I am going to go out on a limb where I could easily get flamed. Let me
start with a few disclaimers.
(1) My data may be local and may not apply elsewhere.
(2) I have met, both professionally and as students in my classes, many
women scientists who are brilliant. The same is true for men. I have also
met, both professionally and as students in my classes, both women and men
who should not be in science.
(3) As always, generalizations are dangerous, and they never pertain to any
one person. They are simply generalizations.
(4) I am fairly sure I have observed what I have observed. I do not know
that I have the correct interpretation.
(5) Most of my observations come from students in my college classes.
However, another source is my son and his classmates who just graduated from
high school.
Let's eliminate the brilliant students of both sexes. Let's eliminate the
bottom-end of both sexes. Let's suppose I have now eliminated the top and
bottom 5% so I still have the middle 90% of students in high school.
Here we go...My Hypotheses:
(1) I think male students tend to hate working on something once they
understand it a little bit. Once a scientific idea seems to make sense
(perhaps only at a very basic level) there is no need to solve a battery of
problems to reinforce the idea or to help them explore the intricacies or
variations. "Please don't bore me with the details... I get the picture."
This drives me up a wall because I know full well they only have a glimpse
of the picture, and there is a lot they are missing. But they want to tune
out the details so strongly that if I (or the high-school teacher) have the
reputation for forcing them to do work beyond the point where they say "I
get the picture," then I do nothing but turn them off and turn them away
from science.
Females tend to thrive on the details. Some might call this "busy work" but
think that is too simplistic and sounds too much like a put-down. However,
the "busy work" can indeed be a problem for them. They might "not see the
forest for the tress" and they might get the impression that doing well on
"busy work" means they are good scientists.
I often see male students who have a very good grasp of the basic idea of an
experiment (I observe this in their lab-report introduction or conclusion),
but they do a poor job of plugging through the analysis. But I also see
many females who neatly plug through the analysis (sometimes correctly,
sometime not) but their lab report introduction or conclusion shows they
don't have a clue as to what this whole experiment was about.
Conclusion: I have a hard time getting males to do work they perceive as
"busy work" even though I know they will benefit greatly from a little bit
of this type of work. Forcing it on them causes them to dislike science.
On the other hand, females like science better if I give them lots of small
projects to do. They manage their time well and complete lots of "busy
work" without breaking a sweat.
Repeat... these are generalizations gained from 22 years of college
teaching. There are many exceptions, but there is no doubt in my mind that
I see this pattern.
(2) I think some practices by some high school teachers exacerbate this
problem. These practices consist of (2a) often assigning more "busy work"
than is necessary. (2b) Allowing students to do "extra-credit-work" to
compensate for poor exam performance.
I am going to relate some things that happened to my son in high school. I
have checked with high-school teachers and other high-school students, so I
know what I am relating is true.
Teachers often have such high pressure for giving good grades that they tend
to assign a fair amount of easy work, or a fair amount of extra credit work,
so the student can "earn" an A in the course even though the in-class exams
are only passed at the B or C level. In general, this motivates any student
willing to play the "busy-work" game... and I think this is more often
females than males.
My son (David) never did "optional work" because he got A grades on the
exams, and didn't see any point in wasting his time with the busy work.
Occasionally he misjudged and received an A- or B+ because he thought he was
going to do better on an exam than he did. Because he did not have a
surplus of "extra credit" his grade-card grades reflect his exam scores,
which I maintain would reflect his actual knowledge base. His overall HS
GPA for four years was 3.75 because he goofed-off considerably as a freshman
and only had about a 3.3 that year. His junior and senior years his GPA was
3.95 (for just those years).
In his graduating class of 100 students, David was not in the top 10%. He
was not even in the top 25%. In fact, he would not have been in the top 25%
even if he had a GPA of 3.99. Why? His graduating class had 26 students
with 4.00 GPA. Of these 26 students, about 20 were female and 6 were male.
To the best of my knowledge my son's ACT score was higher than all but five
or six of these students. My son always got the highest grade or within the
first two or three highest on exams whereas many of these 4.00 students (who
were mostly female) were getting exam grades of C. But they did tons of
"extra-credit busy work" to bring their grades up to an A.
During his senior year David took part in "post-secondary education" which
gave him release time from high school to take college courses. This is a
state-sponsored program in Ohio. Several of his high-school colleagues also
did this. David took Calculus 1, Calculus 2, Computer Programming at
Bluffton College. He got grades of A in all of these courses and his
teachers told me he was the highest student in two of them, and the second
high in the other. These were regular college courses populated primarily
with college students. There would have been more students with 4.00 GPA in
David's high-school graduating class except a few of the 4.00 students also
took college courses and did not get grades of A. If you elect this program
in high school, your college grades count as part of your official high
school record. So when David took college courses it improved his GPA.
When his post-secondary colleagues (mostly female) took college courses it
hurt their GPA. The college teachers told me that the high school females
were always asking if there was some extra-credit work they could do to
raise their grades. Had the females who got B grades in college courses not
taken college courses, there would have been over 30 students with GPA of
4.00 in David's graduating class. That's over 30% of the class, and most of
these were females.
Obviously there is something wrong with grading and/or with grade inflation
in our local school. But upon talking with teachers in other schools, I
find this is not uncommon. Giving extra-credit work, which is primarily
easy (and therefore "busy-work") is not uncommon, and females tend to take
advantage of it more then males.
You may detect some "sour grapes" because of my son's experience. There is
no doubt some of this, but not too much. David will attend Bluffton College
tuition free because I teach here. He will live in the dorm so all I have
to pay is room and board. However, had he wanted to attend another school,
I would be much more bitter. To get good scholarships a student often needs
all three of... good ACT/SAT score, good HS GPA, and top 10% of graduating
class. Because David was not in the top 10% of his class (not even the top
25%) he did not qualify for top-level scholarships at any college that uses
class rank for determining scholarships.
I am more concerned about the females who received exam grades of C in
chemistry and physics, ACT scores of 23-25, but had HS GPA of 4.00... and
they did it by plugging away a lots of extra-credit work. Some of these
students loved chemistry, physics, math even though they were getting C
grades on exams. The teachers (mostly male) were very friendly to these
females and catered to them by giving them lots of extra-credit
possibilities. Some of these teachers even bragged about how many females
were in their classes and what good grades they were getting. Some of these
students say they will major in chemistry, or physics, or pre-med when they
get to college. They are in for a surprise. And some of them will knock on
my door and ask me if I can give them an extra assignment or project that
will help them improve their physics grades.
Repeat... there will be many males in the very same situation. But my
experience says there will be more females in this situation than males.
It is obvious that students take courses, and choose major fields of study,
based upon whether they had a good experience and/or got good grades in
those fields. We certainly don't want to be negative and strive to turn
students away from science. But neither do we want to sugar-coat it and try
to attract students into science only to have them find that science careers
are not as easy as they thought. Are we dangling a science carrot that is
too attractive... particularly for females?
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817