By Professor Doom
There are many
things men aren’t particularly good at, or even suited for. Lactating is as
good an example as any. Yes, you can totally have a male lactate from medical
conditions or drugs. It’s not
even sexist to ask women not to lactate at work, since men can do it as well (our court
system has to deal with the stupidest things at times). Despite this gender
weakness, there’s no big push to get more men lactating, and I don’t reckon
there should be (not that I’m in any way forbidding any particular man from
doing so if it pleases him).
On the other hand,
there’s been an endless, monstrous, push to bring more women into STEM. For the
most part, this is wildly misguided, as it’s certain that at least some women
end up wasting years of their life pursuing a degree, possibly a career, which
they never would have attempted but for those inducements, which are often as
morally questionable as those of a pedophile using candy to lure a child into
his car.
This simple fact
has long been known in higher education. I’ve never seen any “leader” respond
to this problem in the manner which integrity requires: stop gender-based
recruiting for fields where gender is irrelevant. Instead, the response is
always to reduce standards or dance around the problem. It’s why we have
courses like “Integrated
Chemistry for Education Majors” and the like.
Allow me to highlight yet another attempt to
dance around the problem, besides integrity:
This is, of course, coming from a
peer-reviewed paper:
…a
peer-reviewed paper recently published by Laura
Parson “suggesting that we should make Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics (STEM) courses more ‘inclusive’ of women by making the[m] ‘less
competitive.’”
I
remind the gentle reader that “peer-review” is highly questionable at this
point in human civilization, and much like peer-review
shows that penises cause global warming, I suspect
ideology is a larger factor here than reason. Science is nowhere to be found in
any event, as this is coming from a journal called The Qualitative Report.
The
professor performing this research is not in STEM herself, and so we have to
wonder at her explaining to us how to teach STEM. I granted when I was at a
sketchy community college, I often had educationists who’d never taught an
academic course in their lives often tell me how to teach, usually with such
advice as “have more book reports in your math classes.” It’s queer how I’ve
never seen people like that ask for more mathematics in the English courses or
whatever, particularly when one considers how STEM graduates generally have
more (financially) successful lives. It’s almost like they’re deliberately
trying to hurt human beings, but I digress.
So
what did the paper have to say, exactly?
Calls for research
to understand the existing social and scientific systems that marginalize women
in STEM fields at the institutional level have increased in the recent years…
This is very true, these calls are loud, and seem to always grow louder.
One thing I never hear about is any evidence that having more women in STEM
would necessarily improve STEM.
People
in ideological fields, like this professor, never take a decent economics
course, so allow me to mention an important concept here: supply and demand. A
college degree used to be valuable back when few had it, but now that we churn
these things out, the value of a degree has dropped off sharply. The only
degrees retaining their value are in the STEM fields, because those fields
aren’t so generous with handing out degrees. Cleary, increasing the number of
people with STEM degrees (regardless of gender) will devalue those degrees
accordingly.
Again, where’s the evidence that debasing the value of the few remaining
valuable degrees will be a benefit?
This study was
framed through the lens of poststructuralist feminist thought to provide a lens
through which I explored how power is gendered (Hesse-Biber, 2014). Poststructuralism
“rejects objectivity and the notions of an absolute truth and single reality,”
…
I really want to point out
how, fundamentally, this field is utterly useless. Since there is no truth or
objectivity, every “research” paper gives an equivalently valid result, even if
the results are in diametric opposition.
It’s very tough to take such
research seriously when the researcher makes it clear she’s going to find
whatever she wants to find, and that quite literally nobody else might find
anything at all and be just as correct.
“There is an
opportunity for STEM courses to reduce the perception of courses as difficult
and unfriendly through language use in the syllabi, and also as a guide for how
to use less competitive teaching methods and grading profiles that could
improve the experience of female students.”
I always have students ask
“how hard is the test going to be?” and I’ve learned there’s only one honest
response: “as hard as possible.” Any other answer on my part will lead to a
student calling me a liar. Since I don’t like being labeled as such, I provide
the most honest answer I can give…and I see from the above I’m hardly alone in
realizing it’s best for the student if you just state up front that the student
really will need to study hard to make it through the course.
I’d be hard pressed to
consider the advice here to lie about the difficulty if I weren’t already told
the results of the research are meaningless in any event.
Let’s look at some findings
from a study of the syllabi:
Instructor information was
usually brief and provided directions for students to contact them to seek
help. In some cases, the instructor information included more detailed
information about how students could contact them. For example, “It is
generally better for me if you come to see me during my posted office hours
rather than at other times. If necessary, we can set up an appointment” (Upper
level mathematics).
--that quote could easily
have come from my syllabus. I’m a cold-hearted monster, I guess.
Seriously, the above
constitutes doctoral research in
Gender Studies. Yikes. As this is a 15 page paper, let me move on quickly to
the more important results. The following as a good a summary of the things
found in the paper as any:
Instead of only listing
prerequisite courses, these syllabi included prerequisite knowledge and skills,
creating an even more intimidating view of the course. That language implied
that not only would students be held to difficult high standards, but also that
there was also a base of knowledge that was required to be successful in the
course.
One of the issues I had with administration graduate degree
programs
was how you never had to learn anything, much less demonstrate that you know
anything, to get a Ph.D. in administration, and it’s clear Gender Studies must
be the same way if the researcher finds such a concept somewhat threatening,
going into a course.
I’ve received pressure from
admin, in the past, to stop asking students to know so much coming into my
courses…I did the best I could, but at what point should students be asked to
actually learn something and not (theoretically) forget it immediately?
What other problem does the
research have with these courses?
The onus is placed on the
individual for learning, and there is little discussion about how the group can
support and contribute to learning. Not only is group work not encouraged, in
some cases, the language is hostile to it.
Again, I’ve been pressured
many times to add “group projects” to mathematics courses. I’m sorry, if the
individual does not have knowledge, a degree would assert what, exactly? Much
as before, an education is not a “group” thing. At some point, a student needs
to learn things by himself or herself, for himself or herself.
Overall, the primary finding
of the paper is that the language of the syllabi for these courses just isn’t
warm. She uses the word “chilly” to describe it several times:
Finally, the competitive,
difficult chilly climate was reinforced in the syllabi through the use of
unfriendly and tough language, “Do not ask me to figure out your grade
standing. I’ll be glad to show you how to do it yourself, but the homepage
includes that explanation already”
Bottom line, STEM isn’t
about hugs and warm fuzzies, it’s about learning facts and being able to apply
them rigorously. Some part of me wants STEM professors to go review Gender
Studies and other ideological courses and criticize them for their lack of
knowledge and emphasis on feelings over education, but only a small part: STEM
people have better things to do, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment