Basically, the girl who wrote the article said that the Canadian school system she was in was sexist against girls. Her logic for this is staggering. I will now post an excerpt from the article (note: even though the article is almost ten years old by now, the issue I am addressing in this rant still happens frequently, even today):
I went to school's graduation a couple of-weeks ago. More than half of it was awards and I brought along a pad and pen and doodled through the long hours, keeping an ear out for my friends' names.Pretty quickly it became apparent that one girl had a clean sweep in the math and sciences. I began to listen to the speeches given in honor of this girl. The biology teacher gave her the top biology award with a speech that said: people think that girls in our schools are discouraged from going into mathematics and the sciences but since this girl has gotten the top science marks, this cannot possibly be true.
Adrenaline of anger pumped through my body when I heard this. How could he not see that this was actually proof that girls were still discouraged? That discouragement means that the only girls who stay in the sciences are the ones who are incredibly skilled at them and willing to put in a lot of work for them? That discouragement means the girls who would have come in fifth or sixth or even twenty-third in the class are the ones who feel pushed out and ignored; who sit there silently all class without getting called on or acknowledged. These are the ones who get discouraged and who slowly leave, never to return.
I gained a little bit of insight into the "exception rule" since apparently it means that an exception somehow proves the rule by virtue of the fact that it is an exception and very rare if it ever happens. That part made a little bit of sense; after all if it happened all the time it wouldn't be an exception so therefore the rule must be true since it is generally what happens. I'm not so sure I buy that since it just demonstrates that there is something wrong with the rule or that if there are that many exceptions than it really isn't a rule and just an assumption. But I digress. What I couldn't help but find absurd was the author's assumption about the girls who succeed and the ones who fail. The author assumes that the reason that girls who try to go into the sciences and fail is because they are discriminated against; however, re-read her description of the people who succeed:
[T]he only girls who stay in the sciences are the ones who are incredibly skilled at them and willing to put in a lot of work for them[.]Now, maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I could have sworn that in order to succeed in anything you have to at least have some skill in it and be "willing to put in a lot of work". The last I knew, that was pretty much the standard for succeeding (unless of course you have connections, but in case you don't have any connections you have to work hard). In contrast to that, read once again what the author says about those who apparently fail, or drop out of the sciences because of "discouragement":
[T]he girls who would have come in fifth or sixth or even twenty-third in the class are the ones who feel pushed out and ignored; who sit there silently all class without getting called on or acknowledged. These are the ones who get discouraged and who slowly leave, never to return.Let me see if I have this straight. The girls who are at the bottom of the academic food-chain so to speak, are there not because they "sit there silently all class", but becuse they do not "[get] called on or acknowledged". Now I'm not a teacher, but so far I have been a student for going on 16 years now (I'm a junior in college right now). In my long tenure as a student, I've learned that generally the reason people sit still and don't participate in class are the ones who:
or as is likely the case
Many of the kids that don't participate, don't really care about what is being taught anyways. So let me ask you a question, if you don't care anything about the class, will you likely do well in it? Generally speaking the answer to that is no, you will not. Does it come as any surprise that most of these people that "sit there silently all class", probably aren't doing too well? I understand that there are some people who try their best but just can't seem to make the grade. If that's the case then find a tutor or do extra credit or something. If that doesn't seem to help then maybe that's not what God has for you. In addition, perhaps these people don't get called on because maybe the teacher wants to call on somebody who he knows will more than likely give the correct answer. That's not sexism. The other section of the article continued with even more whining and complaining about supposed sexism in the school. Was this due to anything like preferential treatment of male students over female students, or perhaps a male teacher who is a terminal lecher making unwanted advances at a female student? Not even remotely. It boiled down to a reading list that didn't have a lot of female authors in the list. Again, here is an excerpt from the article: Later that year, after the novels were handed out, I realized that all of them were written by men. I went to the English teacher again, and again he said that yes, he understood how this could be a problem but when he was planning the unit he thought he would include The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. Then he cut it because he decided it was too controversial. Well, I said, one book written by a woman that is cut is not 'lot's of women to choose from.' Yes, that was true, he agreed. If I wanted my group to read a science fiction novel written by a woman, he didn't have a problem with that. Well, I did. The idea that I was complaining because I wanted to read a book by a woman and not that women should simply be represented in our English curriculum because they exist didn't quite cut it. For this English teacher I wrote up a list of about 30 science fiction novels that had been written by women. When I told this story to my parents, they were as upset that the English department had no money for new books as they were about the low representation of women authors. They decided to make a donation to the school of a set of the anthology "From Ink Lake." My English teacher was happy to accept. The girl doing well in math and my list and donation were both celebrated as cures to the sexism in our schools. Instead they were indicators of where our education system needs to be overhauled and drastically changed. The problem here isn't the fact that there weren't an even number of male and female author's represented in the list. Most authors over the years have been men. That's just how it was. Yes there are more and more women authors every year but the majority always has been and always will be men. This isn't the problem though. Much like I have pointed out in regards to blacks being oversensitive regarding racism and slavery, many of these girls growing up are being taught that all women are mistreated and misrepresented and that everything is done to keep them down and subserviant. For example words in the english language that have the word "men" or "man" in it were specifically designed to keep women in subjection. This feministic thinking is bull. Yes there are some women that are discriminated against because of their gender and that isn't right but that's not the standard. What is happening is these women are making an issue out of a non-issue. There is no giant conspiracy started by men to keep women under our thumbs. Quit whining about sexism everytime there is a disproportianate amount of men to women represented because more than likely it's a result of the law of probability as opposed to anything else. One more thing, if you keep whining and complaining about everything and trying to asssert dominance over men, the more you look like a PMSing witch and that's how people will treat you. I'm all for women getting ahead in the world and being successful, but not if you have to get there by suing over stupid crap like sexism and whining about stuff until you get your way. Earn your position, don't gripe for it. Oh and by the way, yes, it is a male dominated society. It always has been, and always will be. Now shut up and cook me pancakes, woman before I slap you!* * The author does not condone domestic abuse or violence against women, such as beating your wife, or girlfriend, or even hookers. It was said to be a joke, and was in no way meant to reflect the true opinion of the author. The only exception to this is against feminist nazi's also known as feminazi's because most of them are butch and might as well be men.Over the winter, my English class began a unit on short stories and the anthologies were handed out. Looking over the contents page of one hundred or so writers, only two were women. I went to my English teacher about this and he said that he did realize that this could be seen as a problem but felt that his hands were tied; there simply wasn't any money for new books. He calmed me down from what was now a double blow by adding that we were to be working on novel projects in the spring and then there would be lots of women authors to choose from.
Maybe I just don't care enough, but who actually sits down, reads through a list of authors and checks to see how many of the author's are women? Seriously. I don't know of anybody that I have ever met that actually cared how many authors on a reading list were women. Even the girls I know wouldn't care. I'll grant you that 2 out of about 100 authors is a bit low and that they should have increased the number since there is no way they could include women author's such as:
