Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion STEM interest and dads

You and others have hijacked the thread with personal attacks on someone you disagree with.

My daughter who is a sophomore has a female sophomore friend taking the Computer Science exam in May.

The topic of the thread is the role of parents (fathers, specifically) in promoting interest in STEM among girls. You have indicated that you are not actively encouraging your daughter in the pursuit of STEM, and that she isn't showing an early leaning in that direction. Thank you for your contribution.

Dude is the original poster of the thread. He has attempted to corral the discussion to the original topic, with incremental levels of patience, and he has substantiated his initial query with outside resources. His interest is in the role of environmental factors that elicit female interest in STEM, and he is soliciting feedback to optimize his support for his DD. That is not hijacking, it is the purpose of the forum and, specifically, this thread.

It was your post (#241857) which initiated a discussion of biological determinism of female math skills, which is a redux of a long and open disagreement on the forum. I am hereby posting a thread in which it is appropriate to discus biological determinism and the genetic component of various abilities, as this seems to be a subject of considerable interest to you, so that we have a side valve in which to release these unnecessary--and wholly unproductive--frictions.

Here is the thread-
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/241885.html#Post241885

It undermines the quality of discussion here to be regularly inundated with off-subject messaging suggesting that females are simply innately too incompetent to excel in STEM fields. Properly distilled, this is the argument you are forwarding, and it is abhorrent.

This is a forum for parents of gifted children sincerely seeking to improve the access to high quality gifted education for our families and others. Individual differences in abilities and outcomes exist, often with divergences between the two that merit exploration. We can do better than to categorically write off half the population with trite bro-science.

Speaking of terrible arguments, the notion that I can somehow hijack my own discussion.

As a bit of a tangent to the OP, according to this article and studies, the more gender equal a country is, the less women are interested in STEM careers. The less gender equal or the lower the income for women, the more women are interested in STEM careers.I just found it interesting, you may too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

I have mixed thoughts on the issue of "girls only" encouragement in STEM and those thoughts have shifted recently more towards "less" as my own children have gotten older (my youngest are now in 9th). At this point, I really see what Nicoledad, Spaghetti, Old Dad, and Bostonian (RE situation where verbal ability far outstripping STEM ability in a high IQ female) are talking about. As a bit of a background, DH is STEM while my undergraduate is STEM but my terminal degree/career is not STEM. I have boy/girl twins whom I strongly encourage in STEM throughout childhood. DS naturally had strong interest/talent while DD had zero interest but some talent so I really had to "encourage" her much harder with far less "results". DD is a talented writer/artist, who really came into her own by late middle school, winning multiple contests with significant prizes/money/recognition, by which point I accepted/assumed she would/should not pursue STEM although I still told her to keep all her options open. DD decided against an elite art magnet for high school last year and is currently planning for a bachelor plus terminal degree that has nothing to do with her greatest talents. In the schools in our area, there really is too much stress on STEM, particularly for girls, regardless of their talents/inclinations. DD still has zero passion for STEM but is thinking only about the money/prestige/stability. I am concerned that her considerable talents will go to waste and she will be miserable in the long term.

A few more idle thoughts:

We have both male and female children. In each gender, there is a child who is noticeably talented in one or more STEM-related skills, and also in one or more artistic fields. The parents in our family unit are also individuals with skills in both STEM and artistic areas. I find it fascinating that, as much as children of both sexes are encouraged to pursue and develop their STEM and artistic talents alike in our family, I think male children generally are more likely to be discouraged from pursuing artistic careers, if they have the option of STEM. So it may be that there are factors having to do both with differential encouragement/support (or, perhaps, effectiveness of same) of both STEM or artistic careers in boys and girls. I am not citing any data in this case, just a small sampling of observations unanchored by documentation.

My experience is that people (teachers, administrators, HR departments, politicians, etc) are so excited to bring females into STEM that they will overlook a more talented male in order to provide praise and opportunities to a female. There's a red carpet waiting for anyone with two X chromosomes who can do math, and a journactivist with a camera dying to tell the story. I think a lot of females who are inclined to do engineering don't want the attention. I also think it sends the wrong message to anyone more talented who isn't getting the same attention. A male talented in STEM just isn't interesting to anyone these days.
In general it's awkward that someone's career choice is politicized, and done so mostly by people who can't STEM.

I don’t think anyone here is advocating tokenism—quite the opposite— so let’s put that straw man to rest and save the more politicized red pill narrative for other online outlets. Fair?

What’s been your approach in your parenting vis-a-vis inculcating STEM skills for your children, particularly your DD? (IIRC, you have a DD and a DS.)

Actually I am talking about the Maths section of the SAT which is hardly far RH tail stuff.

Also, while it is true that one doesn't need to be very clever to 'code' as much as have the ability to think like a moron (the computer) one does need to be pretty sharp to code well.

A vast gulf separates being able to code well versus being able to type in a sequence of syntactically correct statements to get the job done (elegant simplicity versus brute force).

I have personally observed that gulf many times over the 30+ years I have worked in system development.

The truth is that many otherwise smart people cannot code (or architect systems) well.