The Debate Goes On

If I were to give Harvard President Lawrence Summers credit for anything, it would be for showing a sometimes complacent recent generation of women that there is still a simmering cauldron of gender inequity that can easily be brought to a boil.

In her recent column, Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker defends Summers’ recent remarks about there being a genetic math and science aptitude difference between men and women. She goes on to profess through sometimes inflammatory sexist remarks (“some women have reacted as though their corsets were too tight”), that his remarks were right about us “gals.” She refers to recent studies that show that male and female brains process information differently to conclude that this somehow means a genetic difference in aptitude – a faulty, illogical leap from “different” to “better.”

Not long ago, children who learned “differently” were considered less intelligent than their peers because of their inability to succeed in the traditional school classroom. Today, learning disabilities are widely diagnosed, and children who receive accommodations for their learning differences can go on to “learn” just as successfully as their peers. What was once thought of as an aptitude issue is, in reality, a processing difference.

So the issue that Summers should have brought out is, if men and women process information differently, what current educational techniques need to be changed to accommodate these differences? How can the educational system cope with students whose learning abilities have been affected by social and economic factors (things that will forever slant the results of “intelligence tests)? And then, perhaps, ask his audience to address the post-educational concern of whether or not certain professions may be gender-biased to begin with.

In fact, reportedly, Summers did touch on these things in his remarks, a transcript of which has yet to be made public. In fact, some who defend him, like Parker, insist that he did not say that women are genetically preprogrammed with the inability to do as well as men in math and science – that he just said that genetic difference may be a contributing factor. Without his exact remarks or a complete explanation of exactly what he meant, the debate will rage on. It is possible that without being accused of making the unsupportable jump into the inherent genetic aptitude of the sexes Summers would not have succeeded in bringing this issue into the forum of public debate. I’d like to think that he has fallen on his sword for the betterment of gender equity in education. But somehow I doubt it.