<p>HAHAHAHAHA, yeah thats havahd for ya.</p>
<p>I can fully identify with one component of this man's speech. DD is the number 2 child...she has an older brother. The reality was that we had tons of "boy toys"...trucks, trains, cars, bulldozers, etc. DS also had stuffed animals and a favorite doll (named Tommy). When DD was toddling about we really didn't even have a doll bed or a cradle or anything like that. She took a Tonka Truck and made a bed out of it for a stuffed animal. She actually used washclothes and small towels from a small bathroom. We NEVER showed her how to do this...and neither did her brother. We always wondered why she didn't use the truck as....well, a truck! Having said all that, DD is a much better science and math student than her brother ever hoped to be. She would be a fine engineer or something of that type.</p>
<p>It is a disgusting thing to say. He has two teenaged daughters, and I can imagine that they are horrified by his comments!</p>
<p>The truck/doll anecdote has nothing to do with women becoming scientists!</p>
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<blockquote> <p>The truck/doll anecdote has nothing to do with women becoming scientists!>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>I agree. I think his speech was in poor taste. The anecdote was just to note that that part of his speech struck a familiar chord in this home anyway. As I said, despite this, my daughter's math/science skills far outweigh her brother's. Sorry for the confusion. I hope you didn't think I agreed with this speech!</p>
<p>Sorry, thumper. I was not referencing to your post in particular. I am just really annoyed about the whole thing. Larry Summers has two very intelligent daughters, and they should not have been mentioned in his statement.<br>
It is sad that most people whole took the poll did not find his comments offensive!</p>
<p>I laughed at the truck/doll incident. My daughter NEVER liked dolls or even played with them much. She DID like playing with trucks and cars, however (but she never personalized them that I can remember). My son, on the other hand, had a doll that he adored and he played "Daddy" all the time with it, including doing things like giving it a bath, singing to it, feeding it, wrapping it up and tucking it into bed, etc. (He actually still has this doll up in his closet and got annoyed with me when I suggested throwing it out last fall. He's 14).</p>
<p>End result: my daughter hates science/math; Son loves science/math. Guess he better not go to Harvard or he might be disuaded from that interest because he used to play with dolls.</p>
<p>Yes and when my 1 year old son was given a small toy car, he automatically got on his hands and knees and pushed it along the floor saying brrmm, brrmm. Of course at age 1 he loved for his older sister to dress him up in a dress-up tutu and run circles around the house, also. His doll is a stuffed dog, that now lives primarily on the top bunk, only occasionally putting in an appearance when he is quite ill (he's 13).</p>
<p>I do think there are some things hard wired into men and women that make them more attuned to/ successful in certain fields and endeavors, but to generalize that to an assertion as broad as all of science and math??!! I don't think so.</p>
<p>Carolyn and "Greensleeves", your stories are very funny.</p>
<p>Cangel: You have posted on your D's user name twice today! :)</p>
<p>I hated playing with dolls as a kid - I just didn't understand what you were supposed to do with them. I did like playing with Lincoln Logs at the Y after school - but there wasn't much opportunity for that.</p>
<p>Summers should NOT be leading a university that has some of the finest minds - male and female - with an attitude like that. Honestly, if I had to pinpoint some of the reasons that I got out of math and science, it's that b.s. - that "boys just have brains that are better for spacial reasoning." Nineteenth century anthropologists also pointed out that men have bigger brains, then concluded that women are inferiour. The presentation is more subtle (which is scary), but the message is the same.</p>
<p>(Also note that our definition of respectable sciences has changed. Number of women in a field is directly correlated to it losing respect - see Freudian-era worship of psych as a great science, compared to it's "social science" moniker now. Ugh, ugh, ugh!</p>
<p>Here is a lengthier, more detailed and nuanced article in the Boston Globe. </p>
<p>When my D was 2, my MIL gave her a babydoll and cradle, because she was scandalized that she didn't have dolls. D looked at it like some horrible, burdensome responsibility, and was so relieved when she could go back to her trucks, books, and stuffed animals (which were friends, not dependents.) She loves being with small kids now, but boy did she hate that doll. She's great at math and science, did better at them than her brother.</p>
<p>This comment is even more outrageous than Summer's. These "activists" who can't engage in "intellectual debate" because of their "sensibilities" (probably too hysterical? PMS?) are the president of MIT and the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz!:</p>
<p>The organizer of the conference, Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman, described Summers' critics as activists whose sensibilities might be at odds with intellectual debate.</p>
<p>Before my son was born, I used to believe that the difference btwn boys and girls was all socialization, but they "are who they are" at such an early age! And although there's plenty of overlap in interests and ability btwn individual girls and boys, there also seem to be distinct differences btwn them when viewed as groups. Even when parents try very hard to be gender neutral in child-rearing, the differences still show up. I don't think that "biology is destiny" when it comes to gender differences, but biology certainly seems to be some sort of factor. </p>
<p>I would never, ever discourage a girl from playing with a truck or majoring in math, or a boy from playing with a doll or majoring in home ec. But even MRI studies have shown that males and females use different parts of the brain to do different tasks. The 2 groups are different! For the past 6 years I have coached a math team. My co-coach and I are both female. We have always gone out of our way to recruit and retain girls. We really try, but we just can't drum up as many interested girls as boys. Currently btwn us we only have 2 girls, and 24 boys. I just don't believe that disparity is because of anything the parents or the coaches are doing.</p>
<p>The main crime committed by the president of Harvard involved believing that anything he might say publically could be separated from his position; and he said something that is totally unacceptable for the president of a major university to say. That makes his comments much more offensive than if the same comments had been made by Joe Schmoe.</p>
<p>Aries, you change the doll's clothes, talk to it, and read it Blake and Shakespeare.
It wasn't reading Blake to the doll that got to me, it was than an eight-year-old <em>liked</em> Blake. And foo! if she didn't know enough to understand symbolism.</p>
<p>Texas, you are so right. My eyes were opened in pre-school, just seeing how kids were wired with a minimal amount of socialization. </p>
<p>And at risk of provoking a flames, the straight/gay thing is in the same lump.</p>
<p>I'd debate you, Texas 137, but it's against my sensibilities. Oh dear me, where did I put my smelling salts....:)</p>
<p>Yeah, if you look at the DNA really closely, you can see the little blue footballs on one, and the pink lace on the other, right?</p>
<p>I do think there are differences between men and women, but I don't think they're the same ones as those that we code into kids from the day they are born.</p>
<p>* The main crime committed by the president of Harvard involved believing that anything he might say publically could be separated from his position; and he said something that is totally unacceptable for the president of a major university to say.*</p>
<p>I honestly don't think Pres. Summers believed that the hypotheses he was stating were TRUE, only that they were hypotheses requiring further scholarly investigation. He's a smart guy in many ways (certainly smart enough to know that an anecdote about his daughter doesn't constitute proof of anything), but he has a history of foot-in-mouth provocative and/or ironic statements with big public repercussions (like the "ironic" memo that went out under his name when he was head of research at the World Bank, suggesting that we could solve our toxic waste problem by shipping it to 3rd world countries: <a href="http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/sumers99.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/sumers99.htm</a>.)</p>
<p>Pres. Summers has a long history as a debater. (He was on the MIT debate team in college and later coached it as a Harvard grad student.) Debaters are often in the position of having to argue strongly against their most deeply held beliefs, because they are required to argue both the affirmative and negative side of every issue. Responsible scholars have to do the same thing--they have to make the strongest possible argument against the theories they are trying to espouse--it's part of the search for the truth.</p>
<p>College debaters and relatively obscure professorial scholars have the freedom to make these kinds of remarks all the time without risk of public misinterpretation in the press.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the president of Harvard must realize that the power and prestige associated with his current position can easily result in short and sweet soundbite headlines distoring his true beliefs.</p>
<p>If you do a Google News search on "Summers," you turn up 169 articles on this story, many with short, snappy, oversimplified, distorted, and inaccurate headlines like: "Harvard president claims that women and science don't mix" or "Women fail science test, says Harvard chief."</p>
<p>I hope and expect that Pres. Summers is already at work on some sort of public statement clearly setting out a more accurate description of his views on the subject.</p>
<p>I do agree that there are some differences based on gender BUT that does not mean that women aren't every bit as capable of being good scientists, mathematicians, doctors, engineers as men are. I think discrimination in academia plays a greater role than gender in preventing women from reaching the upper echelons of research --- and the fact that the number of women hired at Harvard under Summers makes me wonder whether his "beliefs" in innate differences somehow has transferred to hiring processes.</p>
<p>And by the way, I happen to know an extremely talented young mathematician who used to run a "school" for her dolls in which she taught them math! (She also liked Brio trains and Legos.)</p>