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I am going to go out on a limb where I could easily=== message truncated ===
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