From: merolajs@vtcc1.cc.vt.edu (JOSEPH S. MEROLA DEPT OF CHEMISTRY VPI&SU)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
Subject: Re: Stigma was Re: Hiring quotas and faculty positions
Date: 15 Sep 92 20:36:00 GMT
Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <JULIE.92Sep15124656@amazon.chem.columbia.edu>, julie@amazon.chem.columbia.edu (Julie Wright) writes...
>In article <14SEP199221034456@jetson.uh.edu> schieber@jetson.uh.edu (Schieber, Jay D.) writes:
> 
>   In article <BuLCMD.1GE@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca>, drraymon@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (Darrell Raymond) writes...
> 
>   >     Proposal #1: let's evaluate current programs and find out what
>   >  		  causes beneficial effects [... sorry --- deleted a bit
>by mistake]
>[...]
>   >     Proposal #2: overhauling the public school system will have ten
>   >                  times the effect of overhauling the universities. 
> 
>   I agree only partially here.  I think that universities can go a long
>   way to advancing the awareness of students that pass through their
>   doors.  You are right in that many do not gain much, but there are 
>   certainly many who do.[...]
> 
>	Yes, and remember that while part of the problem is that women/
>minorities/whatever are discouraged or underprepared by the schools,
>another problem is that students can go through so many years of school
>with so few challenges to their prejudices.  There are a lot of sexist
>and racist people out there, many of them quite decent people overall,
>just people whose assumptions have never been challenged sufficiently to
>make them think.  I don't want to tell people how to think on social
>issues like AA, for instance, in the schools, but surely it couldn't
>hurt to stress some *facts* (like that women and minorities *do* do
>science and engineering, and that discrimination has often stopped or
>slowed them through history).  


I promised in another post that I would address this second part of
Darrell's post.  (And there are some out there who hoped I had
forgotten 8-) ).  In any event, I think the elementary schools need to
be targetted as places where gender and race misconceptions can be
appropriately tackled.  One of the excellent side benefits of being
a professor living in a college town is that my children go to school
with students from all around the world.  They are learning an 
appreciation for different cultures and peoples that I never had 
until I went to college (and perhaps I still don't have them today).

However, what I have discovered is that our elementary school's still
have a long way to go when it comes to communicating that women and
minorities do have a place in science and engineering.  Again, I'm
afraid I will be talking mostly from own experience, but I have seen
studies which indicate my perception is not far from the norm in 
most school systems.  

A couple of years ago, I volunteered to serve on a committee of our
local school district to evaluate their science curriculum.  In this
process, we had a chance to talk with a number of elementary teachers
about the science curriculum.  What I found was astounding.  Most
of the elementary school teachers are female.  Most of them were also
basically afraid of science.  They talked about how it (the subject)
scared them and they would try to do other things than the
science class.  Whether blatantly or subtly, the message comes through
to the children that science is a hard, scary subject.  This is
doubly a problem with the girls in the class:  there are already a
lot of messages that tell them that science is not for girls and is
not ladylike, and then they get the message from a female teacher that
it is a scary thing.  

Many of us in the chemistry department try to instill in the children
a sense of the wonder and excitement of science by going to the
schools and giving little lectures and fun demonstrations.  I think
this helps the overall problem with science, but it only serves to
reinforce the gender and race problem since the demos are being
done almost exclusively by white males.  

Part of this problems stems from the way colleges of education handle
the training of elementary school teachers, but I won't get started on
that or I will REALLY be accused of trying to push a social agenda. 8-)

I do think that hitting the misconceptions early in the elementary
schools is an important thing to do.  But, (you saw this coming) it still
needs to be coupled with AA at the university level.

Joseph S. Merola
Department of Chemistry
Virginia Tech (aka VPI&SU)

Newsgroups: sci.research.careers