al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) (04/10/91)
Does anyone know of any good examples of why the SAT exams are biased toward a male point of view? I have heard many feminists and cases about it, but I have yet to see any examples. Most arguments point out that since women do better in High School and collage, this proves that the higher scores of male students on the SAT's make them sexist. My only rebuttle is that perhaps male students generally take classes and jobs that are "harder" than those generally taken by their female counterparts. If you agree that a lot of proffesions such as the medical, science, law, etc. are male dominated, you will have to agree the are historically, the ones that are the most difficult. I am an engineering student and the ratio between nmen and women is extremely lop-sided. It takes four years and a lot of brain power to graduate this type of course. On the other hand, most of the liberal-arts type of classes were quite simple in comparison. I am not saying women CANNOT do this type of work, I'm saying women are choosing not to. I am also not about to give the reasons why. Whether they are intrinsic to the female character or are purely placed by society is a question I can't answer. -- Just on the border of your waking mind, there lies another time, where darkness and light are one. And as you tread the halls of sanity, you feel so glad to be unable to go beyond. I have a message from another time..... - ELO: "Prologue" from the "Time" album -- Daicon IV Opening Animation gpinzone@george.poly.edu
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr9.203133.2551@aero.org> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes:
Does anyone know of any good examples of why the SAT exams are biased
toward a male point of view? I have heard many feminists and cases about
it, but I have yet to see any examples. Most arguments point out that
since women do better in High School and collage, this proves that the
higher scores of male students on the SAT's make them sexist.
Humm...where to start. Okay, first, how do you know that the SATs are
male-view-biased? Did you just hear it around somewhere? If so, the
first question might be whether or not they are biased. If you saw
some sort of study, what did it point out about the tests themselves
that showed bias towards males? As for why they are biased that way,
if they are, you would probably have to look at the designers of the
tests. I have frequently heard that they are culturally-biased.
These assertions seem to be related more to the English section of the
test than the math one, and point out that some words will be more
familiar to one culture than another.
The argument you give definitely does not prove that the SAT is
gender-biased. My experience with these tests is that there are
people who are good at taking standardized tests and people who,
although they can do well in school, will not do well on these tests.
So, it is possible that, rather than a specific test being biased,
women just don't do well, as a group, on standardized tests for some
reason. It could be that all such tests are gender-biased or that
women are somehow conditioned to react badly to the testing situation.
Also, you probably need to distinguish between the English SAT and the
Math SAT, since there may be differences there - for example, I did
slightly better on the English than the Math; most of my male friends
did slightly better on the Math than the English.
My only rebuttle is that perhaps male students generally take
classes and jobs that are "harder" than those generally taken by
their female counterparts. If you agree that a lot of proffesions
such as the medical, science, law, etc. are male dominated, you
will have to agree the are historically, the ones that are the most
difficult.
I don't think this is too applicable to high school students, though,
and they are the ones who will take the SAT. Most high school jobs
are not particularly difficult, and the males in high school are
certainly not doctors, scientists (well...), lawyers, etc, yet...they
may not even have decided what careers to pursue yet. The sort of
jobs they have are more commonly working in stores, fast food places,
etc. Similarly, there are not a lot of options on classes in high
school. Most of the students take the same basic classes and some
number of electives. There are advanced placement courses,
accelerated programs, etc, though, so you might try to find out if a
lot more males than females are involved in these.
As for "more difficult," I think that depends on the talents and
inclinations of the person. I find programming to be extremely easy
and doing office work (answering telephones, typing, filing, doing
invoices and purchase orders) fairly difficult. For me, office and
accounting procedures and such just don't make sense and don't
interest me. If what you mean to say is that medicine, law, etc,
require more study, that is true, but, again, high school students
will not usually have begun this study when they take the SATs.
I am an engineering student and the ratio between nmen and women is
extremely lop-sided. It takes four years and a lot of brain power
to graduate this type of course. On the other hand, most of the
liberal-arts type of classes were quite simple in comparison.
As an engineering student, you probably did not take many higher-level
humanities courses. I studied CS, so I only had to take a few
humanities, social science, arts, etc, courses, and they were all
fairly low-level, introductory stuff. I have some friends who are
studying art, literature, psychology, etc, and the upper-level courses
are much more interesting and much more difficult. You have to
consider that, say, a freshman/sophomore writing course is about
equivalent to an introductory algebra course or a BASIC programming
course, in terms of challenge to the students.
I am not saying women CANNOT do this type of work, I'm saying women are
choosing not to. I am also not about to give the reasons why. Whether
they are intrinsic to the female character or are purely placed by
society is a question I can't answer.
How do you know that they are choosing not to? You haven't shown this
in your article. Can you give something to support this?
Are you interested in the answer to the question? Would you act
differently if you knew the answer? Your posting seems to have gone
from a question about why SATs are gender-biased (without any proof
that they are) to an assertion that women choose "easier" jobs
(without any proof that they do). What exactly are you getting at?
Muffyschoi@teri.bio.uci.edu (SamLord Byron Choi) (04/11/91)
al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes: >Does anyone know of any good examples of why the SAT exams are biased >toward a male point of view? I have heard many feminists and cases about >it, but I have yet to see any examples. Most arguments point out that >since women do better in High School and collage, this proves that the >higher scores of male students on the SAT's make them sexist. Let's not make too much of this topic. That males score better on SATs while females have better GPAs is caught up with so many issues that I don't think any of us are really in a position to say too much on the brilliant side about it and would just end up bickering without any facts. People say that some questions are gender biased (e.g. a reading comprehension question that is on the subject of football). This is probably true in some cases, but I'm sure the people at Princeton are becoming more aware of this. I would say that far more than gender biased, they are culturally and intellectually biased. The standard argument goes, that because female students receive better grades than males, yet receive lower test scores, the tests are OBVIOUSLY gender biased. Well, I've read an argument by a student saying that this is utterly false. His argument was that because males receive better test scores, yet females receive better grades, grades are OBVIOUSLY gender biased particularly at lower levels of education where the teacher can't help but give Kute Suzie a better grade than Messy Joey. The difference between the scores of males and females is just an average. And that difference is very small though consistent. It says absolutely nothing whatsoever about individual scores or abilities. Sam Choi
Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no (Steinar Haug) (04/11/91)
i dont want to stoop to flaming, but i resent the implication in the middle of your article about liberal arts courses being "easy" in comparison to engineering/math/science oriented courses. i got good marks all around in high school, and was generally second in my class in science courses, second to a fellow who was a genius at sciences. when i hit college i took a lot of liberal arts courses because they interested me, and i busted my butt on a lot of them. did well in calculus (almost) without opening the book, but had to sweat over a russian history survey course to get a decent grade. i think it's all a matter of difference in individual talent, not in the fundamental difficulty of the course. there are certainly fundamentally easy lib arts courses... "cake courses", we called them... but not all liberal arts courses fall into that area, by a longshot. it almost seems you are trying to veil a fundamental prejudice. women do better in high school and college, despite getting lower SAT scores... so i must now prove men are still smarter by claiming they take harder courses! is that your motivation? or do you have some measure the rest of us dont that shows the objective difficulty of a course rather than a reflection of the particular student's abilities? i'm not sure if i believe the statistics about the difference in SAT scores opposing the difference in actual scholatic achievement. i've heard this "fact" a lot, but generally by word of mouth, and i take what i hear with even more skepticism than what i read. if it is true that there is a difference, i can think of one alternative explanation right off the bat, that the SAT is a poor predictor of scholastic achievement. to finish this off on a lighter note, that's about what i was thinking when i took it 8-) -cindy kandolf cindy@solan.unit.no trondheim, norway
turok@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Michael Turok) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr9.203133.2551@aero.org> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu writes: >My only rebuttle is that perhaps male students generally take classes and ^^^^^^^ >jobs that are "harder" than those generally taken by their female counterparts And, what, subsequently have worse spelling? >I am an engineering student and the ratio between nmen and women is extremely >lop-sided. It takes four years and a lot of brain power to graduate this >type of course. On the other hand, most of the liberal-arts type of classes >were quite simple in comparison. Well, I have observed one thing in my classes: Although not many women major in engineering or the sciences, the one that do tend to be in the top (or at least top half) of the class. Women who not do so well end up dropping it, while there are plenty of mediocre guys who major in this kind of stuff. Those women who stick with it seem to have to combat the negative stereotypes of "but, you are a girl; you can't do math", and only those who are really good continue with their studies. Later, Michael
al885@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Pinzone) (04/12/91)
Re: From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) >Humm...where to start. Okay, first, how do you know that the SATs are >male-view-biased? Did you just hear it around somewhere? If so, the >first question might be whether or not they are biased. I don't know if the SAT's are biased. As a matter of fact, my question was that since there was such controversy over the topic of the SAT's being sexist, I wanted to know if anyone had some hard proof. >I don't think this is too applicable to high school students, though, >and they are the ones who will take the SAT. Most high school jobs >are not particularly difficult, and the males in high school are >certainly not doctors, scientists (well...), lawyers, etc, yet...they >may not even have decided what careers to pursue yet. This is more true today, however, when I was in High School, math beyond the 9th grade was technically not required. However, I needed to take English till the 12th grade and "Social studies" until the 11th. However, when my brother graduated (he is just two years younger than me) he had more restrictions placed upon him. I would also agree that the careers are not usually made in high school. However, boys do tend to stick with the math/science types of courses more than the girls. I will never forget when I was in the 3rd grade, my teacher, a woman who at the time was fighting for equal rights in the area of the Greek Orthodox church, took us into the hall and showed us a model of the solar system that was hanging from the ceiling. She made a remark to the effect "Usually girls don't like science...don't you agree?" followed by a series of nods by the girls. I definitely feel that this was an indirect push away from the sciences based on popular conceptions of male-female psychology. >As an engineering student, you probably did not take many higher-level >humanities courses. I studied CS, so I only had to take a few >humanities, social science, arts, etc, courses, and they were all >fairly low-level, introductory stuff. I have some friends who are >studying art, literature, psychology, etc, and the upper-level courses >are much more interesting and much more difficult. I'm glad you brought up that point. You may have only taken introductory classes on such topics as Philosophy, history, etc... however, they were the same classes students in those fields would have taken in their beginning education. In the physics department, you will probably find that there are two sets of classes, ones for science majors (such as engineering) and one for non-science majors. This does not occur in the liberal arts department. I did not take an English class, or history class, or philosophy class that was different than any liberal arts major just because I am an enginnering or science student. You need to look at it this way. "I have read some Shakespeare" is basically equivalent to "I know Newton's three laws of motion". It's the basic common knowledge of the sciences that are absent in these liberal arts programs. >How do you know that they are choosing not to? You haven't shown this >in your article. Can you give something to support this? You are absolutely right. Here is an interesting example: There was a collage in California that was accused of sex discrimination because it admitted a considerably low amount of female students over male ones. When the collage investigated which departments were the most discriminatory, they found each department entered a HIGHER amount of women than men. What happened was that the majority of men were applying for math and science courses and the women, non-science courses. In this particular university, it was much easier to be accepted under a science degree. The moral of the story was that you can't average averages... but it also indirectly showed that women really don't like to take science based courses (as anyone at Polytechnic, SUNY Farmingdale, NCC, and SUNY StonyBrook will tell you). It was also ironic since the reason for the whole mess was from a lack of understanding of basic math! :-) >Are you interested in the answer to the question? Would you act >differently if you knew the answer? Your posting seems to have gone >from a question about why SATs are gender-biased (without any proof >that they are) to an assertion that women choose "easier" jobs >(without any proof that they do). What exactly are you getting at? What I'm getting at is that I want to know what the answer to these accusations that the SAT is supposedly biased. The so-called proof seems pretty reverse-discriminatory when you think about it. "Women have better grades, so the test is biased" could easily translate into "Women are smarter then men, so therefore, men shouldn't be doing better than women." I just think there has to be a "bigger picture" to all this. -- Just on the border of your waking mind, there lies another time, where darkness and light are one. And as you tread the halls of sanity, you feel so glad to be unable to go beyond. I have a message from another time..... - ELO: "Prologue" from the "Time" album -- Daicon IV Opening Animation gpinzone@george.poly.edu
al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) (04/12/91)
Re: From: turok@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Michael Turok) >Well, I have observed one thing in my classes: Although not many women >major in engineering or the sciences, the one that do tend to be in >the top (or at least top half) of the class. Women who not do so well >end up dropping it, while there are plenty of mediocre guys who major >in this kind of stuff. Those women who stick with it seem to have to >combat the negative stereotypes of "but, you are a girl; you can't do >math", and only those who are really good continue with their studies. Women who do take a major in the engineering sciences usually are some of the best students....period. It takes a lot of guts and brains to take up the challenge, socially and as a study. What do you mean by mediocre? not everyone can be Albert Einstein. :-) -- Just on the border of your waking mind, there lies another time, where darkness and light are one. And as you tread the halls of sanity, you feel so glad to be unable to go beyond. I have a message from another time..... - ELO: "Prologue" from the "Time" album -- Daicon IV Opening Animation gpinzone@george.poly.edu
al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) (04/12/91)
>i dont want to stoop to flaming, but i resent the implication in the middle of >your article about liberal arts courses being "easy" in comparison to >engineering/math/science oriented courses. Well, you must be the exception. There wouldn't be two sets of physics classes (see previous message to Muffy) is there wasn't a demand for easier sci. classes. If I had been a straight LA major, I would have been at the top of my class. It seems we are two different sides of the same coin. -- Just on the border of your waking mind, there lies another time, where darkness and light are one. And as you tread the halls of sanity, you feel so glad to be unable to go beyond. I have a message from another time..... - ELO: "Prologue" from the "Time" album -- Daicon IV Opening Animation gpinzone@george.poly.edu
jan@oas.olivetti.com (Jan Parcel) (04/13/91)
In article <1991Apr9.203133.2551@aero.org> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu writes: >Does anyone know of any good examples of why the SAT exams are biased >toward a male point of view? I have heard many feminists and cases about >it, but I have yet to see any examples. Most arguments point out that >since women do better in High School and collage, this proves that the >higher scores of male students on the SAT's make them sexist. NOW had a pamphlet about this. I don't have it, but I remember a few points. 1. The purpose of the SAT is to predict the person's college grades. 2. For the same grades, (I don't remember if this was math-specific or not), the SAT has recently been under-predicting women's grades by some 20 points ( I don't remember the number) in the math section , i.e. if a man gets 640 and a woman gets 620 on the SAT, they will perform the same in college. 3. This was not always the case. When there were word problems, a man and woman of the same ability would score the same, but the man would do better on multiple-guess, and the woman on the word problems. Then they eliminated the word problems. >I am not saying women CANNOT do this type of work, I'm saying women are >choosing not to. I am also not about to give the reasons why. Whether >they are intrinsic to the female character or are purely placed by >society is a question I can't answer. The point is, that women CAN do the work, and the current SAT's hide this. In fact, given that women perform better on word problems, one could argue that is is possible the MEN cannot do the actual work, once it gets real. But somehow, y'all have been muddling through anyhow, so I will assume that men may also have abilities that don't show up on the SAT's. As to the question of what is intrinsic to the female character vs. socialization, it will take a while to find out. It will take even longer to find out what types of problems, teaching methods, and "problem structures" will exist when women have had time to become equally responsible for the design of schooling and work and the economy, etc. It's possible that there are a lot of areas that are optimized for male style, maybe 90% social and 10% physical, but until another 1000 years have passed, we won't know how to optimize for both men and women in designing the way things are learned and work is done in the world. ~~~ jan@orc.olivetti.com or jan@oas.olivetti.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We must worship Universal Consciousness as each of the 5 genders in turn if we wish to be fully open to Yr glory. -- St. Xyphlb of Alpha III
bradley@cs.utexas.edu (Bradley L. Richards) (04/13/91)
In article <1991Apr12.150919.29758@aero.org> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu writes: >There wouldn't be two sets of physics classes...is there wasn't a demand for >easier sci. classes. If I had been a straight LA major, I would have been at >the top of my class. It seems we are two different sides of the same coin. I have to ask: did you ever take any upper-level liberal arts courses that weren't intended for a general audience? The basic LA courses taken by hundreds to fulfill their college requirements are, generally speaking, pretty easy. So are the basic science courses aimed at a general audience. Let me say that I *did* take advanced LA courses, in modern fiction, Shakespearean tragedy, and so forth. I'm no slouch with verbal skills (if you believe standardized tests, my English SAT was 720, and my GRE was 750), but I was quite happy to get B's in those courses. As much as I enjoyed the courses, I became quite aware that my aptitudes were better suited to engineering and science, and that I could not compete with the really good liberal arts types on their own turf. Bradley
fester@wolf.cs.washington.edu (Lea Fester) (04/13/91)
In article <9104091559.aa26744@orion.oac.uci.edu> schoi@teri.bio.uci.edu (SamLord Byron Choi) writes: >Let's not make too much of this topic. That males score better on I understand not wanting to get into something you consider trivial, but it really doesn't make sense to address a point yet request that the thousands of other readers refrain from doing so. Please don't debate this :-). >s. I would say that far more than gender >biased, they are culturally and intellectually biased. That is the point. The test unquestionably IS culturally biased, and the culture gap between women and men is a canyon wide, so women get screwed by the cultural bias in the test. Being moderately familiar with a culture is not the same as being a member of that culture. Men and women exist within two different cultures, although as a disadvantaged group women DO have to be somewhat familiar with the male culture. While I "have the floor," I'll tell you what REALLY pisses me off about the ETS exams. Besides the fact that they always happen on the first day of my period, so that as a woman I have to deal with the additional cultural bias that says that although almost every restroom for men built in the United States is equipped with urinals, important institutions such as those having enormous influence over an academically minded person's future do NOT need to account for physiological differences if they engender FEMALE needs, i.e. besides the fact that four fucking times in the last four fucking years I've taken the GRE while in moderate to awful pain, what pisses me off about those exams is that they call their non-math, non-analytical section "verbal". Because the skills they test there are basically analytical skills in a psuedo-verbal context. And I've stood in line for those exams and heard women tell each other in frustration that they can't get good scores on the "verbal" even though they believe themselves to be highly verbally skilled. And I have done worse on quote verbal unquote than my roommate who is highly analytically skilled, but whose verbal facility is far inferior to mine. And I have heard computer science professors note with amazement that the verbal tends to predict academic success for PhD candidates better than the math does. Gee kids, what a surprise. Yet women around the country, many of whom are probably like friends of mine in college who offset negative feelings about their relative inadequacy in fields like math by taking pride in writing extremely well and being incredibly articulate, these women are effectively told that their (pride&joy) quote verbal unquote skills aren't as good as they thought, maybe not even as good as el geeko next door. I have no argument with using a test that is an accurate predictor, assuming it really is accurate. But pretending that the "verbal" section assesses verbal skills is a real slam to many people, primarily women. Rename the section "linguo-logo- games," or some such. Leaf, who's always thought computer games were incredibly boring
MXD118@psuvm.psu.edu (Spiro the Spiny Goldfish) (04/13/91)
In article <1334@ai.cs.utexas.edu>, bradley@cs.utexas.edu (Bradley L. Richards) says: >I have to ask: did you ever take any upper-level liberal arts courses >that weren't intended for a general audience? The basic LA courses >taken by hundreds to fulfill their college requirements are, generally >speaking, pretty easy. So are the basic science courses aimed at a >general audience. This is a fallacy. The "basic" science courses that every science major has to take (for example - the Physics courses that I have to take as a Compsci major) are very different from the "science for liberal arts majors" courses. The courses both cover the same range of topics. There is NO functional equivalent in the liberal arts. I had to take the same introductory English courses as did my next-door neighbor who is an English major. This is true for Penn State and every college at whch I have friends. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael E. Dahmus MXD118@PSUVM / dahmus@endor.cs.psu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) (04/13/91)
In article <9104111902.AA17809@cwns10.INS.CWRU.Edu> al885@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes: I don't know if the SAT's are biased. As a matter of fact, my question was that since there was such controversy over the topic of the SAT's being sexist, I wanted to know if anyone had some hard proof. Okay. You asked "why are they biased," rather than "are they biased," which is what confused me. However, if there is so much controversy that you are aware of, what is it that people/articles/etc. have had to say about it? Re: From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) >As an engineering student, you probably did not take many higher-level >humanities courses. I studied CS, so I only had to take a few >humanities, social science, arts, etc, courses, and they were all >fairly low-level, introductory stuff. I have some friends who are >studying art, literature, psychology, etc, and the upper-level courses >are much more interesting and much more difficult. I'm glad you brought up that point. You may have only taken introductory classes on such topics as Philosophy, history, etc... however, they were the same classes students in those fields would have taken in their beginning education. In the physics department, you will probably find that there are two sets of classes, This was not the case at my university; I don't know what is true for others. They did have several different departments which offered different levels of computer classes (CS, Information Science, Business Information and Computing Systems), but it was a difference of direction rather than difficulty. I'm still curious as to what the relevance of this to the SATs is, though. ones for science majors (such as engineering) and one for non-science majors. This does not occur in the liberal arts department. It didn't occur in *your* liberal arts department. My university allowed people to test out of lower-level math and English courses (in fact, if you got a good score on the relevant SAT test, that would get you out). Since they did not have two different (major/non-major) groups of classes, I would think this had a similar effect, of allowing the people who were skilled in the subject to begin with the more advanced classes. You need to look at it this way. "I have read some Shakespeare" is basically equivalent to "I know Newton's three laws of motion". It's the basic common knowledge of the sciences that are absent in these liberal arts programs. It is not at all the same. "I have read some Shakespeare" is equivalent to something like "I read a chapter of a physics textbook." Neither of these implies that there was any knowledge or understanding gained. If you were actually *studying* Shakespeare, or physics, you would supposedly actually learn something about the subject. In physics, you might initially learn some basic applications of Newton's laws. In literature, you might study the way Shakespeare used words, or the structure of the plays, or whatever (not having studied it, I can't come up with too many examples, but the idea is that you don't just look at the words, you look into the writing). >How do you know that they are choosing not to? You haven't shown this >in your article. Can you give something to support this? You are absolutely right. Here is an interesting example: There was a collage in California that was accused of sex discrimination because it admitted a considerably low amount of female students over male ones. When the collage investigated which departments were the most discriminatory, they found each department entered a HIGHER amount of women than men. What happened was that the majority of men were applying for math and science courses and the women, non-science courses. In this particular university, it was much easier to be accepted under a science degree. The moral of the story was that you can't average averages... but it also indirectly showed that women really don't like to take science based courses (as anyone at Polytechnic, SUNY Farmingdale, NCC, and SUNY StonyBrook will tell you). It was also ironic since the reason for the whole mess was from a lack of understanding of basic math! :-) Given a choice between x (a subject) and y1, y2, ... yN (all the other subjects), "choosing to do x" is not the same as "choosing not to do y8." Saying that women choose not to study science (because it is "harder") implies that they are thinking "oh, I'd like to study <some science> but it's just too hard." As opposed to "I'm very interested in philosophy, so I'll study that." If, as you suggest earlier, women are steered away from math and science early on, then they do not *choose* not to study science. Rather, their interests lie elsewhere, so they choose to study in those areas. What I'm getting at is that I want to know what the answer to these accusations that the SAT is supposedly biased. Yes, but what is the relevance to what people later study in college? My score on the Math SAT was slightly lower, but I chose to study computer science (without even considering my SAT score). Other than using it to get into college, my SAT did not affect my college career. The so-called proof seems pretty reverse-discriminatory when you think about it. "Women have better grades, so the test is biased" could easily translate into "Women are smarter then men, so therefore, men shouldn't be doing better than women." Where was it established that that was a proof? The statement is not too specific; however a more likely interpretation is that the SAT is supposed to measure scholastic ability (Scholastic Aptitude Test), as are grades, so if they were "fair," the results should be the same. However, grades are not "fair," and tests are not "fair." All tests and measurements will be biased in some way. This is probably one good reason why colleges look at a combination of grades and SAT scores (and other information) in determining who to admit, since no one measurement will give an unbiased picture of the person's talents, abilities, and knowledge. I just think there has to be a "bigger picture" to all this. The bigger picture is the society we live in. Females are often discouraged from math and science. Grades and tests are not fair, especially because there isn't enough money provided for education. Different schools have wildly different programs, which turn out people with very different skills. Many (lower) schools are more interested in people's abilities to pass standardized tests than their ability to learn or the knowledge they have acquired. People are fallible, including the ones who make up standardized tests. Etc. What concerns me about all this is that there seems to be a consistent pattern of differentiation on the basis of gender. What would happen if, for example, all children logged into classes on computers, with no teacher to bias the treatment of children of different gender? Would more women end up studying science? My computer can't tell whether I'm male or female, and it doesn't care; it treats me the same as it treats anyone else (better, actually, since other people don't know how my environment is set up, but that's a different story...*grin*). Why should someone try to tell me that, because I'm female, I won't like programming? Because I'm the person I am, I *do* like programming. If people see a bias against half the human race (SAT questions, educational paths, whatever), it seems reasonable to me to try to eliminate it. To see it, though, you have to look for it, and there can also be false alarms... after all, people are fallible. Well, this may or may not be off the subject; I don't know what big picture you're looking for. Muffy
Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no (Steinar Haug) (04/14/91)
i dont know what colleges all of you went to, but at the university of pittsburgh it was fairly easy for someone who had to take liberal arts courses for general requirements but wasnt very interested to find out what courses were "easiest". there was no clear break like there was in the sciences, but all you had to do was ask around. "intro shakespeare? well, if you can take it with professor jones, it's easy..." "no, avoid that psych course, they make you WORK at it!" the course discriptions didnt list it, but there was a clear difference in difficulty among liberal arts courses, too. i had sort of assumed this thing went on everywhere...? -cindy kandolf cindy@solan.unit.no trondheim, norway
tseliot@.ucsc.edu (14567000) (04/17/91)
> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes >Does anyone know of any good examples of why the SAT exams are biased >toward a male point of view? I have heard many feminists and cases about >it, but I have yet to see any examples. Most arguments point out that >since women do better in High School and collage, this proves that the >higher scores of male students on the SAT's make them sexist. The studies I've seen show when most of the test question writers were female, females did better then men. Now most of the writers are men, and now men do better on the tests. Similarily with class issues - for example, for years the SAT's had one question in the vocabulary section with yachting terms. Who is more likely to know yachting terms? A poor inner city kid or an upper class one? Overall, the studies show SAT's aren't very good tests in the sense of having good predictive power. -tseliot
al885@cwns9.ins.cwru.EDU ("Gerard Pinzone a.k.a. Ataru Moroboshi") (04/24/91)
>>I don't know if the SAT's are biased. As a matter of fact, my question >>was that since there was such controversy over the topic of the SAT's >>being sexist, I wanted to know if anyone had some hard proof. >Okay. You asked "why are they biased," rather than "are they biased," >which is what confused me. However, if there is so much controversy >that you are aware of, what is it that people/articles/etc. have had >to say about it? How many times do I have to say this? There has been absolutley NO proof that I can find to prove the SAT's are sexist. I am pleading for ANYONE to give me ANY examples that would show this. I am willing to listen to anyone who has some proof. >This was not the case at my university; I don't know what is true for >others. They did have several different departments which offered >different levels of computer classes (CS, Information Science, >Business Information and Computing Systems), but it was a difference >of direction rather than difficulty. I'm still curious as to what the >relevance of this to the SATs is, though. You are mixing apples and oranges. In fact you said it yourself, it's not a matter of difficulty, it is just a different direction. >It didn't occur in *your* liberal arts department. My university >allowed people to test out of lower-level math and English courses (in >fact, if you got a good score on the relevant SAT test, that would get >you out). Since they did not have two different (major/non-major) >groups of classes, I would think this had a similar effect, of >allowing the people who were skilled in the subject to begin with the >more advanced classes. You are talking about introductory English 101 (or whatever it's called) which is basically 12th grade English regurgitated back up. It's not the same thing as the division in the physics department. >>You need to look at it this way. "I have read some Shakespeare" is >>basically equivalent to "I know Newton's three laws of motion". It's >>the basic common knowledge of the sciences that are absent in these >>liberal arts programs. > >It is not at all the same. "I have read some Shakespeare" is >equivalent to something like "I read a chapter of a physics textbook." >Neither of these implies that there was any knowledge or understanding >gained. If you were actually *studying* Shakespeare, or physics, you >would supposedly actually learn something about the subject. In >physics, you might initially learn some basic applications of Newton's >laws. In literature, you might study the way Shakespeare used words, >or the structure of the plays, or whatever (not having studied it, I >can't come up with too many examples, but the idea is that you don't >just look at the words, you look into the writing). Oh give me a break! Don't you think you are going a little overboard? When I said a person should know Newton's three laws of motion, I kinda hoped there was the implication that the person should also understand them! However, you don't need be a genius to understand either Newton or Shakespeare....providing you have a good enough teacher. :-) >If, as you suggest earlier, women >are steered away from math and science early on, then they do not >*choose* not to study science. Rather, their interests lie elsewhere, >so they choose to study in those areas. I find it very suspicious that there are so few women in the fields we have been talking about. I find it sad not many people seem to care. >>What I'm getting at is that I want to know what the answer to these >>accusations that the SAT is supposedly biased. > >Yes, but what is the relevance to what people later study in college? >My score on the Math SAT was slightly lower, but I chose to study >computer science (without even considering my SAT score). Other than >using it to get into college, my SAT did not affect my college career. Me too, I actually scored pretty good on the SAT's, but I really could have cared less if the collages didn't want them so badly. >>The so-called proof >>seems pretty reverse-discriminatory when you think about it. "Women >>have better grades, so the test is biased" could easily translate into >>"Women are smarter then men, so therefore, men shouldn't be doing >>better than women." > >Where was it established that that was a proof? In many feminist publications and on news reports covering the "discriminatory practices" of the SAT test makers. >>I just think there has to be a "bigger picture" to all this. >The bigger picture is the society we live in. Females are often >discouraged from math and science. Grades and tests are not fair, >especially because there isn't enough money provided for education. Well, I'm glad we agree on something! ;-) >Different schools have wildly different programs, which turn out >people with very different skills. Many (lower) schools are more >interested in people's abilities to pass standardized tests than their >ability to learn or the knowledge they have acquired. People are >fallible, including the ones who make up standardized tests. Etc. I find that (high) schools are basically all the same. They aren't designed to produce widespread creativity. They just make sure they have enough people graduating so no one can complain too much. It's a pretty cynical view, but I haven't seen any high school (at least public ones) go out of their way to help improve the masses of childern (aside from the very small departmental "clubs") to do better and use their own minds to think, and not just memorize. >What concerns me about all this is that there seems to be a consistent >pattern of differentiation on the basis of gender. What would happen >if, for example, all children logged into classes on computers, with >no teacher to bias the treatment of children of different gender? >Would more women end up studying science? Maybe it would! Providing the child's parents are as open minded as we are. ;-) WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE Oh, dear, where can the matter be When it's converted to energy? There is a slight loss of parity. Johnny's so long at the fair. =========Gerard Pinzone=======================gpinzone@george.poly.edu========= _______ ________ ________ Just on the border of your waking mind / ___/ / _____/ / __ / There lies another time / ___/ / /____ / __ / Where darkness and light are one /______/ /_______/ /__/ /__/ And as you tread the halls of sanity East Coast Anime You feel so glad to be unable to go beyond ELO: "Prologue" -=- Daicon IV I have a message from another time...
esc@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (elizabeth) (04/24/91)
al885@cwns9.ins.cwru.EDU ("Gerard Pinzone a.k.a. Ataru Moroboshi") writes: >How many times do I have to say this? There has been absolutley NO >proof that I can find to prove the SAT's are sexist. I am pleading for >ANYONE to give me ANY examples that would show this. I am willing to >listen to anyone who has some proof. ************************************************* Something I've always heard as one example is what the testmakers use for material in reading comprehension questions. I've read that in some RC questions, the material is skewed for sex, for example one article will be about car maintenance or rocket science. The saying goes that the boys have a better chance of answering the questions just on a matter of information they already have rather than actually understanding what the article is about. I remembered this example because of a recent incident I observed regarding a spanish midterm. On one portion, the class was expected to skim an article and answer some questions about it. The object was to see how good your overall spanish comprehension was. The problem was that the women did better than the men on this part because the article was about perfume. The women could answer some of the questions because most knew something about the subject, while the majority of men obviously didn't know anything about the subject and had to rely entirely on the spanish they knew. So, in this case (like on some instances of the SAT) one sex had an extra advantage the other sex didn't have just by virtue of the fact that one sex had extra knowledge or prior experience to draw upon. Hope this helps. :)
cook@rpi.edu (Cathi A Cook) (04/24/91)
esc@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (elizabeth) writes: >al885@cwns9.ins.cwru.EDU ("Gerard Pinzone a.k.a. Ataru Moroboshi") writes: >>How many times do I have to say this? There has been absolutley NO >>proof that I can find to prove the SAT's are sexist. I am pleading for >>ANYONE to give me ANY examples that would show this. I am willing to >>listen to anyone who has some proof. >************************************************* >Something I've always heard as one example is what the testmakers use >for material in reading comprehension questions. I've read that in >some RC questions, the material is skewed for sex, for example one >article will be about car maintenance or rocket science. The saying >goes that the boys have a better chance of answering the questions >just on a matter of information they already have rather than actually >understanding what the article is about. [deleted] >sex had an extra advantage the other sex didn't have just by virtue of >the fact that one sex had extra knowledge or prior experience to draw >upon. Hope this helps. :) Someone else brought this up a while back. Actually, from the tests I've seen, the questions are often written to _penalize_ just such assumptions. Often they will have a "common sense" answer based on knowledge of the subject, but which is directly contradicted by the given article. I can't imagine all the writers of the SAT being stupid or bigoted. These people understand, I'm sure, that they are testing _reading_comprehension_, not physics. I'm sure that they deliberately plant just such "Oh, I know this stuff, I don't have to read the article." tidbits, to catch those who simply skim. As a highschool dropout, I never did take an SAT. However, I later took the ACT and recieved a 32 overall, along with a 30 (100%) in Natural Science. I believe a 32 was approximately 98 percentile. I've always done well on standardized tests, and I never did see any bias. -rocker
tex@obsidian.wpi.EDU (Lonnie Paul Mask) (05/03/91)
esc@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (elizabeth) writes: >al885@cwns9.ins.cwru.EDU ("Gerard Pinzone a.k.a. Ataru Moroboshi") writes: >>How many times do I have to say this? There has been absolutley NO >>proof that I can find to prove the SAT's are sexist. I am pleading for >>ANYONE to give me ANY examples that would show this. I am willing to >>listen to anyone who has some proof. >Something I've always heard as one example is what the testmakers use >for material in reading comprehension questions. I've read that in >some RC questions, the material is skewed for sex, for example one >article will be about car maintenance or rocket science. The saying >goes that the boys have a better chance of answering the questions >just on a matter of information they already have rather than actually >understanding what the article is about. well, before you go making assumptions about what sex knows what, i currently only know where the spark plugs and the oil filter are(in general) on some of the larger cars. and my dad.s a great cook, especially since he has gotten to stay home for all my life due to his epilepsy. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without |lonnie mask taking off your shoes. |tex@wpi.wpi.edu -Mickey Mouse |wyle_e on irc ------------------------------------------------------------------------
esc@uxa.cso.uiuc.EDU (elizabeth) (05/06/91)
tex@obsidian.wpi.EDU (Lonnie Paul Mask) writes: >>Something I've always heard as one example is what the testmakers use >>for material in reading comprehension questions. I've read that in >>some RC questions, the material is skewed for sex, for example one >>article will be about car maintenance or rocket science. The saying >>goes that the boys have a better chance of answering the questions ^^^^^^ >>just on a matter of information they already have rather than actually >>understanding what the article is about. >well, before you go making assumptions about what sex knows what, i >currently only know where the spark plugs and the oil filter are(in >general) on some of the larger cars. and my dad.s a great cook, >especially since he has gotten to stay home for all my life due to his >epilepsy. *********************************************** I very purposely put words like *some* and not words like *all* into my article so I wouldn't get flames like this. Because we live in a pretty sexist world, a lot of women don't know the difference between a spark plug and a hole in the ground, and a lot of men could'nt boil water to save their lives...yeah yeah both sexes are *capable* of doing these things but a lot of people don't. I wasn't making assumptions about anything I was merely repeating what I read. Don't be so touchy. elizabeth.