Okay, Keith, I'll take on your question. I'm guessing by "gender issues" you
mean your students are lesbian and/or transgender, or at a minimum that they
do not fit neatly into the concept of binary gender.
The latest research of which I know suggests that 5-10% of girls have brains
that are "wired male," and I believe a similar proportion is true of boys
with brains that are "wired female." There is also research, somewhat more
controversial, suggesting that a disproportionate percentage of lesbians,
gay males, and transgender people have brains that are wired differently
than their chromosomal make-up would lead you to guess. So far, it all seems
relatively simple. But. There's pre-natal wiring and there's the post-natal
effect of hormones, not to mention growing research on how environment
(which would include our cultural concepts of gender) affects the brain and
its wiring, never mind intersex people, all of which complicates the picture
even further. It's nature and nurture in a continual feedback loop. In
thinking about all this, I can easily understand how people end up
questioning the very concept of binary gender in the first place.
Anyway. So in regards to your informal observation about your best female
programming students, would I "dare admit this might say something?" I would
dare admit that it might. But, absent brain scans on these students and some
additional general research, I'm not ready yet to say that it does.
Take care,
Bill Ivey
Stoneleigh-Burnham School
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Keith E Gatling <keith@gatling.us> wrote:
> It's also interesting (and dangerous) to note that some of my best female
> programming students have had what I will delicately call "gender issues."
> Do we dare admit that this might say something?
>
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