Saturday, March 25, 2006

Revealing the Genital Advantage Reaction to the NYTimes op-ed by the Kenyon College admissions dean (she candidly described a policy of gender bias in favor of less qualified male applicants in order to maintain an attractive m/f balance in the student body):  Katha Pollitt  on "the genital advantage" in The Nation (you have to read the commentary whole -- excerpts distort the sarcasm) John Tierney, the NYTimes columnist who in general questions any kind of affirmative action, suggests looking upstream and helping boys do better in h.s.  He says: Boys are, on average, as smart as girls, but they are much less fond of school. They consistently receive lower grades, have more discipline problems and are more likely to be held back for a year or placed in special education classes. The Harvard economist Brian Jacob attributes these problems to boys' lack of "noncognitive skills," like their difficulties with paying attention in class, their disorganization and their reluctance to seek help from others. Those are serious handicaps, but they could be mitigated if schools became more boy-friendly. A few educators have suggested reforms: more games and competitions that appeal to boys, more outdoor exercise, more male teachers, more experiments with single-sex schools. But those ideas have gotten little attention or money. Schools have been too busy trying to close the gender gap in the few areas where boys are ahead, like sports and science. No matter what changes are made to help boys, they'll probably still be less likely than girls to go on to college, simply because girls' skills and interests are better suited to the types of white-collar jobs that now require college degrees. Boys will remain more inclined to skip college in favor of relatively high-paying jobs in fields like construction and manufacturing. There's no reason to expect a 50-50 ratio on campus — and certainly no reason to mandate it. Boys don't need that kind of affirmative action. What they could use, long before college, is equal attention. NYTimes letters to the editor on the topic includes this comment from a Heather Wood in Tulsa, OK: Affirmative action's strongest argument is that it helps level the effects of past (and present) discrimination. I have a hard time believing that men can make a straight-faced argument of historical systemic discrimination. Absent that, affirmative action looks less like a necessary leg-up and more like an unearned head start. And from a Vaughn Carey in Stowe, VT who speaks of higher education's "dirty little secret" of white male quotas: These schools recognize that if the female population soars above 60 percent, the character of the college radically changes, most notably in terms of intercollegiate sports, which are a critical tool in fund-raising. Once again, the myth of the meritocracy is exposed for what it is. More frank talk from Kenyon on its admissions policies and numbers here. -RH   1:40:35 PM    comment []

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