The forced-learning thing is a current issue in Australia. e.g. it's optional to choose Maths in your two senior highschool years here, and at the end of those two years we have our equivalent of the SATS, which are used for university placement. The current version is called
ATAR which is used by most states (it's new because we don't yet have a fully national system: each of the 6 states had their own). The point is, you're graded as a percentile ranking in whichever subjects you choose, so people tend to choose subjects where they have
relative advantage. This is actually a pretty good system. If less people do English, then it will be easier to get a high score in English, so more people will be attracted to English, thus the standards required to do well in the English component will rise. e.g. it ensures that people are spread out in the different fields rather than clustering too much, but it also ensures that people play to their strengths, too.
Note, many more girls than boys drop math in their senior years, so some now want to
force everyone to do math and the rationale (or "justification" I suspect) is "more women in STEM". And this of course is being pushed by companies who want more graduates, cheaper labor as you said. However, this has serious ideological implication and unforseen consequences.
e.g. consider that the girls who
didn't take math are almost certainly the
worst girls at math, and that they're choosing other subjects that they are better at. By making the "everyone must do math" rule, it's impinging on the freedom of
mostly girls to choose subjects strategically to play to their own strengths. And recently, they've made a big deal that girls are out-performing boys on the ATAR in general, thus they make up greater than 50% of college admissions. e.g. if girls are doing
better than boys overall, and they're also the ones most likely to be dropping math, then
perhaps forcing girls to use up one of their subject slots on math is only go to impeded girl's overall scores on the ATAR. e.g. that > 50% advantage girls have for college admissions is likely to actually be eroded by the change. Of course, you can't really bring this stuff up, logical as it is because someone who wants the change will loudly say "what? are you saying girls can't do math". nope, i'm saying that
girls who dropped math are almost certainly worse at math than
girls who didn't drop math, so forcing them to take math will drag girl's ATAR scores down, both individually and as a group.
e.g. it's sort of weird: "girls can totally do math. Well
force all girls to do math,
then you'll see" seems like it's throwing actual girls and what they want under the bus to prove a point.
https://theconversation.com/study-finds-more-girls-opting-out-of-maths-and-science-12221Dr Wilson said education choice was a major contributor to the decline in maths and science participation, with 13.5% of girls choosing to study family and community studies in 2011, a subject that was not on offer in 2001.
“Something’s gone wrong there that you have nearly as much educational value put on community and family studies as you do on maths.”
"... educational choice and quite possibly having too much of it.”
... Holy shit man, "something's gone wrong" in your head when you're valuing everyone doing shittily at maths rather than valuing community and family. Maybe "community and family studies" is
relevant to what those girls plan to do with their lives? Being bottom of the class in algebra obviously wasn't doing it for those girls, despite how warm and fuzzy that would make academics feel because of the "participation" numbers.
e.g. girls forced to do math will, as another academic pointed out in the article, just take Basic Maths, aka "maths for dummies" which: doesn't score highly on the ATAR,
obviously isn't relevant to what they plan to do, and is of no interest to universities or employers. About 20% of all girls would be forced to take that class, instead of "gone wrong" things like studying to work in childcare or community services.
~~~
e.g. another The Australian (a newspaper, but it's paywalled with no free articles) points out in a headline "Girls outsmart boys in maths and science but are shunning the money spinning subjects" so we should get
more girls to do that so that they can outsmart the boys
even more, right? Did they ever stop to think that these facts could be
related. Maybe the girls who
are shunning math and science just happen to be people who are
terrible at math and science, thus the remaining girls are above-average, and neither gender is in fact any better? e.g. "Girls outsmart boys in maths and science
because so many are shunning the money spinning subjects". Forcing more girls to study that would just erode the apparent advantage while impeding them from doing what they are good at, so it would
remove that "girls outsmart boys in maths and science" thing while also eroding the thing where girls outnumber boys in college admissions.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-06/girls-opt-out-of-science-and-maths-studies,-report-finds/6286362Dr Cathy Foley is the science director of the CSIRO's manufacturing arm and said, while results between boys and girls in maths and science were very similar, young women were opting in greater numbers not to study the subjects. "The report shows that if you look at the testing of girls and boys in maths and science, that there's a small difference, about 3 per cent difference, so let's say they're about equal," she said.
One gender did 3% better than the other on national testing, so lets say they're "about equal"? It's completely obvious that it means boys did 3% better here, because if
girls were 3% ahead on
anything, that would be a major headline, used as clear evidence that girls are the innately superior gender, not hand-waved away as "about equal". I'm not drawing any conclusions here about who is or is not equal/better/worse, since there are conflicting reports and measures, but the level of blatant confirmation bias on this sort of stuff by the press is staggering.
e.g. from that CSIRO data we can conclude that, overall, boys are doing
slightly better than girls on national STEM studies. But it's also clear the girls who drop STEM are the ones who
aren't good at it, in comparison to others of their
same gender. e.g. "mantadory STEM classes" would mainly act to force girls who are
especially shitty at STEM, and don't want to do it, into the STEM classes, which would bring in more low-scoring female students. On a percentile-ranking basis, more low-scoring students would boost everyone else up a notch in the rankings, but overall, male scores would rise the most in relation to the ATAR college admission rankings, since boys are about ~3% ahead in STEM classes already.
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