Educational brainstorming
John Meyer (john_meyer@geocities.com)
Wed, 06 May 1998 13:46:09 -0600
I've been watching this debate for some time now, and I even wrote a
research paper about it, and I have a few thoughts as to the equity or
inequity of boys and girls.
First off, I noticed that a lot of the push was towards getting girls
into technology, which is fine by me. Having a girl in technology, having
everybody in technology, takes off a little bit of the stress in working
with technologically illeterate people.
But I don't see many feminists shouting about getting boys into more of
the humanities, which are suffering in terms of being cut out of funding
and such. With boys having a disproportionate percentage in the illiteracy
group, and with the dire need of humanities in school, you would think that
we would be pushing humanities as well. Also, a majority of the teachers I
had were female. Should we demand more male teachers? And how would we
get more males into teaching? Apparantly this is not a top priority in
this technophile society.
Also, it will take a special kind of person to succeed in technology,
and I am not talking about male or female. Let's take programming,
although that is only a small part of the whole technological puzzle.
When you program for 50 hours a week, looking at a monitor with your eyes
focused like a laser, trying to find a single bug in your program that
keeps it from working, you find out a true test of endurance. If
feminists want more female programmers, that's fine; just remember that
putting a person in programming and having them survive for long are two
different ideals.
My own belief is that in order for education to thrive, we need a return
to the "Renaissance Man/Woman". We need men and women who are interested
in a varity of topics, not just "specializing". And with the turnover and
layoff rates in the economy, a lot of people are going to have to broaden
their horizons as well. So, what do you think?
john_meyer@geocities.com