Thursday, May 16, 2019

Girls Only?

I am one of those people with a wide range of interest. Maybe too wide my kids would say. I both love art and science. I've never been in a museum, of any type, that I did not love. I read books in all genres and all subjects. 

Fundamentally I do not like limits. And I really do not like limits placed on others. I cringe when someone says a child/spouse/whomever is "not good" or "doesn't like" something. Such statements tend to become self-fulfilling. And, when you think about it, it is a small leap from that to classifying whole groups whether based on race, national origin, sex or sexual preference. It used to be thought that women did did not have the capacity to think scientifically. Now most graduates from medical schools are women. 

A girls STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) camp is currently being promoted in Minnesota. Now I get that the motives may be good but why on earth would you segregate girls into a gender based STEM camp? Does it mean that girls are less able than boys? Or that they cannot compete with boys? Or is it the opposite - girls cannot excel because boys drag them down? Unfortunately, everyone will come to their own conclusion on why the segregation is needed and none of them will be good. The solution is to avoid the segregation in the first place.

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