American Elephants

You hear all the time that we don’t have enough graduates in math and science. But I read just today that there are no jobs in science. We have plenty of graduates in science, but they are not very good at science, and we need stars.  Whatever. Barack Obama is going to fix that. Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Department of Education in 2013 in fields like Math, Science and Engineering.

Title IX guidelines reduced the percentage of male athletes in intercollegiate athletics. The rules allow colleges to temporarily increase the number of female athletes rather than cut male athletes, but the only viable permanent way to comply with the rule is to restrict men’s participation compared to women’s participation.

Writing in Newsweek in June, President Obama celebrated the fact that 25 percent fewer men than women graduate from college, calling it a “great accomplishment ” for America. He lamented that a smaller gender disparity — 17 percent fewer women attending college than men — had existed before Title IX was implemented.

When my mother entered the University of Washington many years ago, she wanted to become a mining engineer. The head of the Geology Department said that he had never had a woman in his department and wasn’t going to start. True family story. So I am conscious of plain old fairness. But the idea that male and female must be statistically equal is absurd.

Obama, as the father of daughters, wants them to have opportunities. But will what’s good for women’s basketball will be good for nuclear physics? I don’t think so. The “women’s movement” has a lot to answer for. In their greed to take executive offices and perks away from men, they’ve done a lot of damage to the male of the species.

Anyone who has raised little boys, knows that they like to build things, investigate how things work, and put wheels on practically anything so it will go fast. They intuitively understand the workings of the internal combustion engine, and love to tinker with cars. My next door neighbor was usually out in his garage, in his 80s, puttering around with his Model A. If you have small boys, or boys of any age, I advise The Dangerous Book for Boys. Boys are different than girls. Allowing and encouraging participation is one thing.  Insisting on equal participation is nuts.

New insistence on equal, Title IX participation, in math, engineering, physics and computer science is playing silly social justice games with fields where American scientific excellence is vital to the economy and to national defense. Let kids follow their own  interests. Liberals with good intentions, but minds full of social justice, forcing equality and quotas have done immeasurable damage to our kids and the institution of education. We need to get the federal government out of the education business entirely. They are no good at it.