More Gender and Books
Check out Sara Mead's post at The Quick and the Ed on the David Brooks column I wrote about yesterday. Beyond Brooks in particular, here's the important broader point:
The real irritant about this piece, for me, is the way Brooks lightly tosses out some pop culture factoids about brain research and the proceeds to make sweeping recommendations for the education system based on them. Never mind that the full body of research is a lot more complicated than Brooks makes it out to be (check out this excellent book by Diane Halpern if you want an honest picture here), that the practical implications of many findings are far from clear (what would the practical implications of differences between little girls' and little boys' crayon color preferences be, anyway?), or that variations within each gender are typically much greater than the difference between the averages for each gender.
It's become weirdly fashionable to be "daring" and start flinging random factoids about gender and neurology around in a pretty thoughtless way. Realistically, though, while this research is often interesting I think it tends not to have meaningful policy implications because the differences aren't big enough or systematic enough to justify sweeping segregation or whatever. The exceptions to that rule -- say, organizing high-level basketball teams where women are genuinely systematically too small to compete with men -- tend to be both fairly trivial and ridiculously obvious.
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The real irritant about this piece, for me, is the way Brooks lightly tosses out some pop culture factoids about [X] research and the proceeds to make sweeping recommendations [about policy Y]
And there you have the outline of pretty much every David Brooks column ever written!
June 13, 2006 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's be fair. To single out David Brooks for this kind of behavior is to ignore that a LOT of the writing in the NYT these days exhibits similar "logic." Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd are the most visible offenders, but really, sweeping generalizations based on half-assed anecdotes have become the Times' stock-in-trade.
June 13, 2006 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Realistically, though, while this research is often interesting I think it tends not to have meaningful policy implications because the differences aren't big enough or systematic enough to justify sweeping segregation or whatever.
Of course it has meaningful policy implications; the reason why this isn't obvious is because most of the policy implications are negative rather than positive, i.e. that we ought not to take action rather than that we take action in a particular way.
For example, it may not be realistic to try to equalize the numbers of men and women in certain scientific professions. That is not to say that we should prevent women from going into them, but that we needn't have programs trying to increase the percentages. Nor should we be disturbed if men dominate the professorships in certain fields.
"You say I'm a dreamer. We're two of a kind. Looking for some perfect world that we both know that we'll never find." - Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"
June 13, 2006 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
A hundred years ago, everyone knew that women couldn't write great literature. This wasn't something that some people believed- it was scientific fact.
Now of course, we know that women are actually very good at literature. It's science that they can't do. The amusing thing about this is that the men who say that women can't do science can't do science themselves.
June 13, 2006 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
(a) No one is saying that women "can't do" science or math. The question is whether statistically on average men are better at these fields.
(b) No one is saying that girls shouldn't be encouraged in science, math, etc. The question is simply whether we should make acheiving absolute parity a goal, or whether we should just encourage people to reach their potential and then let the chips fall where they may.
"You say I'm a dreamer. We're two of a kind. Looking for some perfect world that we both know that we'll never find." - Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"
June 13, 2006 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
No one is saying that women "can't do" science or math. The question is whether statistically on average men are better at these fields.
Really? I thought the question was whether or not women, as a group and individually, were being discriminated against in the sciences.
No one is saying that girls shouldn't be encouraged in science, math, etc.
Of course not. Barbie is just saying that "math class is tough." Way back in the dark ages of 1992.
The question is simply whether we should make acheiving absolute parity a goal, or whether we should just encourage people to reach their potential and then let the chips fall where they may.
I thought the question was simply whether or not we were prepared to do something about the strange fact that most girls underestimate their math and science aptitude. Or do something about the fact that girls get treated worse than boys do in math and science classes.
You need to stop focusing so much on idealized outcomes of parity or unproven theories of innate difference. I think we can all agree that it's weird that girls who are good at math and science don't think they're good at it. It's a bizarre failing of our educational system, and one which anyone interested in making it work better should be interested in addressing.
Unless, of course, you're threatened by the notion of a fair playing field for women. You wouldn't work in the sciences, would you?
June 15, 2006 8:25 AM | Reply | Permalink