Day: October 2, 2000

Cathy Young wrote a column for the Detroit News a few weeks ago on her impressions of forums held by opponents in the gender war — the American Association of University Women panel, “Beyond the Gender Wars,” and the Independent Women’s Forum’s, “The XY Files: The Truth Is Out There … About the Differences Between Boys and Girls.” As she deftly put it in her column (It?s time for a truce in gender wars), “Perhaps the clearest fact to emerge from the two panels is that both feminist and conservative ideologies offer a blinkered view of reality.”

One of the things Young is very good at is highlighting the hypocrisy of feminists who tend to think some social phenomenon is disastrous until the discussion turns toward men at which point all bets are off. Young writes, for example,

The leitmotif of the symposium was that instead of pitting girls against boys in a victimhood contest, we should make the schools better for everyone. Sounds good, but isn?t it a bit disingenuous to trumpet girls? victimization and then shout, “Let?s not play victim!” when boys? problems are mentioned? As some IWF speakers noted, the AAUW played a key role in starting the “gender wars” it now decries.

The AAUW angrily denies this. One of its panelists, Barrie Thorne, a women?s studies professor at the University of California, Berkeley, declared that gender equity is not a zero-sum game in which one sex wins at the other?s expense — which is true. But the protestations that girls? advocates never tried to deny or minimize boys? problems are less credible.

The 1992 AAUW report, “How Schools Shortchange Girls,” called for programs to boost girls? achievement in math and science while warning against targeted efforts to remedy boys? deficits in reading and writing. At the symposium, some speakers downplayed the fact that women now get 55 percent of college degrees by suggesting that women need college to earn as much as male high school graduates (which may have been true 20 years ago but certainly not for the current generation).

Young, on the other hand, also sees the dangers in turning around and framing such issues entirely in terms of boys’ needs. Rather, she takes the rather obvious, commonsense view that educational programs should be geared to helping children succeed regardless of sex. Of course that proposal is too sensible to be taken seriously by the radical feminists or their conservative anti-feminist counterparts, except when they are forced into that position as the AAUW has been thanks to new educational research on boys’ poor educational performance.

Source:

It?s time for a truce in gender wars. Cathy Young, The Detroit News, September 28, 2000.

New research on Swedish mortality data strongly suggests that the maximum age at which people die has been steadily increasing since the middle of the 19th century. In the earliest period with reliable data, the oldest maximum age at death was around 100. Last year in Sweden that was at 108, and is still growing.

University of California at Berkeley’s John Wilmouth told the Associated Press, “I don’t expect modern medical breakthroughs that will allow people to live to 200 or something.”

I think he’s wrong on that and it should be noted that researchers throughout the 20th century made predictions about where maximum life expectancy would finally stop increasing, most of whom saw their estimates surpassed in their own life time. Going from 108 to 200 in maximum life span would be quite a leap, but we have seen life expectancy come close to doubling in many parts of the world in less than a century thanks to medical advances. It is not inconceivable that in the next 20 to 30 years medical advances might permit maximum life spans of 200 or more.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of parents attitudes on sex education reflects a less dramatic example of what I referred to the other day as the almost society-wide abandonment of parents moral/ethical obligations toward children. The Kaiser foundation surveyed 4,000 parents and found that, “Most parents want the nation’s junior and senior high schools to teach their children more about sex…” (Unfortunately the CNN story only gives vague claims like that rather than concrete numbers).

It is mind boggling to me that so many parents want to relegate such an important physical, social and moral issue to a third party. Personally I’d rather not have the state meddling in such affairs.

The irony with sex education is that for the most part opposition to sex education in the past came from conservative Christians and others concerned that schools’ sex education courses promoted promiscuity. Now, however, most sex education programs include a strong dose of abstinence education. I’d really prefer my daughter not be exposed to either.

The other annoying new fad is so-called “character education.” Two candidates fighting over a Michigan Senate seat, incumbent Republican Spence Abraham and Democrat Debby Stabenow, have been running ads on the local television stations attacking each other over the issue. The weird thing is the politics are the reverse of what you might expect — Stabenow is a big supporter of character education and has been mercilessly going after Abraham for voting against funding for such measures in the past.

Do parents really want the state giving their children moral instruction?

My daughter is almost 4 years old and at the moment she is pretty much a bundle of joy. She has her temper tantrums and other moments, but for the most part we spend our time singing and dancing, reading and playing, generally discovering fascinating new things about the world. But she’s going to grow up and at some point her mother and I are going to have to provide her with the tools to understand and think critically about the many important decisions she will have to make as an adult about things like sex and the sort of morally ambiguous issues most of us face every day.

I’d hate to think we’ll shirk that duty and tell her to talk to her school teachers when she starts asking serious questions and begins facing adult situations.

While watching NFL games this weekend, I kept hearing the same claim over and over — young, extremely mobile quarterbacks who are as comfortable running as throwing are going to dominate the NFL. Personally I’m a bit skeptical.

First, note that the best quarterback in the league at the moment, and maybe one of the best quarterbacks ever, Kurt Warner, has barely attempted a serious rush. His stats for rushing are 9 attempts, for a grand total of 14 yards.

Okay, fine but aren’t Duante Culpepper and Donovan McNabb proving a running quarterback can create nightmares for a defense, and isn’t Michael Vick, who just ran for 215 yards the other day, going to light the NFL up after going number one in the draft.

Sure, just like Kordell Stewart lights up defenses with is running/passing combination. What? Don’t tell me Stewart has more interceptions than touchdowns and abysmal 56.4 passer rating. What happened.

First, defenses adapted, and second, the concentration on the running game distracts from the passing game. Notice how Randall Cunningham made a lot of thrilling plays while he was in Philadelphia, but never got his team close to being a serious contender until he became largely an immobile pocket passer with the Minnesota Vikings and now the Dallas Cowboys.

The main thing that makes me skeptical, however, is what happens once Culpepper, McKnown and Vick start getting taking a lot of hits from NFL-sized defensemen. Look at all of the problems another mobile quarterback, Steve McNair has had staying healthy (and he tends to be inconsistent even when he is healthy, though not to Stewart’s extremes).

Donovan McNabb’s performance against the Falcons last night was very impressive, as was Culpepper’s domination of the Detroit Lions, but I want to see how these quarterbacks stand up to taking the punishing hits that are headed their way before declaring the era of the pocket passer to be over.

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