Screw Poor People, Girls Win!

I find the deafening silence about class in this country infuriating.

On Wednesday, The New York Times celebrated the fact that girls came home from the prestigious Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology with 1st place ribbons and hefty scholarships. Girls were 11 of the 20 finalists, outnumbering boys for the first time in the competition's history. Winning projects included ones that stopped the reproduction of drug-resistant bacteria and offered insight into bone growth. These weren't your typical science fair projects, they were real research.

Of course, it's wonderful that girls are offering boys a run for their money (here, literally) in science.* But there's another story here that The New York Times buried in the fourth to last paragraph. It reads:

Three-quarters of the finalists have a parent who is a scientist. The parents of Alicia Darnell, who won second place, are medical researchers at Rockefeller University and her maternal grandparents were scientists, too. Isha Himani Jain, who took home the top individual prize, published her first research paper with her father, a professor at Lehigh University, when she was 10 or 11; her mother is a doctor.

The line separating the winners from the losers isn't gender, it's the resources that scientists can offer their children, monetary and otherwise. How disgusting that we celebrate overcoming male privilege with such a grotesque blindness to class privilege.

A child who grows up with a parent who is a scientist has an immeasurable advantage over one who does not. They inherit not just money (and the good schools, healthy and safe home, and free time that it provides) but knowledge and resources. Some people have a daddy who knows how to do research, has the resources to do it (laboratory, materials, and grants), and can add them as an author to an article (at age 10 or 11), and some people do not. Guess who's going be empowered to consider science as an occupation? Guess who's going to be competitive at the science competition? Guess who's getting into a top college? Guess who's getting into graduate school? And guess who is going to help who secure a position when they're done?

Ironically, the students who take home the thousands of dollars in scholarships are probably the students that need the encouragement, and the money, the least. Perhaps those lucky girls and boys (whose parents can no doubt afford to send them to college) should turn around and give their scholarships to straight-A students in poor school districts that don't have the resources to compete in science competitions and, thus, never had a chance of winning in the first place.

* To be clear, and before we decide we've reached gender parity, girls are doing very well compared to boys in high school math and science, but boys start to dominate science and math in college, are more likely to go to graduate school, go further, get paid better in their math and science careers, and climb higher in the academic hierarchy. So, no, we certainly have not arrived at gender parity.

Comments

[saibotchilizm]

I did not ever say that good work should not be valued. A job well done is invaluable, and necessary to any society.

I got all the benefits those girls did. My father is a practicing scientist, my mother a part-time college literature professor; I had all the help I needed in my education, all the way up to receiving my Bachelor's (and soon, my graduate degree).

We were never "rich", but the knowledge benefit made up for it. I was one of those merit-worthy students, acing my time in college, studying Physics (a hard discipline). I won merit-based scholarships, which paid for half of my entire tuition; the other half was paid by my parents. But I know where I fit in; I am LUCKY.

I have known countless people seemingly incapable of preparing simple college essays and homework assignments, people who were patted on the back for being so intelligent when they graduated college. People who made me disgusted with our entire educational system, as they never learned a $%*@ thing but were still able to ace the system. While their parents paid for it.

I have known several people smarter than I, but railroaded into dead-end 7-11 style jobs because of how poor their families are.

This is what I mean by all-pervasive class issues. Those girls in the science fair did great, but that wasn't the point I brought up. My point was; what about those smart people, with so much potential, who get slammed because of their lack of wealth? And those idiots, who get all the "merit-based awards", and deserve none of it?

[Edwestern]

The contest was still judged on the merits of the projects, though, right?

It's a little insulting to the winning students to call them "lucky", as if their work played a minor to non-existent role in winning the contest. And flat-out assuming that their parents can "no doubt" afford to send them to college. Maybe they have several brothers and sisters; maybe they want to pay their own way through school. The point is, they earned it. When people earn something they treasure it way more than if it is simply handed to them as charity.

I'm all for charity and finding ways to help the disadvantaged. But attacking and demeaning the accomplishments of some of the best and brightest students in the country based on their backgrounds is the wrong way to go about creating equality.

[saibotchilizm]

It's telling to see that this post doesn't get much of a response even on a liberal blog.

Class is an issue that overrides gender, race, and sexual preference. Sexism, racism, and homophobia, are endemic here, but they pale in comparison to "poorism".

What frustrates me is the focus that goes to the poor abroad and overseas. Don't let our per-capita GDP fool you, there are legions of people in this country as desperately poor as anywhere.

But it doesn't get mentioned. It is somehow easier in the American Culture to feel guilty about a Chinese person we will never meet, than to try to help a poor black (or white, or Latino, etc.) living down the block, who we drive past every day.

[wagadog]

Look, it's not the money -- I went to the best schools on scholarship, because, well, I COULD, and my parents were VERY poor.

It's not the help with your homework -- my dad, a union steamfitter, certainly couldn't help me with my algebra much less calculus, and my mom, a lab technician certainly couldn't help me much past high school biology and chemistry. I had to learn these things on my own.

So...what is it with these girls? What do they have that I don't, from their parents?

It's spelled NEPOTISM.

Not only do most women who persist in science have one or more scientist parent, but something like 80% of female scientists are married to scientists. And while still working in their own fields, it's most often as research assistants or associates with frequent gaps in funding and no job security.

In fact the few that have made it to faculty positions have had to go in on "Two for One" deals -- the university pays one salary, gives both a nominal faculty position, and then they both have the "opportunity" to apply for funding, which may or may not top them both up to "full" salary.

And that's the LUCKY ones, that MARRIED THE RIGHT GUY. The rest of us have the option of going from temporary non tenure track teaching job to non tenure track temporary teaching job, and consequently get no FMLA coverage in the first place.

And then because you never had the "good sense" to sell your body to the dirty old professor, find out he's spread the rumour that you're "a lesbian."

Moral of the story: If you want to be a scientist, MARRY A FULL PROFESSOR. This is your career and whether you'll ever be able to have a family we're talking about here.

I wonder who's going to have the guts to tell these girls...oh­, never mind, their daddys are big professors, they'll already know how the game is played.

/me pukes.

[Lon]

It should be noted that the advantage is likely not so much money as knowledge, and expectation. While scientists tend not to be poor, they also do not tend to be as rich as stock brokers or lawyers, etc. This is a more specialized advantage than class.