Blogg-Ed Indetermination

Perhaps it’s a terrible conceit for me to declare “This really makes sense to me!” when discussing Louann Brizendine’s (wiki citation) The Female Brain (Amazon citation). After all, it’s dangerous territory for one to make – or agree with – generalizations about the other gender. Nonetheless, as an observer of women for 50+ years, I must say that in my opinion this book not only makes sense but lays out a compelling case for understanding the physical, chemical, and neurological differences between the brains of women and men that serves to enrich our understanding of human behavior.

As the father of a daughter (now in her early thirties), a husband of a menopausal spouse, the adoptive parent of a new mother, an employee whose bosses were almost always women, and now an educator in an all girls school, I have had the great pleasure of interacting with strong women of all ages. Brizendine’s book – with almost 80 pages of citations – attempts to add a scientific basis to help women and men better understand what’s really going on inside female heads, from birth to puberty, child bearing and rearing, and later adulthood. I wish she would write a similar volume on male brains.

Brain research is not without its skeptics, and it may well be that what “lights up” in one’s brain during an MRI is really bogus, hormones are overrated, and the whole field is a bunch of hooey. But I don’t think so. It feels intuitively right, and that’s good enough for me.

So now what? Assuming that female brains and male brains are different in some fndamental ways, what does that mean for education in general, and education at an all girls school in particular? The answer is: I don’t know. Honestly, it’s hard for me to tease out the implications of this without making it sound sexist. The predominant model of education in our schools is, I think, oriented towards a male-dominated model of education. Suggesting anything else might imply to some that women are less capable, which really is ludicrous. And perhaps I am shying away from the implications simply because I am male and think that it’s best to leave that hard work in the more capable hands of my female colleagues.

But I will say this: I welcome the conversation, male or female, about what it all means.

As a technology director at an all girls school, I am always on the lookout for new insights into educating young women in the STEM areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Thus I was excited to learn about Lesley’s Farmer’s new book Teen Girls and Technology: What’s the Problem, What’s the Solution (Amazon citation).

Given her background in library programs (she coordinates the Librarianship Program and Cal State, Long Beach) it’s not surprising that Farmer has gathered an impressive amount of research studies which describes the past and current status of girls technology education.

Using the simple writing model of “what, so what, and now what” Farmer adequately addresses the “what” part of the model, citing study upon study and piles of statistics to give the reader a grounding in the disparate treatment girls receive from teachers, other adults, and peers of both genders which contribute to girls attitudes towards and facility with technology.

It’s in the areas of “so what, and now what” that I felt keenly disappointed. Farmer offers no fresh insights into what’s to be done to address the situation, but instead relies too much on previously published literature and broad platitudes about how to engage female teens through socially relevant topics and fun activities using topics such as entertainment, fashion and beauty, child care, and advice to the love lorn. In short, it read to me like applying gender-sterotypical solutions to a problem that does little to break the mold and truly inspire young women to lives of meaning and purpose in the technical arena.