Native Differences in Ability and an Integrated Curriculum

The ideal curriculum for the young child would be both open and integrated. An integrated curriculum ties the various fields of learning together, acknowledging the related patterns of brain activity in areas such as music, math, and science.

Music, science, and math go hand in hand. This is a natural combination for children. As we think about the integrated curriculum, it is important to remember all of the educational possibilities of weaving music, science, and mathematics throughout children’s experiences and all parts of the classroom environment (Scholastic Early Childhood Today, 2003). Music and rhythm are a vital part of human culture. The integration of music into the general curriculum encourages students to become actively involved in their learning. For example, the rhythm, meter, measure, and pattern of familiar lyrics can help develop math and science skills while enhancing many other aspects of the curriculum (Rothenberg, 1996).

Music can be a real asset when it comes to teaching math. “Music is filled with patterns and that’s what math is really about. You’re not going to explain the intricacies of notes and scales to a three-year-old, but exposing a child to music now will help him learn these concepts later” (Gill, 1998, p. 40). _Education

Integrating different types of learning which exercise similar brain networks, within the curriculum, can provide complementary pre-verbal cognitive perspectives which may be difficult to achieve otherwise.

But the curriculum must also be open to integrating more and different skills and knowledge areas as windows for critical learning periods open and close. By a certain point in development, it should be clear whether the child possesses special interests or particular ability or skills potential. The curriculum is integrated, but open to special circumstances and motivations.

Different children possess varying innate potential for development in the diverse fields of study and over a wide range of skills and competencies. While it is true that smart practise is crucial for mastery of skills and knowledge, it is also true that starting with a higher innate potential allows for the possibility of a higher level of mastery, with well-directed practise.

In terms of music, for example, we find that males overwhelmingly dominate the list of the 100 greatest classical composers. This is also true for the list of 10 greatest violinists of all time. You will also find a powerful male dominance revealed in the list of the top 50 jazz musicians of all time. The handful of females who make it into the top 50 jazz musicians list, tend to be vocalists.

As far as mathematics is concerned, there has not been a female Fields medal winner. The Fields Medal is given to mathematicians who are considered to advance the field the most.

In science, the Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded almost exclusively to men, with Marie Curie sharing the award in 1903 with Antoine Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie.

This male - female comparison of historical elite achievement in music, mathematics, and science, is meant only to demonstrate the likelihood of a sex related difference in innate ability at the elite levels, in those areas. The differences of innate strengths in these areas are distributed normally in both the male and the female populations, with the elite tail of the male distribution extending further to the right than the elite tail of the female distribution.

Other than for the elite tails, there is considerable overlap in ability in music, math, and science for males and females. In other words, the way is relatively equally open to mastery in those fields for large numbers of males and females.

For most dangerous children, early training in a broad range of general competencies will lead to adolescents with multiple skills which can be put to use in several ways to both provide income, and to pursue further mastery in special areas which may most interest individual dangerous children.

Wikimedia: Dumbing Down the Idiocracy?

NYT
Several areas of commerce, enterprise, and science remain the province of mainly-male participation. Physics, mathematics, advanced computer science, technical engineering, math-intensive sciences, aircraft test pilots and combat pilots, commercial sea captains, and so on. Most informed people understand that research is dominated by males, but few people realise that technical information intensive areas -- such as highly demanding reference information providers -- are also dominated by males. A lot of politically involved feminists would like to change that situation, but is there a danger in moving too forcefully from the top down when changes may adversely affect critically important services?

...surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of [Wikipedia's] hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.

About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.

...The notion that a collaborative, written project open to all is so skewed to men may be surprising. After all, there is no male-dominated executive team favoring men over women, as there can be in the corporate world; Wikipedia is not a software project, but more a writing experiment — an “exquisite corpse,” or game where each player adds to a larger work.

...The public is increasingly going to Wikipedia as a research source: According to a recent Pew survey, the percentage of all American adults who use the site to look for information increased to 42 percent in May 2010, from 25 percent in February 2007. This translates to 53 percent of adults who regularly use the Internet.

Jane Margolis, co-author of a book on sexism in computer science, “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” argues that Wikipedia is experiencing the same problems of the offline world, where women are less willing to assert their opinions in public. “In almost every space, who are the authorities, the politicians, writers for op-ed pages?” said Ms. Margolis, a senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.

...Ms. Gardner said that for now she was trying to use subtle persuasion and outreach through her foundation to welcome all newcomers to Wikipedia, rather than advocate for women-specific remedies like recruitment or quotas.

“Gender is a huge hot-button issue for lots of people who feel strongly about it,” she said. “I am not interested in triggering those strong feelings.”

Kat Walsh, a policy analyst and longtime Wikipedia contributor who was elected to the Wikimedia board, agreed that indirect initiatives would cause less unease in the Wikipedia community than more overt efforts.

But she acknowledged the hurdles: “The big problem is that the current Wikipedia community is what came about by letting things develop naturally — trying to influence it in another direction is no longer the easiest path, and requires conscious effort to change.” _NYT

The Wikipedia world is indeed a rough and tumble world of competitive edits and re-writes. If a person cannot withstand criticism and competition, they will not likely last long in that world.

The male hormone testosterone shapes the human brain in multiple ways not yet fully comprehended by science or society at large. Much of what science has learned about the influence of hormones such as testosterone on the gender differences so prevalent in society, is considered not politically correct -- and thus essentially unmentionable in left-leaning tabloids such as the New York Times, quoted above. Testosterone makes males more interested in objects than people, more competitive, have generally superior spatial and higher math skills, physically larger and stronger with greater stamina, tending to greater independence, and generally more logically determined and less emotional in the face of distractions.

Charles Murray's fascinating book, Human Accomplishment, provides a historical reflection of the phenomenon that Wikimedia's executives and critics are struggling with. Males have tended to achieve the lion's share of discoveries, inventions, and masterpieces of art, music, and literature as far back as history can tell.

A population shrinkage is occurring among the more intelligent people of the world -- Europeans and Northeast Asians -- while an explosive growth of population is occurring among the less intelligent people of the world. The average intelligence of the human population is inexorably dropping from near 90 points of IQ, downward -- close to the mid-80s and below. That qualifies as an Idiocracy.

In order to dumb down the Idiocracy, one must institute foolish rules of arbitrary and counter-productive governance, while educating the populace to accept dumbed-down groupthink rather than to think for themselves. It is easier than you might think. What Wikimedia is contemplating -- and what many western governments have done, and called affirmative action -- is an excellent example.

La Griffe to Feminists: Men Are Better at Math. Get Used to It!

Two recent publications on the math gender gap have claimed that there is actually no math gender gap. These findings were celebrated by feminist academics and journalists, but were always suspect in that they contradicted a huge body of scientific evidence. Now perennial fact-checker and ne-er do well, La Griffe du Lion, takes a look at the two studies and declares them wanting in logic, reason, and hard facts.

In brief, we have seen tonight that the gender gap in mathematics has been stable for at least half a century; that sex differences in ability-distribution means and variance ratio are independent of race, culture and geography; that female math performance is closest to that of males in high-IQ countries; that culture plays a role in math performance, albeit small; and that the theory of Everyone accounts for all of the above. If these results are unsettling, take comfort knowing that no presentation of fact, regardless how compelling, will keep the gap buster from her noble calling. _LaGriffeduLion via Dennis Mangan

To follow the reasoning that leads to LGdL's conclusions, you will need to read his article at the link above. It is accompanied by a large array of graphs which aid an intuitive grasp of the statistics involved.

The gender gap is ubiquitous geographically and culturally, and is persistent over time. The gap is somewhat narrower in societies with higher average IQs, such as Europe, North America, East Asia, and Oceania, but still quite undeniably present and persistent.

The continuing effort of feminists in academia and journalism to deny what is obvious to anyone who looks at the issue scientifically, undermines the credibility of feminists on a wide range of issues which straddle both the scientific and political spheres.