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[Physltest] [Phys-L] Re: California standards test in physics



"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".



You forgot to mention the plural pp is sie the same as the singular for
a female. (The formal tho is Sie.),

and the plural article is the same as the singular feminine article!
(inter alia)

bc, only one quarter of Deutsch and a month in Dresden.

Ken Caviness wrote:

cut

Other wording could be used, this is true; but would it be as interesting,
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
----------------------



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