Talking Point #7

This weeks blog is very different from other weeks. We aren't give any specific thing to write about but are just given a broad topic. I thought it would be interesting to break this subject down as follows:

The first article that I looked for was a simple article that talked about gender in general, not specifically relating to education, in 2010. I did not find exactly what I was looking for but found this article on technological giants to be very intriguing. It points out that some big companies woud not reveal information regarding gender or race of their employees. Why wouldn't they is my question. What are they hiding? This quote from the article sticks out to me the most: "Google, Yahoo!, Apple, Oracle and Applied Materials argued that the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released." What the heck did they mean by this? And how did federal regulators buy this as an argument?Like I said this was not exactly what I was looking for but I found this to be astonishing, especially considering it happened less than two months ago!

The next article I wanted was to discuss gender in relation to schools. Still not what I wished for I found an article about a study that was very thought provoking. However the study was done in 2006 so I was a little weary to use it but since the topic is still debatable, I figured it was safe to use. The study concluded that boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women. At first, I did not know what to think of this as in my experience I have had great teachers in general and do not believe their genders have had anything to do with it. However in countering this study Marcia Greenberger states "We have to be careful of too many generalizations". After reading this quote, I believe this is the answer to how I feel about this.

In the last article I was looking for it to combine gender and education into one. I found a terrific article but unfortunately it is a very small sampling size as it is only based on one high school. However it was exactly what I was looking for even though I would have liked to cover the country or even a state. The article shows that only 46% of the students in Rochester graduate but more girls graduate than boys. The superintendent claims "It is a phenomenon that is not unique to the city, it's across the country." This was what I was looking for but it not backed up with statistical information.

In conclusion, I never did find exactly what I was looking for in any of these articles but nevertheless, I learned a lot from what I did find.