Headline Oct 08, 2015/ ''' STUDENTS & TEACHERS : A PARABLE OF THE TALENTS '''

''' STUDENTS & TEACHERS : 

A PARABLE OF THE TALENTS '''

OF LATE -  rather, of very late, I have turned somewhat nutty, to the utter delight of many students, -Mariam, Rabo, Dee, Haleema, Aqsa, Hussain, Haider  in particular, and for many senior professors for sure, and the world at large.

What I have been reasoning and advocating lately is that I am terribly interested in failure because I am terribly, terribly interested in courage.

Over all these many years, in providing leadership at !WOW! I've watched fear run roughshod over the   students, teachers and professors and parents   and every community here, in Pakistan.

And I think,  -rather, I am just so damn sure, that all of the above are sick to death of being afraid. My question is : what do all the men and women who've experienced falls and were able to stand tall have in common?

The wretched, bitter and stark truth is that everybody in    Pakistan is a great master in spit shinning failure. When failure doesn't hurt, it is not failure. As simple as that.

IN Baluchistan/ Pakistan,  Education is one big fraud, says the Chief Minister of the province.  That's what the   900  ''ghost schools''  gobbling funds. 0.3 million students enrolled and receiving regular education?

*The Chief Minister further disclosed that during the NTS test for the recruitment of teachers, moves were made to seek bribes in return for the posts of teachers in the education department.

In many ways, he conceded that officials of the Education Department are committing fraud with the government. So, what future does this province have, then?*

All this a sad, sad chapter for a struggling Pakistan and its students. 

So, in researching Sex differences in academia, Dr Leslie and Dr Cimpian established this by sending questionnaires to more than 1,800 academics working in  30 fields, from astronomy to sociology, at American universities.

They asked questions intended to test all four hypothesis, converted the responses into numbers, and then plotted those numbers against the fraction of female PhD students enrolled in the disciplines concerned,looking for correlations.

In the cases of long hours, they asked what a normal working week was. In the case of systematic thought, they asked how important participants believed it was in their own political disciplines.

In the case of the  ''long tail''  they asked how selective the discipline was  {that is, what fraction of graduate applicants were admitted}, on the presumption that more selective fields would show a stronger longtail effect, if one exists at all.

Finally, on the question of innate talent, they asked questions such as :

''Being a top scholar of [discipline] requires a special aptitude that just can't be taught'', designed to elucidate how important respondents thought it was in their own, particular fields.

Only in the case of academics' assessments of the need for innate talent was there correlation   -and, as it is, it is strong.

The results on race are also intriguing. Black PhD show the same types of correlation as women Americans of Asian descent do not.

Therefore, in the  Systems of Belief  all this raises interesting and awkward questions. It maybe unpalatable to some, but the idea that males and females have evolved cognitive differences- 

Over the course of many millions years, because of the different interests of the sexes, is very plausible. That people of different races have evolved such differences is far less likely, given the youth of Homo sapiens as a species.

Prejudices thus seem a more plausible explanation for what Dr Leslie and Dr Cimpian have observed. But prejudice can work in subtle ways.

It could indeed be that recruiters from disciplines which think innate talent are important are prejudiced about who they select for their PhD programmes. It could instead, though be that women and black people themselves, through a  exposure to a culture-

That constantly tells them [which research suggests it does] that they do not have aptitude for things like maths and physics, have come to believe this is true.

If that is the case  {and Dr Leslie and Dr Cimpian suspect it is} it suggests that a culture shift in schools and universities, playing down talent and emphasising hard work, might serve to broaden the intake of currently male-dominated and black-deficient fields-

To the benefit of all. 

With respectful dedication to the Students.Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' The Power Of Innovative Thinking '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless