I agree that women excel in literature. It is just that very excellence that leads me to believe that women with the ability to excel in other spheres would have done so it they had it in them. But I realize that this is a radical idea, and may seem inconsistent with my feminism. But women classical composers just stink, pretty much, there's no denying it.
A few years ago I coached a boy's team and a girl's team for Oddysey of the Mind. I didn't coach the long-term problem, I coached for the "spontaneous" event. There are three basic categories of spontaneous problems, verbal, hand-on, and hybrid. There is no way to know what the spontaneous problem will be at the actual competition, so one must have the children practice for all types. For example, in verbal, one might start with a sentence, and the children have to take turns saying sentences that build on the first sentence. For the hands-on, build the tallest structure you can in ten minutes using drinking straws and marshmellows, but it can't fall down. For the hybrid, show and tell me everything you can do with a paper plate. The kids I coached were all GT, and they were a riot. I had the best time. And came away with an indelible belief that the hard-wired differences between male and female affect creativity. The approaches to the problems were just different. |
