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From: asimov@degas.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU (Daniel &)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: career vs. relationships
Message-ID: <11785@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Mon, 10-Feb-86 20:14:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11785
Posted: Mon Feb 10 20:14:26 1986
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Reply-To: asimov@degas.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Daz)
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Summary: Prejudice vs experience


	When the question of prejudice comes up, a certain paradox
comes to mind which I believe is a very real problem.  I
have been in a recent incarnation a college math teacher.
My experience after about 10 years in that role is that male
students are far more likely to be excited about mathematics,
really gung-ho over the subject matter.  I personally am very
pleased whenever I find an exception to this trend.   Nevertheless,
if I meet a random student for the first time, I have an internal
guesser-daemon who assigns differing probabilities to the student's
chances of being gung-ho, according to the student's sex.  I don't
feel guilty about that, because I don't think that it interferes
with my ability to treat each student as an individual anyhow.
And besides, I couldn't make the guesser-daemon go away if I
wanted to: it's based on experience.
	In a recent conversation with a good friend, I mentioned this
experience of mine, of differing probabilities, and she reacted
as though I had just proved myself to be the most blatant male
chauvinist.  In fact, she hasn't even answered my communications
since that conversation.  
	Is the best solution to simply stay off these controversial
topics entirely? I'd like tho think that there's a better solution.
Has anyone else grappled with the murky region between experience
and prejudice, and found a good way to deal with it?
--Daz