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Nice article, Kreisler, even if I failed to see the relevance, apart from this part:

"Imagine that, miraculously, every child in the country were to receive education of equal quality. Imagine that a completely fair and accurate measure of intellectual ability were to be developed. In that utopia, a fair admissions process based on intellectual ability would fill the incoming classes of the elite colleges predominantly with children of upper-middle-class parents. In other words, such a perfect system would produce an outcome very much like the one we see now."

I think that has some metaphorical relevance to our composer discussion.

If everyone was given an equal education, those children who by no talent, just pure chance, were born into an upper-class family would be the ones in college? What exactly is the connection between the first two sentences and the conclusion he makes, since he jumps straight to it without any explanation, without backing it up? Yes, a "nice article" indeed. Some are easily impressed by big words, I guess, or feel giddy when someone shares their fetish for a rebellion of "political correctness". (I won't bother taking the bait of the predictable substance-free reply, so save your energy.)

I daresay that (for whatever reason) upper-middle class kids generally have more discipline, ambition and optimism - traits that will see them succeeding in whatever they do.

Upper-class parents are successful, i.e. "upper-class", because they are relatively intelligent. Intelligence is heritable. Use whatever little brains you have to make your own conclusions.

I studied and now work in a field where there a very few girls. When I decided to study computer engineering people kept telling me that this was a "strange choice" or that they "didn't see me doing that". On the other hands, all other guys in my class were told how this was a great decision, "we are proud of you", "you'll get a good job with that diploma". I met a lot of women who were better than me with maths, one of them even told me that she would we have loved to be a mechanic engineer, but went for something else because "it didn't fit". I think we still have a society problem in the way we raise our little girls and how we pushed them toward success. Success, yes, but success where it fit for a girl to succeed: as a teacher or a nurse, at kinds of job where you take care of people. These are very respectable jobs, but none of them are going to get you famous (or win you a nobel prize).

The prime minister of my province recently asked me why there was so few women in our office (and field of work), and how the government could help. I told him that I had great woman in my family who inspired me, my mother, my aunt, both going for what they truly liked and went to non-traditional career. So those of us who have the courage to go past the "society standard" have to SHINE as much as they can so that they inspire little girls to follow their dreams.

In respond to the previous text, men and women are different, but finding men superior to women is just a question of biased criteria. The statistics are clear, in my country (where education access is the same for everyone), girls perform better than boys in school and right now, in our universities, there are more women than men. Some say this is happening because classes are given by women and that creates courses that are better adapted to girl; but, could that means that before, the inverse was going on? Could classes content/methods affect the performance of each sex? And what about school access in those days?

Claiming that history prove that men are superior with the lack of famous female is just stupid. Why did George Sand had to take a male pseudonym? If Simone de Beauvoir is not significant enough to be part of your "significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions" maybe you should consider removing Jean-Paul Sartre as well as they were tied in several ways. Society problems should not be confused with women intelligence or capabilities.

I could continue on "counter exempling" all the fallacies in this text, but I prefer relying on your intelligence and get some sleep (larger brains? come on!)

I don't know what sort of things you study in Canadian universities, MissT, but in Finland's women are the majority only in the humanities (though not in theoretical philosophy nor a few other individual subjects).

As for children, girls are generally more motivated in school than are boys, that's why they tend to outperform boys in school.

Also, no one claimed that history proves that men are superior. If you wish to "counter example" the supposed fallacies in the text, try first to understand the text.

Jackson's and Rushton's article provides a slightly different view on sex differences:

http://anantiblog.wordpress.com/

I don't think that by being a man will make a composer more skilful. On the radio once I heard a story that in the early 1800s there was a female composer who was being picked on by all the male composers and critics etc. that she would not be able to write a full half-hour symphony like the men. She definitely proved them wrong.

There were quite a few composers working in the "early 1800s" whose work has survived. What was the name of your female example?

The field where I currently see a notable female presence is that of TV and film scoring. That suggests (but far from proves) that women may start off with equal talent (or call it what you will) but their inclinations lie more in the decorative arts, less toward the semi-autism that conceives and constructs more substantial works.

Ellen Zwilich comes to mind immediately. Amy Beach. Then there is Dorothy Fields, the lyricist, who rivals any lyricist of the 20th century.

Visual artist Mary Cassatt is another highly prized American artist.

There have been a number of promising women composers, but until recently the publishing and producing industries were dominated by men. Even women writers would use pseudonyms to get their works published. I think in the next 20 or 30 years we will see women composing in all genre with success.

I love this suggestion (my oldest son is in the USC film school.), but perhaps you mean George Lucas, not Steven Spielberg? Spielberg was famously declined admission to USC.

Lots of women in the USC program!