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: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: SAT scores - sexist? Message-ID: Date: 13 Apr 91 02:19:44 GMT References: <9104111902.AA17809@cwns10.INS.CWRU.Edu> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: Natural Language Incorporated Lines: 145 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <9104111902.AA17809@cwns10.INS.CWRU.Edu> al885@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes: 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. Okay. You asked "why are they biased," rather than "are they biased," which is what confused me. However, if there is so much controversy that you are aware of, what is it that people/articles/etc. have had to say about it? Re: From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) >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, This was not the case at my university; I don't know what is true for others. They did have several different departments which offered different levels of computer classes (CS, Information Science, Business Information and Computing Systems), but it was a difference of direction rather than difficulty. I'm still curious as to what the relevance of this to the SATs is, though. ones for science majors (such as engineering) and one for non-science majors. This does not occur in the liberal arts department. It didn't occur in *your* liberal arts department. My university allowed people to test out of lower-level math and English courses (in fact, if you got a good score on the relevant SAT test, that would get you out). Since they did not have two different (major/non-major) groups of classes, I would think this had a similar effect, of allowing the people who were skilled in the subject to begin with the more advanced classes. 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. It is not at all the same. "I have read some Shakespeare" is equivalent to something like "I read a chapter of a physics textbook." Neither of these implies that there was any knowledge or understanding gained. If you were actually *studying* Shakespeare, or physics, you would supposedly actually learn something about the subject. In physics, you might initially learn some basic applications of Newton's laws. In literature, you might study the way Shakespeare used words, or the structure of the plays, or whatever (not having studied it, I can't come up with too many examples, but the idea is that you don't just look at the words, you look into the writing). >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! :-) Given a choice between x (a subject) and y1, y2, ... yN (all the other subjects), "choosing to do x" is not the same as "choosing not to do y8." Saying that women choose not to study science (because it is "harder") implies that they are thinking "oh, I'd like to study but it's just too hard." As opposed to "I'm very interested in philosophy, so I'll study that." If, as you suggest earlier, women are steered away from math and science early on, then they do not *choose* not to study science. Rather, their interests lie elsewhere, so they choose to study in those areas. What I'm getting at is that I want to know what the answer to these accusations that the SAT is supposedly biased. Yes, but what is the relevance to what people later study in college? My score on the Math SAT was slightly lower, but I chose to study computer science (without even considering my SAT score). Other than using it to get into college, my SAT did not affect my college career. 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." Where was it established that that was a proof? The statement is not too specific; however a more likely interpretation is that the SAT is supposed to measure scholastic ability (Scholastic Aptitude Test), as are grades, so if they were "fair," the results should be the same. However, grades are not "fair," and tests are not "fair." All tests and measurements will be biased in some way. This is probably one good reason why colleges look at a combination of grades and SAT scores (and other information) in determining who to admit, since no one measurement will give an unbiased picture of the person's talents, abilities, and knowledge. I just think there has to be a "bigger picture" to all this. The bigger picture is the society we live in. Females are often discouraged from math and science. Grades and tests are not fair, especially because there isn't enough money provided for education. Different schools have wildly different programs, which turn out people with very different skills. Many (lower) schools are more interested in people's abilities to pass standardized tests than their ability to learn or the knowledge they have acquired. People are fallible, including the ones who make up standardized tests. Etc. What concerns me about all this is that there seems to be a consistent pattern of differentiation on the basis of gender. What would happen if, for example, all children logged into classes on computers, with no teacher to bias the treatment of children of different gender? Would more women end up studying science? My computer can't tell whether I'm male or female, and it doesn't care; it treats me the same as it treats anyone else (better, actually, since other people don't know how my environment is set up, but that's a different story...*grin*). Why should someone try to tell me that, because I'm female, I won't like programming? Because I'm the person I am, I *do* like programming. If people see a bias against half the human race (SAT questions, educational paths, whatever), it seems reasonable to me to try to eliminate it. To see it, though, you have to look for it, and there can also be false alarms... after all, people are fallible. Well, this may or may not be off the subject; I don't know what big picture you're looking for. Muffy