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



At 10:31 AM 1/2/98, Mark Shapiro wrote:
Following up on Jane's postings on WWK, I would like to make the
following observations...
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.

A while back (last year or so maybe?) I seem to recall a woman Italian
physicst (whose name I forget) making a similar argument in a letter to the
editor in Physics Today. As I remember she claimed that the percentage of
women in physics in Italy was much closer to 50% than here. Her thinking
was that this was a result of the fact that nearly ALL college prep
youngsters were required to take several years of math and science at the
high school level. So no one was treated differently or singled out as a
nerd because they were taking math or science; they all HAD to take it. She
claimed that as a result there existed little or no stigma associated with
being a science nerd in Italian high schools.

A second benefit of this educational system (she claimed) was that everyone
who made it through the college prep program in high school had the
background for doing science in college, unlike here where you can get to
college with a weak science/math background and as a result be very limited
in what careers you are qualified to pursue without large amounts of
remeadial work. In Italy (she said) you could wait and decide when you got
to college to do physics (or not) because you automatically had a
sufficient background, even if you had not thought of persuing it
perviously.

I would guess (but don't know for sure) that a disadvantage of such a
system would be to reduce the number of people going to college since not
everyone could make it through a rigorous science/math college prep
program.

This all sounds plausible to me but I don't have any facts to back it up
with- nor any idea how to adapt it to the US situation...

kyle

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kyle forinash 812-941-2390
forinas@indiana.edu
Natural Science Division
Indiana University Southeast
New Albany, IN 47150
http://Physics.ius.indiana.edu/
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