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Comment by zgr | Hacker News Reader

Are you actually implying that men are better teachers than women!? If you're going to make a statement like that you better have some facts to back it up.

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No, he's implying that we should have an equal amount of men and women in education.

Right, but how would that improve the educational system?

Actually I think this is a fair question. I think it's important to remove barriers and prejudices that prevent any person of a particular sex from being able to go into any field that they choose but I also think it's not straightforward to say that having a 50/50 split always leads to the optimal situation or that if a 50/50 split doesn't exist it automatically means there is some barrier or prejudice. I think it would be much better to focus on making sure that teachers going into the field are competent regardless of their sex.

It would improve teaching the same way it would improve software development: statistically. Talent is normally distributed, across both genders, meaning that external forces that repel one gender from a profession reduces the quality of the talent pool for that profession.

Do you know that to be true? Is talent at teaching really normally distributed across both genders?

It's completely possible that they are not. If they aren't then the neuroscience tells us that it's most likely cultural rather than biological but even that's only informed speculation at this point.

At the risk of sending this discussion on a tangent:

Talent is normally distributed, across both genders

I honestly would not have thought that. Women are better than men at many things and vice versa.

It's possible that 'teaching kids' is something that women are statistically better at than man.

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