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As an aside -- but I hope slightly more on-topic...

On of the projects I've toyed with for some years is to write a high-school-level physics textbook based on the principles of steam locomotives. Everybody likes steam trains, right? A huge amount of the physics syllabus could be covered with reference to what goes on in a loco -- power, energy, gas laws, friction, mechanics, etc. They're not fast enough to get relativity in, but you can't have everything. My gut feeling is that relating physical principles to something big and bold that everybody can understand could be an interesting approach, rather than the abstraction that is currently favoured.

The problem is that teachers and publishers don't seem very keen because it's 'for boys'.

Would it be a calculus-based approach?

I was really thinking of 11-14 year olds. There's really no significant calculus in the UK math or physics syllabus until 16+.

Interesting idea, though... acceleration, power... rate of change of temperature... You can explain anything with a chuff-chuff

Is it completely Politically Unacceptable that there might be ANY inherent differences between the sexes? Might we do a disservice by trying to compensate them out of existence, as previous generations tried to "correct" left-handedness?

You have me confused. It's all that "separated by a common language" stuff. In the US, eleven year olds aren't in "high school." That's for 14-17 year old students, and the more technically qualified of that group have studied calculus.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chuff

:-)

OK. Yeah, right after I posted my previous entry, I went back and edited the phrasing. So we're vehemently agreeing :-)


That's the million dollar question. There's a lot of studies, but nothing conclusive.


Oh, don't you worry. It's already been marketed (see, for example: http://www.mathdoesntsuck.com/). My personal view is that they are condescending and irritating (and arguably worse than piano books for boys).

p.s. Kevin, would you mind going back to your previous post and fix the quote tags? You're missing a slash before the final "[quote]," so it currently looks like I said what you wrote and you said what I wrote. Thanks!

Ah, right, sorry. 'High school' in the UK starts at 11-ish in the state sector. There's an educational cut-off at 16, which is the age at which children can lawfully quit. There's a big jump in the standard of post-16 education, so stuff like calculus seems to be deferred until then.

Oh, my I'm lost for words. Really.



Sure, np.

Good grief ! I'll never be able to look a steam engine squarely in the buffers again

I think I might have to cry 'straw man' here. I don't see anybody -- least of all me -- trying to androgenise the human race. Equality of opportunity is the issue, not uniformity.

For me that means, for example, doing what we can to ensure that women are not actively discouraged from studying engineering at university. Whether women have an innate disposition to dislike engineering, which would make such an effort worthless, is a question we simply don't have the data to answer conclusively yet. Until we can, the opportunities should be there. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

Well, here's my problem with "gender-specific" approaches.

There's overlap between what boys and girls are "like." "Some" boys, and as far as I can tell a non-insignificant number, like ballads or whatever, and implying in a major way that boys like only "furious fortisimoes" or whatever the phrase was, leaves them out. Some girls, thank you very much, like furious fortisimoes and have trouble relating to "pretty" music, and labeling a book of music they would relate to as "for boys" leaves them, inexplicably to them I might add, out. And as far as I can tell, that section of girls isn't insignificant, either.

So I find that labeling things this way is usually an overbroad approach that in fact *does* reinforce culturally defined gender roles at the expense of non-insignificant numbers of indiviuals.

Spoken as someone who comes from a family of 4 boys and 1 girl, and seeing the boys cry, being the girl who majored in math, having the boys be good at interior decorating and gardening, and the girl indifferent, and a host of other individual talents and interests that make us all individuals, and interestingly and often delightfully so, and seeing the cultural preferences limit both genders.

And I haven't found it yet to be different among my male and female friends. I was looking around just a couple of days ago at people I know, and there's not a one in the bunch who actually fits those cultural roles in all ways, furious fortisimoes included

JMO, of course.

Cathy

This discussion is getting a little bit strange. You guys are talking about the expansion of the liberal arts, and also courses of studies requiring cooperation, and then equate that with giving more opportunities to women at the expense to men. What do liberal arts and cooperation have to do with gender? The only gender-related part of this is that women have been socialized to be cooperative, generous and undemanding, and goodness knows that it has not been to our favour. Look at any freelance profession that has larger numbers of women, and then look whether that profession tends to be paid its due. Er, music teaching for example?



What do any of these things have to do with women? Are you serious? And if you are looking at cooperation, how about the army?

The first challenge to stereotypes came when during practice teaching I had to teach about some African nomads. In this society a man is laughed at if he carries heavy things: women are expected to be physically strong and they do that. Constructing houses is a woman's job. A man wouldn't be caught dead doing either.

The second challenge came via another culture, where I met lots of women who were engineers, doctors and mathematicians. That society was completely unaware that these were supposed to be male attributes. Talk to men and women of these societies about our stereotypes and they look puzzled - never heard of it. This was 30 years ago and as a young woman I was relieved.

This seems a little harsh

We simply created a book series when we saw the need arise in our studio and in the studio of many others (boys losing interest in piano). We did not see this same loss of interest with our girl students.

We couldn't sit back and watch many promising students leave the piano simply because motivation was lacking.

I listened to the music, too, ironically played by a female , and it didn't sound like "boy" as opposed to "girl" music, possibly because music doesn't sound that way. So the approach is aimed at boys because it's comic-book based?

Sorry, my favorite comic when growing up was Fantastic Four

I collected baseball cards, too.

Cathy

Cathy,

There are always going to be exceptions to everthing... however the fact remains that we used this program with the 250 piano students at our music school for a year prior to publishing the program and we were not surprised to discover that the students who absolutely loved the program were predominantly boys between the ages of 6 and 12.

As we mentioned earlier, it absolutely can be used with girls (it is an ebook, and therefore the title page with the words "Piano Books For Boys" is easily removed), but the fact remains that all of the research and experimentation conducted during the development of the book was done with the ultimate goal of motivating boys to stick with piano lessons.

As others have posted, this is an open social/psychological/biological science question, not a closed topic. Well, it might be closed to people whose political opinion completely shapes their views of what constitutes appropriate research questions.

So yes, I am indeed "serious," and I noted your flip dismissal as a bit of an intellectual put-down.

How many times in the past have we heard that girls are terribly disadvantaged in "boy-oriented" classrooms in which aggressive and competitive boys choke off girls' growth. This was one of the factors behind moves toward reintroducing single-sex classrooms a few years back. One can think that the structure of the classroom experience may shape the outcomes, and the way that it shapes the outcomes may to some statistical extent be related to gender differences in learning style. And those learning differences may or may not be inherent in the gender. We're still learning about that.

Again, I'm waaay OT. Backing off ..... now.

The bottom line for me is whether beyond the packaging your series also contains substance. Music involves skill, enhanced awareness, and intelligence and strategy - it's complex and subtle. It is designed for teachers, you say, yet the presentation only addresses the external part. If there is substance then all is well. I suggest that there are some female students who don't like "sweet" either.

I joined a gym this year in an effort to regain my health, and also work with a trainer for the first time in my life, as an older female. Curves couldn't get me in the door because their hype addresses body image: weight loss and the name itself. My trainer's program reflects goals we came up with together: fitness, strength and flexibility, posture, and efficient body use. Some of these reflect my interest in music. Body imagery is nowhere in there.

Being in this gym has been an interesting experience. The men of all ages look with derision at macho posturing. They emphasize proper form, precise movement, concentration, balance, precision. These are all attributes of music practice. If there is any male persona out there, then it would be a craving for mastery and setting high standards for yourself. I'll bet that it's a female craving too, but in my generation we were to hide that and downplay ourselves. In this gym the young women are as concentrated and serious as the young men. In fact, the older generation isn't much different, maybe because of the clientel it attracts.

Stereotypes leave me uncomfortable. They create obstacles and can lead to people talking past each other. If this approach works for some students who are wired that way, and if it has substance, then all is well.

Um... that's my name up there, but not my words

Whatever sociological problems there might be in this area, I hardly think it's fair to expect them to be solved by piano teachers on their own. We just have to do the best we can, I guess.

On a related note, how do I renew my son's interest in horse riding? He says it's 'for girls'. Seems a shame, when he's such a competent rider. I mean, Indiana Jones rides a horse, right? It's not that he doesn't like being around girls -- he just doesn't like to do things that he thinks of as 'girly'.

He tends to feel the same way about violin lessons but, thankfully, not the piano. But then he does have at least one highly masculine role model for the piano -- me

Well yes, that's one way of looking at it. Another analysis holds that girls over-achieve until puberty, then get sidetracked by sexual relationships (they're interested in SOCIAL relationships more than boys are just about from birth).

All "on the average" and "your mileage may vary" of course. We don't need rules or prohibitions, particularly on a subject like this where politics so often sway judgement.