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From: Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no (Steinar Haug)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: SAT scores - sexist?
Message-ID: <1991Apr10.203325*Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no>
Date: 11 Apr 91 03:33:25 GMT
References: <1991Apr9.203133.2551@aero.org>
Sender: news@ugle.unit.no
Organization: DELAB SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway.
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Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
In-Reply-To: al885@cleveland.freenet.edu's message of 9 Apr 91 20:31:33 GMT
Originator: nadel@aerospace.aero.org

i dont want to stoop to flaming, but i resent the implication in the middle of
your article about liberal arts courses being "easy" in comparison to 
engineering/math/science oriented courses.  i got good marks all around in 
high school, and was generally second in my class in science courses, second
to a fellow who was a genius at sciences.  when i hit college i took a lot of
liberal arts courses because they interested me, and i busted my butt on a lot
of them.  did well in calculus (almost) without opening the book, but had to
sweat over a russian history survey course to get a decent grade.  i think it's
all a matter of difference in individual talent, not in the fundamental
difficulty of the course.  there are certainly fundamentally easy lib arts
courses... "cake courses", we called them... but not all liberal arts courses
fall into that area, by a longshot.  

it almost seems you are trying to veil a fundamental prejudice.  women do
better in high school and college, despite getting lower SAT scores... so i
must now prove men are still smarter by claiming they take harder courses!
is that your motivation?  or do you have some measure the rest of us dont
that shows the objective difficulty of a course rather than a reflection of
the particular student's abilities?

i'm not sure if i believe the statistics about the difference in SAT scores
opposing the difference in actual scholatic achievement.  i've heard this 
"fact" a lot, but generally by word of mouth, and i take what i hear with even
more skepticism than what i read.  if it is true that there is a difference,
i can think of one alternative explanation right off the bat, that the SAT is
a poor predictor of scholastic achievement.  

to finish this off on a lighter note, that's about what i was thinking when
i took it 8-)

-cindy kandolf
 cindy@solan.unit.no
 trondheim, norway