Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar From: al885@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Pinzone) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: SAT scores - sexist? Message-ID: <9104111902.AA17809@cwns10.INS.CWRU.Edu> Date: 11 Apr 91 19:02:47 GMT Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 94 Approved: ambar@ora.com Re: From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) >Humm...where to start. Okay, first, how do you know that the SATs are >male-view-biased? Did you just hear it around somewhere? If so, the >first question might be whether or not they are biased. I don't know if the SAT's are biased. As a matter of fact, my question was that since there was such controversy over the topic of the SAT's being sexist, I wanted to know if anyone had some hard proof. >I don't think this is too applicable to high school students, though, >and they are the ones who will take the SAT. Most high school jobs >are not particularly difficult, and the males in high school are >certainly not doctors, scientists (well...), lawyers, etc, yet...they >may not even have decided what careers to pursue yet. This is more true today, however, when I was in High School, math beyond the 9th grade was technically not required. However, I needed to take English till the 12th grade and "Social studies" until the 11th. However, when my brother graduated (he is just two years younger than me) he had more restrictions placed upon him. I would also agree that the careers are not usually made in high school. However, boys do tend to stick with the math/science types of courses more than the girls. I will never forget when I was in the 3rd grade, my teacher, a woman who at the time was fighting for equal rights in the area of the Greek Orthodox church, took us into the hall and showed us a model of the solar system that was hanging from the ceiling. She made a remark to the effect "Usually girls don't like science...don't you agree?" followed by a series of nods by the girls. I definitely feel that this was an indirect push away from the sciences based on popular conceptions of male-female psychology. >As an engineering student, you probably did not take many higher-level >humanities courses. I studied CS, so I only had to take a few >humanities, social science, arts, etc, courses, and they were all >fairly low-level, introductory stuff. I have some friends who are >studying art, literature, psychology, etc, and the upper-level courses >are much more interesting and much more difficult. I'm glad you brought up that point. You may have only taken introductory classes on such topics as Philosophy, history, etc... however, they were the same classes students in those fields would have taken in their beginning education. In the physics department, you will probably find that there are two sets of classes, ones for science majors (such as engineering) and one for non-science majors. This does not occur in the liberal arts department. I did not take an English class, or history class, or philosophy class that was different than any liberal arts major just because I am an enginnering or science student. You need to look at it this way. "I have read some Shakespeare" is basically equivalent to "I know Newton's three laws of motion". It's the basic common knowledge of the sciences that are absent in these liberal arts programs. >How do you know that they are choosing not to? You haven't shown this >in your article. Can you give something to support this? You are absolutely right. Here is an interesting example: There was a collage in California that was accused of sex discrimination because it admitted a considerably low amount of female students over male ones. When the collage investigated which departments were the most discriminatory, they found each department entered a HIGHER amount of women than men. What happened was that the majority of men were applying for math and science courses and the women, non-science courses. In this particular university, it was much easier to be accepted under a science degree. The moral of the story was that you can't average averages... but it also indirectly showed that women really don't like to take science based courses (as anyone at Polytechnic, SUNY Farmingdale, NCC, and SUNY StonyBrook will tell you). It was also ironic since the reason for the whole mess was from a lack of understanding of basic math! :-) >Are you interested in the answer to the question? Would you act >differently if you knew the answer? Your posting seems to have gone >from a question about why SATs are gender-biased (without any proof >that they are) to an assertion that women choose "easier" jobs >(without any proof that they do). What exactly are you getting at? What I'm getting at is that I want to know what the answer to these accusations that the SAT is supposedly biased. The so-called proof seems pretty reverse-discriminatory when you think about it. "Women have better grades, so the test is biased" could easily translate into "Women are smarter then men, so therefore, men shouldn't be doing better than women." I just think there has to be a "bigger picture" to all this. -- Just on the border of your waking mind, there lies another time, where darkness and light are one. And as you tread the halls of sanity, you feel so glad to be unable to go beyond. I have a message from another time..... - ELO: "Prologue" from the "Time" album -- Daicon IV Opening Animation gpinzone@george.poly.edu