch of concepts at various times, revisiting them to get to higher concepts…

Old math was taught ONCE in depth, and you were expected to master that concept before moving on to the next…

New Math? you gather concepts, and put them together… ole Math, you hunted it down and killed it…

Have to think on this one a bit.

Word problems bring in reading comprehension to the problem… somthing at which girls trend a bit better than boys.

So it is NOT a pure math question at that point, like we used to have on standardized tests.

Pure math is 2+2=?

Than why aren’t we seeing huge numbers of girls in physics? Afterall, physics involves a lot of modeling the situations described. Pretty much all word problems.

Emilie H. on July 25, 2008 at 11:51 AM

Word problems bring in reading comprehension to the problem… somthing at which girls trend a bit better than boys.

So it is NOT a pure math question at that point, like we used to have on standardized tests.

Pure math is 2+2=?

Todays math is: Pedro earned 2 Pesos by sweating in the hot sun at a job White folks won’t do, and after working long and hard for ths evil capatalist master Raul has 2 Pesos… so how many Pesos do the two of them have together for the evil Capatalist nongreen business man to steal?

— it wasn’t pleasant to have to overcome it.
redaerobaby on July 25, 2008 at 1:12 PM

But you did. Good info. Thanks.

I never made any such assumptions about one person with whom I attended Tufts, Cornell, Vanderbilt, USC or the city colleges that were unlucky enough to have me.

The Race Card on July 25, 2008 at 11:41 AM

I think the places where you went to school might have a lot to do with the attitudes toward women in engineering. In the South, a lot of people have very reactionary attitudes toward the sweeping political correctness that has infected the public sphere. They feel like PC attitudes, quotas, affirmative action, etc are being shoved down their throats, and they resent it. So, there’s a knee-jerk suspicion of those who are perceived as quota-fillers. That is the kind of attitude that I encountered initially from many other students. It faded as I demonstrated my capabilities, but still — it wasn’t pleasant to have to overcome it.

Sociobiology is passé dude.

The Race Card on July 25, 2008 at 12:26 PM

Perhaps, but biology isn’t.

Women are more nurturing and this goes well with the fact that they have milk giving breasts suited for the purpose of feeding infants.

What percentage of their lives is spent breastfeeding? I suspect most women have more men suckling at their boobs than babies.

Sociobiology is passé dude.

You have a young couple, one of them is going to raise the kid, the other build the house. Would it be a surprise to learn women are better equipped to raise children and men better at building a house?

…………TheSitRep, you are a sexist.

I know.

I will say this…in the hard sciences in college, it’s still hugely populated by white males. We would jokingly refer to the one woman (or less) a year in the physics graduate program as “the token female”…not to denigrate their ability, but more of a whine/complaint that there weren’t enough women to hit on after colloquiums and to make “study groups” with.

ynot4tony2 on July 25, 2008 at 9:56 AM

Why are women who excel at math, and the men who love them, getting so upset? It’s just statistics, and it doesn’t mean men are better at math than women. It means that in a room with 20 people who all have the same math capability that a majority of them will be men. If your lonely math geek, then this isn’t good news, but if your lonely math geekette looking for geek love then it’s a very good equation.

I read this article yesterday, and the results appear to be based on the “no child left behind” testing, and I have heard that this testing is so overbearing that schools have resorted to “cheating” such as teaching the test. I don’t place much faith in results based on that system.

Todays math is given in the form of word problems. All of the tests now test this way.

Wouldn’t word prolems make the test harder though? Maybe I’m thinking about a different type of word problem than you, but with word problems, not only do you have to solve the equation/evaluate the integral/whatever, but you also have to set up the equation/integral/etc. so it correctly models the situation the problem describes.

But I have yet to be in a class wherein I thought someone was wholly unqualified to be there.

There is always the possibility that I wasn’t in on the joke because I was the joke.

//self-assault

Throughout college, people routinely assumed that many female engineering students were there simply to satisfy a quota — even though that was not true. So, in addition to having to face the sheer isolation of being one of but a handful of girls in the engineering college, we ALSO had to prove that we DID in fact have brains, and weren’t just there to satisfy some quota.

I never made any such assumptions about one person with whom I attended Tufts, Cornell, Vanderbilt, USC or the city colleges that were unlucky enough to have me.

I busted my ass for grades and applied myself with consistent rigor to my studies, volunteering and working. It seems to me that most people with whom I attended school also worked hard. I really don’t get people who assume otherwise.

Athletics and affirmative-action have lowered standards. But I have yet to be in a class wherein I thought someone was wholly unqualified to be there.

The fact that girls are doing much better then boys in Academics doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that in the past 20-30 years education has been geared towards, and dominated by, women, has it?
I’m sure it hasn’t.

madne0 on July 25, 2008 at 11:25 AM

Not women (or men) per se dominating but the political outlook of such person.

Jaibones on July 25, 2008 at 10:00 AM

Jailbones, first of all “STFU?” You don’t like something and that is your response? You must be a liberal.

Secondly, I am a female, and a school teacher. I can tell you straight up, compared to twenty years ago, the curriculum and tests have been dumbed down. Sorry, that’s just a fact and I don’t take pleasure in reporting it. As a teacher, I am ashamed at how our schools have become political indoctrination centers that teach kids what to think and not how to think for themselves.