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Re: #6: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING (final excerpt!)




Following up on Jane's postings on WWK, I would like to make the
following observations...and maybe to start a bit of a debate on the
rapidly expanding "constructivist orthodoxy" that seems to be taking over
the schools of "education".

First, I want to challenge the assumption that the primary reason
for the low participation of women in majors like engineering, physics,
and math is because of the way these disciplines are taught. If this were
so, then we would expect to see similarly low rates of participation in
these majors everywhere that they are taught. However, it is not
universally true that there is a low participation by women in these
majors. In some countries, such as France and Hungary, the participation
by women in these majors is much higher than it is in the United States.
In France the percentage of women who are professional physicists is about
25% and in Hungary the percentage of women who major in math exceeds 50%.

This suggests that the low percentage of women majoring in these
disciplines in the U.S. (and many other countries) is the result of the
way young women are socialized before they reach college. While I would
agree with Jane that better teaching and a more supportive atmosphere in
our college level courses will help to attract more women to physics, I
also feel that to a large extent the game has been lost before this cohort
of the population ever reaches college.

Our schools of "education" do an excellent job of instilling
atrocious attitudes about mathematics and science in prospective K-12
teachers here in the U.S. These teachers in turn do an excellent job of
killing interest in math and science for most students by the time they
are out of middle school. In addition, they are very effective in letting
young women know that math and science are not careers for them.

It is my contention that these problems of socialization are
completely independent of pedagogical philosophy. All the constructivism,
objectivism, or instructivism in the world will not change things until we
start to instill "can do" rather than "can't do" attitudes in our young
people.

My two-cents-worth.

Mark

Dr. Mark H. Shapiro
Physics Department
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 6866
Fullerton, California 92834-6866

Phone: ++ (714) 278-3884 PCS: ++ (714) 350-3575
Fax: ++ (714) 278-5810
e-mail: mshapiro@fullerton.edu