vendredi 20 février 2004

Surprised by sex segregation statistics Well, I don't know. I've had to chastise a Desk chief at the Factory. What with other absences for having babies or spraining ankles in the Alps, when the man let Claire off to write a book and Anne-Laure disappear for her first spell in an office almost on the Equator, he's turned the Desk afrique into an all-male enclave at times. And the same dreadful thing has happened on the Desk anglais even, on occasion. This should not be! Such a hormonal imbalance is very bad for the news. Worse, it reminds me of being at a single-sex school and mistakes you can nearly waste too much life recovering from after an upbringing like that. I reflected during this afternoon's few spare moments on this accumulation of imbalanced vibes and other things I would outlaw immediately were I the boss of AFP. Until I remembered that I'd loathe such a job, wouldn't want any more "authority" and in any case have only one daughter, not four, which seems to have become a characteristic of the Factory's recent great leaders. What got me thinking of single-sex education and my relief that the Kid is not going through it was a recent link -- from I forget where -- to a South African "social commentary" on the matter. In a piece on running workshops for 17-18 year olds in Cape Town, Tashi Tagg found last year that: "there is a marked difference between [young adults] who come from single sex schools and those who don't. The single sex school kids are always affected by the once-off presence of the opposite sex. There's an underlying awareness. Also a sense of embarassment/shyness/self-consciousness etc. Self-consciousness most. Interestingly enough this is one of the main feelings I pick up with each and every group. Obviously some kids are really 'out there' -- very relaxed and comfortable with who they are -- but, I'd say 70% of those I've met aren't. In fact loads of them have Insecurity of Note - so much so they are literally forced to physically cling to each other. I shit you not" ('School Gossip', TashiTagg). The academic quality of my own school was excellent and I thank my parents for that, but from the late 70s, after I'd finished, single-sex education became a "no-no" in Britain for all but a dwindling elite, while in France it's a very marginal and mainly Roman Catholic church-related trend. At 'About', experienced teacher Robert Kennedy, who unlike me but like a good number of my workmates, favours private schools (on About's education pages), briefly notes a feminist trend in the United States in the 1990s towards single-sex education, which he says was "recanted" in 1999 by the American Association of University Women. I'd thought that now we're in the 21st century, single-sex education had become something of an anomaly worldwide, certainly a great rarity, but further inspection leads to me to some reported evidence in favour of it -- drawing on recent studies in England, Australia and Jamaica -- gathered by the US National Association for Single Sex Public Education. If the statistics and summaries the NASSPE has published are correct, those who think like me are in for a surprise or two. At the very least, they are intriguing. These people argue that "the best evidence now suggests that coeducational settings actually reinforce gender stereotypes, whereas single-sex classrooms break down gender stereotypes. Girls in single-sex educational settings are more likely to take classes in math, science, and information technology. Boys in single-sex schools are more likely to pursue interests in art, music, drama, and foreign languages. Both girls and boys have more freedom to explore their own interests and abilities in single-gender classrooms" (the emphasis is theirs). Hmmmm. 8:55:05 PM  link   your views? [] White lies, ignorance, deceit and damnable lies Days when nothing happens are rare enough to be worthy of note, I thought early last night -- while I had an Internet connection. OK, Swaziland declared a national disaster (BBC/AFP), but that's been regrettably predictable. Otherwise, my regular stint scouring the Web turned up zilch, even on all the "alternative" news sites (a few of which are in the blogroll). One or two more like this and journalists might start reporting good news. The workaholics -- there are always so many of them that it surprises me: hacks who hate having no events to report -- might start even writing those "features I've always wanted to do, but never had time." Things change this morning: the "conservatives are poised to rout the reformists" in Iran's election (Yahoo AFP). "Politics sucks!" My connection went down twice yesterday. "There's no breakdown in your sector," my ISP's hotline people informed me after the first stopped my searching. "Well, I'm reporting one." "It's your computer. Unplug the modem--" "I've played all those games, twice. It's your service!" After seven minutes of ding-dong for which I was being charged 34 cents a minute, they made me hold again, "to fix up a rendez-vous with a technician." I hung up on the hotline then, dug out my "secret numbers" for the big bosses at Noos. "As ever," I informed one, "your hotline people are blissfully ignorant of a technical fault in my sector, blaming it on me. They want to send a techie. And every time they do that, the techie confirms the breakdown." As ever, the big boss was polite, said he'd check it out and get back to me. At their expense, not mine. Twenty minutes later, he 'phoned back to confirm the breakdown and told me what the technicians were doing, asked me what was happening at my end. Now that was an answer, so when the connection went down again for the rest of the evening, I wasn't bothered. When this happened several times late last year, Noos gave me a 70 euro (89 dollar) rebate. That was nice. Until I got my 'phone bill: calls to Noos had totalled 72 euros! They have made efforts. I commended them on sometimes now sending SMS warnings to my mobile phone informing me of technical work in advance. But if they do not swiftly establish a system where the technicians tell the hotline people what's going on, I'm not only going to publish those "secret numbers" for the ISP's HQ here, but send them to Noos's consumer watchdog organisation, Luccas. They have been warned. In science, there was a story: "President Bush's administration has been accused of suppressing and distorting scientific findings that run counter to its own political beliefs. The charge comes from an American body, the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement with more than 60 supporters. The signatories, who include 12 Nobel Prize winners, say scientific integrity must be restored to policy-making." That BBC Science article will have picked up the story on something most of us suspected but should be glad to see exposed from Wired ('Bush Distorts Science'). "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views." That's a quote from Doctor Who. I'm happy to see it at the top of another take on this damnable deception at Morons in the News. 10:59:55 AM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.