[comp.society.women] Encouraging children toward certain fields

skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (08/02/88)

In article <12780@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> clambert%hector@Sun.COM (Caroline Lambert [summer intern]) writes:
>I disagree. What if you had a girl who did well in math and science,
>but did exceptionally well in, say, languages? Wouldn't it be better for
>her to become a scientist/engineer with an interest in languages than
>a linguist who knows Stokes' theorem?

I'm confused by this.  I'm not at all sure why it would be better.  Why
do you think it would?

I'm partly confused because I don't think that what a person studies
in school has to have anything to do with what profession one ends up
with.  After all, it wasn't so long ago that this group had some very
interesting postings from people who studied the humanities and ended
up in computers.

In other words, a person might love languages and be encouraged in them
and yet never become a linguist.

I don't have children, so perhaps that is the source of another part of
my confusion.  I don't see children as so malleable nor parents as so
powerful that they could change or determine a child's love for a certain
subject.  Well, that's overstating it.  I know of many parents who have
killed love for a particular subject and I know of parents who have
nurtured it.  But I also know many students who feel an incredible
amount of stress because their parents have decided what would be a good
field for the child.  

I think that the child would be better off being a happy linguist than
an unhappy scientist.

And finally, I am simply confused by the assertion that one would be
better in one field than another.  What is wrong with linguistics or
right with science?  

(Perhaps all my confusion simply comes from being a rhetorician with an
interest in computers.)

-Trish