I've been pondering everyone's thoughts on this. It left me speechless that such an article would come forward. But it does reflect my personal experience.
My son, 23, is a gamer and a wonderful guy, outgoing and comfortable, thank Goodness. However when he started playing games as a little boy, I saw a big shift in his personality. Luckily there was a study at that time that resulted in a small article in the paper saying that children who play computer games too young become more aggressive and impatient, more driven and difficult to get along with... something like that. The theory was that the response of the computer is so fast that small kids come to expect that sort of feedback from all of life. It fit Charlie exactly and so games, and computers, went away until Jr Hi, when he was playing games at school anyway. By then though, he had a solid presence about him and he didn't seem to suffer. And he was also learning computer languages, and system administration from his dad, not just playing games. Starting in kindergarten I could see that the classroom was slanted toward girls. At those young ages, girls naturally like to sit more than boys. Boys need to run around. Both need to socialize. The classroom disallows all but the sitting quietly and following directions. The Jr Hi years saw lots of shakeups for us. We finally took him out of school because the place was simply too mean. In particular, the teachers were too mean and it made him sick to his stomach. He was skinny and pale. It was a frightening time for this mother. First we tried a private school that let children do whatever they want, and he loved it. It was a school patterned after the Sudbury Valley School near Boston. They have been raising "free" children since the 60's. From their studies, it turns out that if kids are left alone, they want to learn. Kids want to grow up and want to grow up to be useful and successful. They are born with a sense of direction and huge curiosity, and self-knowledge. In our culture, this is systematically drummed out of us by adults who had it all drummed out of them -- all with the one word "should". The result is: we have not yet seen the adult of the species. But, this private school was, in fact, girl-biased. At a potluck, one of the main teachers chided Charlie to me: *Charlie* made this dish? I tried to say something about it to her later, that she doesn't want to be reinforcing the assumption that boys don't cook. She said that she figured that the system has been so slanted toward the boys for so long, it was time to slant toward the girls and even things up. I was irate, but I bit my tongue and didn't say anything. Charlie had to live with the situation, not me. Some months later Charlie came home complaining about how they treat the boys and I told him he didn't have to go back if he didn't want to. So, from then on, I kept him at home and we hid from the authorities until he was 16. I couldn't sign the school system's home-school papers and promise that I'd teach him this and that, because he wasn't interested in this and that. I did insist that he study 3 hours a day, but whatever he liked. It was math, science and computers. So, I can see what the article is saying. I have to say that any imposed gender-slant in the culture is detrimental to both genders. All the generations and cultures where the male had (or has), to a large extent, exclusivity on intellectuality and on power outside the home, he is also not allowed to cry, or to access to his feelings. Which gender suffers the larger loss? One more thing. The fact that women aren't in computing as much as men totally escapes me. I don't get it at all. Coding seems very much like sewing to me, requiring artful careful well-planned and often tedious work. I remember that, when typewriters first came out, it was men's work. And then it changed. So I wouldn't count it as decided yet. What do you think? Marilyn Davis _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
