Sexism, of course…
I’ve only just recovered from the shock of seeing the sheer hopelessness of British science education laid bare last week. Indeed, I was so staggered to discover how poorly conceived the current GCSE science examinations are that I forgot that I’d already blogged about the lamentable tendency of the modern education system to concentrate on getting kids to swallow and regurgitate little bite-sized factoids, rather than actually learning to think for themselves. Leaving aside the issue that quite a few of the things that are being taught seem to be wrong anyway, my point there was that teaching science isn’t about teaching facts at all, it’s about trying to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. At least that’s what it should be, if only the dumbers-down would stop meddling.
Well, I’d almost come to terms with my despair when I saw another article (from Friday’s Guardian) which tells a tale that’s not just idiotic, but also sinister and offensive. Here’s the full text
One of the country’s biggest exam boards is developing different GCSE courses for boys and girls, it emerged today.
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) said it was looking into creating a science GCSE with more coursework in it for girls, and one which gave more weighting to exam marks for boys.
Studies have shown that girls perform better in coursework than boys, while boys do better in exams.
AQA said it would not prevent boys from taking the girls’ course and vice versa.
The courses in English, maths and science could be available from September next year.
Bill Alexander, the exam board’s director of curriculum and assessment, told the Times Educational Supplement: “We could offer a route for boys that is very different to a route for girls.
John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said it was “extremely dangerous” to get into gender stereotyping. “There are lots of boys who like the investigative element of coursework as well,” he said.
John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it was a “wild generalisation” to state that boys did better in exams, while girls performed better in coursework, but that it had “more than a grain of truth” to it.
However, he suggested that as well as sitting the gender-specific exams, pupils’ work should be marked in part by professional assessors.
Experts believe that this year could end a 20-year trend for girls to outperform boys in GCSEs because many new courses have no coursework. Instead, pupils complete work over a prolonged period, but under exam conditions.
There’s also a longer piece on the same topic in the Times Education Supplement.
Different courses for boys and girls? Are they serious? This is gender stereotyping of the worst possible kind. I find it absolutely abhorrent that anyone in any position of authority in the education system could even have contemplated doing something so offensively patronising. What’s next, different courses for different racial groups?
I sincerely hope that the new government intervenes and stops the AQA from going along this road. Better still, it should scrap these worthless examination factories and sack the profiteering dunderheads in charge who are responsible for turning the education system into a national disgrace.
In the Dark 
June 21, 2010 at 4:58 pm
This is a terrible idea. I’m no big expert on education methods or curricula but it seems like entirely the wrong way to go.
June 21, 2010 at 5:16 pm
I should say that I’ve got nothing against assessment containing both coursework and examination elements, as long as the former is marked consistently. That would be a good way forward, provided the assessment matched the content of the curriculum (assuming for the sake of argument that the science curriculum had some content). The idea of coursework for girls and examinations for boys is, however, completely idiotic.
June 21, 2010 at 8:11 pm
“What’s next, different courses for different racial groups?”
I’m willing to bet, in this politically correct world, that some universities and faculties, here or in North America, have seriously proposed assigning a race to each student, marking exams indifferently, calculating the mean score for each race, and then ‘correcting’ students’ marks accordingly. Furthermore, a racial quota system for access to some courses is already in operation in some countries, meaning that some people with higher marks are excluded in favour of others with lower. In Britain there is a form of discrimination whereby people with better marks from some schools are excluded from some courses in favour of people with lower marks from other schools.
I believe that there is no such thing as positive discrimination, only discrimination. I don’t care what colour or sex my dentist is, but when he or she is drilling inside my mouth I am pretty keen to know that he or she passed the course on merit and nothing else. (The quality of the course itself is maintained by taking only the best regardless of all other considerations.) I also suspect that my dentist, if from a minority, would not wish to be patronised.
Anton
June 21, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Anton,
As someone who’s been on the required course concerning employment discrimination legislation, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that current UK law makes positive discrimination just as illegal as negative discrimination. In the light of this news item I’d like to see that principle extended to the education system.
Peter
June 21, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Well Peter, some levels of the education system have for a while declined to discriminate on grounds of ability…
(With thanks to Tom Lehrer.)
Anton
June 21, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Sheer madness – I guess this will have to be extended into university education and above.
June 21, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Interesting thing about physics is that the number of girls taking the subject is relatively small (about 20%) but they are over-represented among the recipients of first-class degrees. Clearly we should set harder exams for the girls and/or easier ones for the boys. Obviously it’s not acceptable just to reward the students who are brighter and work harder.
Along the lines that Anton is suggesting is the following apt parody of the original story I found on the Guardian’s comment page. It’s not suggesting that female students are less intelligent than their male counterparts, but is merely pointing out where this logic leads…
June 21, 2010 at 11:02 pm
“One of the country’s biggest exam boards is developing different GCSE courses for intelligent and intellectually challenged pupils, it emerged today.”
Shurely not a parody? It is already done at university level by having courses on physics, maths, history, classics etc for the able, whereas media studies, social studies etc cater for others?
Anton
June 22, 2010 at 8:29 am
Ah no, this is new. It’s the same subject (nominally at least) but comes two varieties.
June 22, 2010 at 9:28 am
I have an open mind about single-sex education. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that both boys and girls peform better academically in such schools, although I don’t know how strong this evidence actually is. However, I am deeply uncomfortable with the obvious logical extension into racially segregated schools, which is de facto the way some local authorities have gone. I guess my view is that in an ideal world there wouldn’t be segregation of any kind but state schools in that world would be much better resourced.
I went to an all-boys grammar school but there was a girls’ school across the road, so although there was segregation in the classrooom it didn’t extend long after the bell rang. I believe the 6th forms of the two schools have now merged anyway. My primary school was mixed, but it has now been demolished.
In any case tailoring the teaching method to suit a particular group is very different from setting different assessment standards.
June 22, 2010 at 9:35 am
Phillip,
Is not “equal opportunity” a synonym for discrimination of some sort in the entrance requirements to a course?
Anton
June 22, 2010 at 11:32 am
Phillip,
I don’t quite follow your argument that single-sex schools are an “unrealistic environment”. I can think of plenty of examples where the sexes are separated, in sports like tennis for example. What is behind it, though, is the question of how much of what a school does is academically-oriented and how much about cultivating a general understanding of life. I think the more old-fashioned schools like the one I went to concentrated on the former and assumed that parents, family and friends would do most of the latter…
Peter
June 22, 2010 at 11:40 am
Anton,
I sense Orwellian fears about the phrase “Equal Opportunities”. The thing that troubles me most about it is that there’s a presupposition that every job category should have 50% male and 50% female employees in it. I’d rather just see everyone given the constant encouragement to choose whatever career path they’re drawn into rather than trying to implement some kind of absurd quota system.
Peter
June 22, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Peter: My concern is that the phrase “equal opportunity” is very hard to define, and that this difficulty is exploited by politically correct people who wish to discriminate in certain ways while appearing not to.
My question, which is really for employers, is this. Employers commonly claim to provide an ‘equal opportunity workplace’. In that case, will they or will they not offer a job – be it cleaner or professor – to the applicant that they judge most likely to do the job best, regardless of colour, sex, age, faith etc?
If the answer is No, is that not unfair to the best qualified applicant; if the answer is Yes, what then do they understand by equal opportunity?
Anton
June 22, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Anton
The way it is supposed to work is that when you want to employ someone (whether they be char or chair) you make a list of the essential criteria that the person getting the job should be judged by. When selecting the successful applicant you use those criteria and not others (such as gender, race, religion, etc). There are also “desirable” criteria that can be used as a sort of tiebreak, but everyone who passes these filters should be shortlisted and subequently interviewed. Questions at interview are supposed to be the same for each candidate and likewise oriented towards the written criteria.
This doesn’t mean the employer can’t be selective, but it does mean that someone who is qualified for the job shouldn’t be excluded on extraneous grounds.
In my experience the system works pretty well for appointments of specialist research staff for which higher qualifications and a track-record of publications are essential. It’s more complex in the case of staff who are needed to work in a close-knit team. To borrow a footballing metaphor, you don’t always get the best team by picking the best individual players. I’m sure that there are examples of an outstanding candidate on paper being rejected because they do badly at interview and convince the panel they would be impossible to work with! It’s not always very easy to draw a line between this kind of consideration and an unpleasant discrimination against a person belonging to a minority group.
Peter
June 22, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Phillip: In my view the threat of political correctness is not exaggerated. One friend has already been arrested for street preaching that threatened violence to nobody, explicitly or implicitly. I wish that PC didn’t exist so that everybody could forget about quotas, appoint the person who will do the job best, and get on with their own work. In scientific academe I find it inconceivable that anybody would do anything else.
To stir things a bit, I believe as a matter of freedom that one should be free to discriminate against or for anybody on any grounds whatsoever when spending one’s own money. I regret laws that forbid this. It is when spending taxpayers’ money that I would insist on no discrimination or quotas of any sort regarding race, faith, age, sex etc – because people of diverse races, faiths, etc pay taxes.
Anton
June 23, 2010 at 8:20 am
Anton,
I’m not sure how the legislation works in the private sector, but many companies have voluntary arrangements that far exceed the legal provisions anyway. This is often because they have to work with a very diverse client base and want to promote a positive image of their company in that light. Others have made the judgement that a better working environment for all staff is one where there are clear rules governing discrimination of various forms. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything to stop Bob the Builder taking on his brother-in-law as a labourer if he wants to.
I agree with your comments about quotas in general, and re-iterate that such things are not part of the equal opportunities framework, at least as far as I’ve had experience of it.
Peter
June 23, 2010 at 1:26 am
Once upon a time, there was a bristly, shaggy, famous, old professor who sat as the boss of interview panels for postdoc and student posts. He did this a few times a year. Among equally qualified candidates (in objective terms) he had a disproportionate tendency to pick the girl. If there were several girls to choose from, the winner was usually the bouncy- or vulernable-looking one.
Experienced colleagues observed his leer and his squint, and knew that he was imagining (and anticipating) another new bit of “droit du seigneur.” The sly old devil had no shame about wielding arbitrary executive power, but he always had a glib rationalisation ready. If a male candidate acts pliable and open, then he’s rejected as “he doesn’t have a clue; no firm ideas, and doesn’t know what he wants.” If a girl candidate acts similarly pliable and open, then it’s a positive trait: “she really understands what I want in my team; she’s someone flexible I can work with; she communicates well.” Besides (with a smirk) the old man declares himself a “feminist”.
Over the years and decades, incidents occur at the school. There’s an uneasy general awareness of preferential treatment in projects, promotions and resource allocations. Occasional complaints about wandering hands are quickly muted. Other cases become consensual, leading to the problem of secret or outright concubinage. In rare extremes, the supervisor impregnates his own student or postdoc hireling. But it’s always hushed up, because he’s such a “big cheese” on national committees, and he’s _so_ vital to the politics of the latest fashionable consortium.
And so he lives happily ever after (or rather “Carrys On”) as one of the notorious figures inside academia, but sainted to the government and general public. And when he finally departs, he elevates one of his surviving male proteges. This uplifted lad soon develops the same old habits of wandering hands, and the cycle resumes….
……
I can believe that females perform disproportionately well, as research students and junior postdocs. But has anyone statistically checked the influence of the supervisor’s gender and orientation? A few bad professors and readers do try to penetrate their underlings, and to thwart the careers of competing boys. However I reckon that it’s much commoner for a girl to gain _subtle_ advantages from her straight male boss. Many bosses will fall for a bit of platonic flattery or momentary, unspoken fantasy. It’s “chemistry”. They’re “easy to get along with.”
But the magic buoyancy wears off for mature girls who achieve enough in their research and rise into competition with the big male patrons. Then, I’ve realised, the patronage stalls, and the latent sexual bias pushes her career downwards rather than upwards.
June 23, 2010 at 7:33 am
I’ve no idea who your “bristly” old professor is. It’s nobody I recognize. In my experience, no professors have the power you attribute to them!
June 23, 2010 at 12:03 pm
The bristly old professor is an anonymised composite of three real, prominent, influential characters who’re active in the physical sciences in the United Kingdom. Worthy of “astronomy look-alike” mugshots. Perhaps not every university department or funding council has an ogre like this. Different departments within the same university can have remarkably different cultures.
Some of an ogre’s immediate colleagues develop a bit of Stokholm Syndrome, and keep their mouths shut as long as there’s still something else to lose. Maybe this succeeds in keeping outsiders innocent?