Geode, always, you get the wrong end of the stick. I'm not worried about mathematical ability in young women, it's the consequences of the false conclusions that come from false premises.
The false premise is that women are as good as men at maths at the topmost levels. The false conclusion is that therefore the Harvard guy is a bad man and needs punishment, replacing or something.
The inability of women is just a fact of nature. It's nothing to get upset about. Being upset that the four forces of the apocalypse do as they do is the silliest thing. Nature has produced women maturing 3 years younger than males. To do something about that would require a selective breeding programme to eliminate the difference or some genetic engineering. I'm okay with both of those and the first has been underway for eons, which has brought us to the current situation of women being less capable than males at maths [and other things such as golf, chess, and a lot more besides].
A very practical point in relation to women maturing 3 years younger than males is that their education programmes should be accelerated by 3 years. Women are being hamstrung because the education system is oriented towards males and the lowest common denominator to ensure none are left behind. The consequence is that the talented are held back and permanently harmed. That applies to both males and females, but particularly to females.
I know I'm wasting my breath with you, [fingertips anyway as I'm not breathing heavily despite being a very grumpy misogynist], but maybe somebody else will figure it out and eventually the idea that education for girls, and boys, is faulty and inadequate, based on false premises.
While accelerated education for girls won't overcome the three year problem, it will help. To some extent, schools already try to cope with the problem with accelerated education for the capable. 12 year old girls are no doubt disproportionately represented in such programmes and show more educational success until boys start maturing. That's because girls pull out a bigger brain earlier.
You could check my theory by seeing if that's true. Don't check it in Taleban-land or India because females are not encouraged to the same extent in those societies. In the USA or Britain, or Australia, or New Zealand, you might find some legitimate data to support or refute the idea.
What most males and females do is irrelevant to the topic we are discussing. <Most males, and most females, can't do more than rudimentary math and certainly don't need it after high school or college anyway.> "Need" is an interesting question. Most do indeed survive to old age, so on that basis, one could say they don't need more than rudimentary maths, or even any! But there's more to life than survival of an individual to normal old age - there's individual and collective success in peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, prosperity, fun and love. Mere survival is a sorry state, suitable for you perhaps, but many people prefer more.
People who can't figure out the magic of compounding interest for example, won't understand that $10 spent today when aged 20, is like $100 of 2005 dollars spent towards the end of their lives. Do they really want another $100 glass of wine? Or are they looking through a present-distorted lens.
They won't be able to figure out that they should NOT buy insurance now. The numbers will bewilder them and they'll revert to a simplistic, cliched "Better safe than sorry" idea.
If you don't know that you can't teach an old dog new tricks then you are not involved in training dogs, or anything. Sure, old dogs can adapt somewhat to new things, but they need a framework from their young days to do it. If it's outside their framework, it's impossible. Same for people. For example, children at young ages can learn to make any sound from any language and do it really quickly. When they are old, they won't lose their accent if they go to live in a new language, no matter how long they live somewhere. They can adapt to a large extent, but not completely. If they heard no lanaguage until adulthood, they would have trouble learning to speak at all. Plenty of people are surely in that situation with cochlear implants having been invented. You could check my theory by seeing what happens with cochlear implant people who were deaf at birth. Not, note, at 2 years. At birth.
Anyway, you surely know it's true. Education is best done young when the brain is developing.
Mqurice |
