Letters to the Editor
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This article is just cheese and crackers. Can somebody direct me to the buffet?
Blah, blah, blah, character assassination, blah, blah, personal attacks, blah, blah. When you learn to write a post that isn't filled with hostile rhetoric, let me know. It comes across as desperate self-aggrandizement by whining and nipping like a puppy at the heels of others.
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Vos Savant has a point
She has a good point: the biggest step in eliminating inequality is recognizing the fact that the inequality exists.
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I don't see the problem
I don't think either the letter-writer or vos Savant specifically call out girls as being innately prone to underachievement. In the letter, the phrase "I work hard at not calling primarily on boys" can simply be another way to say "I try to call on boys and girls with equal frequency."
Similarly, vos Savant uses only gender-neutral terms like kids and people. She is pointing out a potential inequality in the attention given to children, but she doesn't claim that it's the only possible inequality. She'd probably say that calling on all ethnicities equally is a good idea too.
I think teachers can tend to have a bias towards calling on one gender or the other, if they don't think about what they're doing. A heterosexual woman who would habitually pay more attention to the men in a bar or a restaurant might find herself subconsciously paying more attention to the boys in her class rather than the girls. A male teacher who has a young son he's accustomed to looking after might find himself paying more attention to the boys as well. A gender bias in attention can happen without it being prejudice.
Ms. Traister's work has seemed spot-on in the past so maybe she was just in a bad mood when she came across that article, and saw a sexist slight when it was really a matter of semantics.
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Vos Savant never mentioned "Female" in her answer
She spoke about "unattractive children, the ones with faces that only a mother could love." I, for one, have no problem with that answer, but you somehow decided she was including females in it.
Get off your high horse and actually read what she said.
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Traister & Savant
Two people who profoundly annoy me, and one annoys the other. The annoyer of my annoyer is still an annoyance? I'll work on that.
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This is getting dreary
First of all, Broadsheet misread the initial question – the teacher asked for advice about “other unintended gaps in treatment,” i.e., apart from the already-mentioned bias in favor of boys and advanced students (which are not necessarily in the same group, you’ll note). Vos Savant, in the limited space she has, offered one up, in language that strikes me as typical for Parade. She boils down a complex issue into simple words that won’t either condescend to or alienate her readership, while giving them something to think about. It’s actually quite clever to equate prejudice with “lookism” – isn’t prejudice really based on the knee-jerk assumptions we make based on personal appearance? Rooting this out at its deepest level, in the bias we all have, by definition, toward the people we deem attractive, would go a long way toward engendering true equality of treatment.
Vos Savant’s response (which I haven’t read except in your quotes) seem straightforward, while Broadsheet’s is (as usual) muddled and replaces persuasive analysis with stridency. Savant’s form of consciousness-raising is too gentle and diffuse for Broadsheet's taste. Do you really think the teacher who wrote in to her (or anyone else on the planet) would have profited from an anti-patriarchal screed? Or a stern lecture because her question can be twisted to imply (I still don't get this one) that girls are not advanced?
And talk about gratuitous sniping! What do her eating habits have to do with her Parade column anyway? And is a stale pun really worth calling her an idiot? Shame on you for engaging in exactly the sort of pointless name-calling that you rightly condemn in others.
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Marilyn's Daily Diet
Priceless! Maybe that's why her advice is so poor; the woman is light-headed. It all makes sense now....
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Rebecca, you're great. But...
You're picking a pointless fight here, and making quite a reach in order to do so. Ms. Vos Savant's inoffensive response offends no one but you. You should retract this.
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Having to "share" fairness with other short-changed groups is a problem?
Two paragraphs from the article, starting with a question from a Parade reader to Marilyn Vos Savant:
"As an elementary school teacher, I work hard at not calling primarily on boys and at giving equal attention to advanced students and others alike. Do you have any words of advice for teachers to help close other unintended gaps in treatment?" wrote Los Angeleno Ray Baker. Vos Savant's highly erudite response? "Try to do the same for unattractive children, the ones with faces that only a mother could love. Cute kids and beautiful people have so many undeserved advantages in life. A better education should not be one of them." So to summarize: treat kids who are slow, ugly, or female with the same respect you reserve for children who have the advantage of being smart, attractive, and male.
There are so many things to say, here. But I'll just pick one: as vos Savant's high IQ was whirring into action on this one, did it not cross her mind that the initial equation of girls with less-advanced students was worth remarking on? Okay, one more: When considering other classroom situations in which some students might get disproportionate attention from the kind of teacher who has to concentrate really hard on calling on girls, did mentioning minority or non-English speaking kids not occur to her?
I hold no brief for Marilyn Vos Savant. But a few points here:
* From the first paragraph quoted: The Broadsheet article mentions "slow" although Marilyn Vos Savant mentioned only one thing: looks. Why?
* From the second paragraph, and far more telling: First the Broadsheet author makes a logical mistake that most people with even average IQ's don't make: She interprets Vos Savant's putting another group in the same category -- namely of those who may be short-changed in a school classroom -- as girls . . . with being equated with girls.
* But then in the next sentence (perhaps to appear compassionate after all?) the author chides Vos Savant for not mentioning ethnic minority groups! (It would have been better if Vos Savant had mentioned all groups who might've been short-changed in a classroom, but this is, after all, a brain-teaser column in Parade, and not a venue for a complete answer to the letter-writer's question.
Just a wee direct logical contradiction here. Vos Savant is damned for mentioning other groups (though in fact she mentioned only one) and """equating""" them with girls . . . and then damned again for omitting another groups that she might have included.
And because Vos Savant merely gave a quick answer -- mentioning not to short-change those who are less than good-looking -- she got labeled as an idiot in the headline here. (Actually, it is rare that anyone points out that those with merely average looks get short-changed, so it makes sense thata in a brief answer, Vos Savant would mention this rather than other things that have been mentioned millions of times.)
So, to summarize: Broadsheet has demonstrated how someone intent on criticizing someone else, no matter how lacking in substance the criticism may be, can twist the someone else's words, add a dose of illogic, top it all off with a gratuitous epithet, and end up making the criticizer look far worse than the putative criticizee.