Shhhh . . . don't tell the thought police . . .
but I'm going to mention a book about the possibility of biologically determined -- that is, innate -- gender differences between girls and boys. Stanley Kurtz at The Corner has a mini-review.
Here's a sample:
. . . I’ve been dipping into a fascinating new book by Leonard Sax called, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About The Emerging Science of Sex Differences. This book is interesting because it takes an “outside the box” position on gender. On the one hand, Sax is sharply critical of social constructionism. He hates the idea of androgynous child rearing, and argues that there are powerful and biologically rooted sex differences that do influence learning. On the other hand, Sax thinks the best way to get beyond stereotypes is to first acknowledge the power of real sex differences. Yes, says Sax, girls do more poorly at math because they are bored by the abstractions that fascinate boys. According to Sax, that difference is rooted in brain biology. But Sax says that if you teach girls math using concrete examples, they’ll do just as well as boys. Similarly, if you teach boys languages or arts by using their strong spacial perception abilities, or their love of competition,, boys will do much better at these subjects than they usually do. Sax is a big proponent of single sex education. Paradoxically, he says, gender neutral education favors the learning style of one sex or the other, and so only drives men and women into the usual stereotyped fields. The best way to raise your son to be a man who is caring and nurturing, says Sax, is to first of all let him be a boy. The best way to produce a female mathematician is to first of all let her be a girl.
As the mother of two young girls, and as someone who has noticed increasingly -- since the advent of parenthood -- that boys and girls are different from one another (and not just in the obvious ways), I've become very interested in these issues.
Here's a sample:
. . . I’ve been dipping into a fascinating new book by Leonard Sax called, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About The Emerging Science of Sex Differences. This book is interesting because it takes an “outside the box” position on gender. On the one hand, Sax is sharply critical of social constructionism. He hates the idea of androgynous child rearing, and argues that there are powerful and biologically rooted sex differences that do influence learning. On the other hand, Sax thinks the best way to get beyond stereotypes is to first acknowledge the power of real sex differences. Yes, says Sax, girls do more poorly at math because they are bored by the abstractions that fascinate boys. According to Sax, that difference is rooted in brain biology. But Sax says that if you teach girls math using concrete examples, they’ll do just as well as boys. Similarly, if you teach boys languages or arts by using their strong spacial perception abilities, or their love of competition,, boys will do much better at these subjects than they usually do. Sax is a big proponent of single sex education. Paradoxically, he says, gender neutral education favors the learning style of one sex or the other, and so only drives men and women into the usual stereotyped fields. The best way to raise your son to be a man who is caring and nurturing, says Sax, is to first of all let him be a boy. The best way to produce a female mathematician is to first of all let her be a girl.
As the mother of two young girls, and as someone who has noticed increasingly -- since the advent of parenthood -- that boys and girls are different from one another (and not just in the obvious ways), I've become very interested in these issues.
posted by Kate Marie | 11:19 AM | Permalink
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7 comments
7 Comments:
I agree that there are differences, but I'd caution against going 100% separate schooling. What if you are a girl who learns better the way boys learn? What if you're a boy who learns more like girls do? There's a girls' elementary school here that teaches math using Barbie dolls and doll houses, to make it "relevant" -- what if your daughter hates Barbie? What if your son wants to sit quietly and study and not rough house around during breaks at his boys' school?
There needs to be either a happy medium or a way to sort the kids other than ONLY by gender. That's why I support school choice. Let the marketplace offer lots of options (e.g., The Self Esteem is Everything School vs. Getting the Right Answer is Everything School or The Theoretical School vs. The Applied School) and let parents choose and schools discriminate (in a good way -- by choosing those kids with the right aptitude).
I agree that there are differences, but I'd caution against going 100% separate schooling. What if you are a girl who learns better the way boys learn? What if you're a boy who learns more like girls do? There's a girls' elementary school here that teaches math using Barbie dolls and doll houses, to make it "relevant" -- what if your daughter hates Barbie? What if your son wants to sit quietly and study and not rough house around during breaks at his boys' school?
There needs to be either a happy medium or a way to sort the kids other than ONLY by gender. That's why I support school choice. Let the marketplace offer lots of options (e.g., The Self Esteem is Everything School vs. Getting the Right Answer is Everything School or The Theoretical School vs. The Applied School) and let parents choose and schools discriminate (in a good way -- by choosing those kids with the right aptitude).
Drat the broken blogger!
Dear Kate Marie,
You knew this was coming- this blurb (I won't assume it applies to Sax's whole monograph, though it would seem to) confuses the distinction between sex and gender. Once a difference between male and female individuals can truly be termed "innate" it is not a manifestation of gender, it is a function of sex. Gender only happens through the mediation of culture, even if what is being mediated has some basis in human biology. I fear that the superficially appealing prospect of "letting boys be boys" and "girls be girls" is an invitation to treat even the most arbitrary gender patterns as somehow biologically predetermined.
You knew this was coming- this blurb (I won't assume it applies to Sax's whole monograph, though it would seem to) confuses the distinction between sex and gender. Once a difference between male and female individuals can truly be termed "innate" it is not a manifestation of gender, it is a function of sex. Gender only happens through the mediation of culture, even if what is being mediated has some basis in human biology. I fear that the superficially appealing prospect of "letting boys be boys" and "girls be girls" is an invitation to treat even the most arbitrary gender patterns as somehow biologically predetermined.
Dear Madman,
While your point about the semantics of "sex"/"gender" is a good one as far as it goes, . . . I'm not sure how far it goes. I haven't read the book, (and neither, I presume, have you), so I have no way of responding to your assertion that "letting girls be girls" and "boys be boys" (which,is, after all, Stanley Kurtz's phrase, and not the author's) is "an invitation to treat even the most arbitrary gender patterns as somehow biologically predetermined." From what I have read about the book, the author argues that there is a good amount of scientific evidence to suggest that the differences in male and female performance in certain academic disciplines are NOT the result of arbitrarily-assigned gender roles -- in short, that they are differences of sex and not of gender. (That's not, by the way, to say that a too-rigid enforcement of gender roles can't or won't reinforce and perhaps widen those differences, or that individual women and men don't face "gender" bias). In any event, how can you tell which gender patterns are "most" arbitrary without being willing to examine those which -- because they are based on innate biological differences -- are less so? Or to put it another way -- since, as you say, gender is a result of the mediation of culture and is therefore to some extent always arbitrary, how can we tell which roles are truly "gender" roles and which are more properly "sex" roles unless we're willing to look at the scientific evidence on the subject?
P.S. to Madman of Chu
-- Or are you going to go the whole nine pomo yards and tell me that, except perhaps for a very few chromosomal and anatomical facts, there ARE no sex differences -- that there are only gender differences?
You have been seduced by the dark side of the force, oh erstwhile mighty philosopher of The Goat!
Dear Kate Marie,
I would never claim that all gender patterns are wholly arbitrary. The whole tampons/maxi pads question is a cultural phenomenon rooted in very non-arbitrary sex characteristics. My point is that the dialectical relationship between sex and gender is very complex and clarity of discussion is not aided from confusing the distinction at the outset as the blurb does. I think Sax's problem is one of semantics. His real title is "Why Sex Matters," but the vagaries of the English language and the hypergoatish American psyche restrain him from using it, resulting in a confusion of his thesis from the get-go.
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