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



Dewey,

In response to your first message I would make the following
comments and observations:

(1) One only has to do a quick search on the words
"constructivist" and "constructivism" in Alta Vista to see the extent that
"constructivist" thought has dominated curriculum design and development
in the U.S.

(2) In some of the countries where the participation of women in
math, science and engineering is high, the primary and secondary school
systems are rigidly controlled from a central authority, and teaching
hasn't changed a whole lot over the years.

(3) My argument regarding schools of education is an attempt to
understand why the "game is lost" in K-12. I would agree with you that
most (not all) of the prospective K-12 teachers who enter college come in
with poor attitudes about math and science. My experience has been that
the faculty in our majors that do most of the "training" of K-12 and
particularly K-8 teachers (here at Fullerton it "Child Development", which
now serves as an avatar for the old "Education" major (now illegal in
California), do a really good job of confirming and extending the
anti-math, anti-science attitudes of the prospective teachers. We do
produce some secondary school science teachers who have quite positive
attitudes towards math and science. The problem is that most of the real
damage, in my opinion, is done before students even get to high school.

I tend to disagree with your characterization of the motivation
for the "filtering" that takes place in the lower grades. I doubt that
many K-8 teachers approach science and math teaching with the idea that
they need to filter out all but the best students. Instead, they push the
notion that the only students who NEED to know math and science are those
who are going on to careers in these fields, and that the only people who
would ever consider such careers are 'brainy nerds". The filtering takes
place, in my view, because only the strongest, most highly motivated
students who know that they will need math and science (because they want
to be an engineer or a doctor) persist in a system of education that does
its best to devalue achievement.

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