The whole article is attacking a position that, as far as I know, nobody holds in the West any more : that women should be discriminated against because they are less good at science.
Well, I think PZ Myers is a liar who has never heard of such people, but they do exist. Robin Hanson, for one. More representative is conchis’s claim early in the comments that
some [Oxford] admissions fellows were discounting female students’ grades on the basis that they were more likely to reflect conscientiousness than talent.
Rewritten: I’ve heard hints along these lines in America, where girls get better grades, in both high school and college, than boys with the same SATs. This is suggested to be about conscientiously doing homework. If American colleges don’t want to reward conscientiousness, they could change their grading to avoid homework.
That would make them be like my understanding of Oxford, where I believe grades are based on high-stakes testing, not on homework. But I also thought admissions was only based on high-stakes testing, too. That is, I don’t even know what the quoted claim means by “grades,” nor have I been able to track down people openly admitting anything like it.
Do British students get grades other than A-levels? Are there sex divergences between the grades and A-levels? A-levels and predictions? I hear that Oxbridge grades are lower variance for girls than boys. I also hear that boys do better on the math SATs than on the math A-levels, which seems like it should be a condemnation of one of the tests.
Well, I think PZ Myers is a liar who has never heard of such people, but they do exist. Robin Hanson, for one. More representative is conchis’s claim early in the comments that
Rewritten: I’ve heard hints along these lines in America, where girls get better grades, in both high school and college, than boys with the same SATs. This is suggested to be about conscientiously doing homework. If American colleges don’t want to reward conscientiousness, they could change their grading to avoid homework.
That would make them be like my understanding of Oxford, where I believe grades are based on high-stakes testing, not on homework. But I also thought admissions was only based on high-stakes testing, too. That is, I don’t even know what the quoted claim means by “grades,” nor have I been able to track down people openly admitting anything like it.
Do British students get grades other than A-levels? Are there sex divergences between the grades and A-levels? A-levels and predictions? I hear that Oxbridge grades are lower variance for girls than boys. I also hear that boys do better on the math SATs than on the math A-levels, which seems like it should be a condemnation of one of the tests.