Psychology (I9IO), p. 35. 5IO VARIABILITY AND SEX DIFFERENCE IN ACHIEVEMENT 5II only in raising the average intelligence and happiness of the race. We shall not expect any increase from this source in the number of eminent individuals, nor in achievement of that high order which forces knowledge and wisdom farther. Thorndike' states the implications for pedagogy thus: This one fundamental difference in variability isjmore important than all the differences between the average male and female capacities .... a slight excess of male variability would mean that of the hundred most gifted individuals in this country not two would be women, and of the thousand most gifted, not one in twenty .... Women may and doubtless will be scientists and engineers, but the Joseph Henry, the Rowland, and the Edison of the future will be men; even should all women vote, they would play a small part in the Senate .... Not only the probability and the desirability of marriage and the training of children as an essential feature of woman's career, but also the restriction of women to the mediocre grades of ability and achievement should be reckoned with by our educational systems. The education of women for such professions as administration, statesmanship, philosophy, or scientific research, where a very few gifted individuals are what society requires, is far less needed than education for such professions as nursing, teaching, medicine, or architecture, where the average level is the essential ..... Postgraduate instruction, to which women are flocking in large numbers is, at least in its higher reaches, a far more remunerative investment in the case of men.2 'E. L. Thorndike, Op. cit., p. 42.
Again, the breeding function of the family would be better discharged if public opinion and religion conspired, as they have until recently, to crush the aspirations of woman for a life of her own. But the gain would not be worth the price."-E. A. Ross, Social Control (I904).
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