Bad pedagogy

Walter Williams offers his take on Dr. Larry Summers' plight.

Summers, President of Harvard University, is under attack for his suggestions on why there might be fewer women in the sciences.

Dr. Summers' second hypothesis is that there are sex differences in IQ and aptitude at the high end...

MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins' response to this hypothesis was to leave the lecture...

explaining to a Boston Globe (Jan. 17, 2005) reporter that, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

...continued in full post...

This, by the way, serves to validate Dr Summers' first hypothesis – that women simply aren't willing to put up with the stressful environments and demanding jobs that men are.

But is the IQ hypothesis the "junk science" Hopkins calls it?

Virtually all academic literature on sex, IQ and aptitude reach the conclusion that there are differences between men and women. While the mean intelligence between men and women is similar, the variance differs significantly. Women cluster more about the mean while men are more spread out. That means fewer women, relative to men, are at both the low end and the high end of the intelligence and aptitude spectrum. That might partially explain why so many men are in jail compared to women, and why more geniuses like Mozart and Einstein are men.

While scholars debate nature vs. nurture, the fact remains, the difference exists, and it's one we ignore at our peril. When we ignored physical differences between men and women, four people in Atlanta died at the hands of a rapist.

As Balint Vaszoni points out, the term "politically correct" was coined in distinction to "factually correct". Things that are the first are generally not the second.

And Williams' parting shot?

Dr. Summers has responded to the criticism created by his NBER remarks with serial mea culpas, groveling and apologies. He's in deep trouble. Faculty members don't differ that much from chickens in a barnyard. The sight of the boss chicken bleeding is all that's needed for the vicious pecking to commence. If there's a legitimate criticism that can be made about Dr. Summers' NBER comments, it's that he didn't exercise discretion. There are certain things best left unsaid in front of children. Children have little understanding and can be easily offended by unvarnished truths.