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Quoting Larry Smith <larry.smith@SNOW.EDU>:_______________________________________________
At 9:05 AM -0500 1/6/05, Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:
On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:59:55 -0800 Larry Woolf <Larry.Woolf@GAT.COM>
writes:
3. A student wires a series circuit that includes a
block of rubber and a light bulb. She states that
she does not expect the light bulb to light up
when current is applied to the circuit. Which of
the following best describes her statement?
*** There appears to be a built-in bias with regard to gender here.
Do you consider it gender bias when equal numbers of questions refer to
females and males? If so, what is your definition of gender bias?
Ah! A telling point.
interesting,Why is it necessary to identify the student as a female. Other wording
could be substituted to avoid this gender bias (which is disallowed in
California).
Other wording could be used, this is true; but would it be as
personal, and engaging? Would it be an "fairer"?...
Larry
I grew up using "he", "him", "his" to refer to a person of unspecified
gender.
That was grammatically correct, according to the experts. Then it became
politically incorrect to be gramatically correct! ;-)
Remember when some people were trying to introduce gender-neutral
pronouns, like
"heesh"? Gag. Sorry, please pardon my language.
I like Larry Smith's solution. In fact, that's exactly what I do on all
my
tests, homework assignments, quizzes, letters to the editor, ... . I
alternate
using the male and female pronouns. (No, not within a given problem!)
It's
great fun: One question may start out "A student ...." and later uses the
pronoun "he", the next question refers to "an astronaut" and it turns out
the
astronaut is a "she". I generally start out with a "she", because it has
more
shock value. Maybe this would be illegal in California, I don't know, I
don't
live there. But people frequently tell me that they appreciate my
gender-equal
approach. So I'm in favor of equal time for both genders. But honestly,
_gender-free_ language is awkward and distracting. Let's get real.
Incidentally, compare to French, Spanish and the other Romance languages,
where
everything, every noun is explicitly either masculine or feminine. This
really
is more a linguistic thing rather than a sexist attitude. Although I
must admit
to a few difficulties when I studied German and learned that a child or a
young
women was (grammatically) an "it".
Thinking about it, I'm starting to think that legislation on this sort of
thing
is linguistic bigotry. We Americans are too prone to not look beyond our
own
country, our own language, our own nose.
Must run, enjoy your weekend!
Ken
----------------------
Ken Caviness
Physics @ Southern
Collegedale, TN 37315
caviness@southern.edu
Tel: 423.236.2856
Fax: 423.236.1669
----------------------