Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Harvard President's Comments Spark Debate About Gender, 01/24/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june05/harvard_1-24.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Are there differences between the ways boys and girls think and learn? What are they? Explain.

2. How do you decide the time and place to discuss controversial topics?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is the current controversy at Harvard University?

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers issued an apology last week for comments he made at a recent academic conference that suggested that "innate differences" between the sexes may account for fewer numbers of women in elite math and science academic positions.

2. How did Harvard President Lawrence Summers explain why there are few top female scientists at elite universities?

According to people who heard the comments, Summers said that there are few top female scientists because women with children were often unwilling or unable to work 80-hour weeks, but also because more males earn the best scores on math and science tests in late high school.

Summers said cutting-edge research has shown that genetics are more important than previously thought, compared with environment or upbringing, the Boston Globe reported.

3. What was the response to Summers' comments?

It was at this point that Nancy Hopkins, a Harvard graduate and biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out, saying later that if she hadn't left, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

"It is so upsetting that all these brilliant young women [at Harvard] are being led by a man who views them this way," she said later in an interview.

The Harvard Faculty Standing Committee on Women sent a formal letter to the president objecting to his comments, saying they "impede our current efforts to recruit top women scholars."

4. How did Summers respond to the criticism?

Summers quickly issued formal letter printed on the university's Web site.

"Despite reports to the contrary, I did not say, and I do not believe, that girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science. As the careers of a great many distinguished women scientists make plain, the human potential to excel in science is not somehow the province of one gender or another," Summer's letter stated.

5. How did some teens respond to the president's comments?

When asked about their reactions to the president's comments, advanced science students from Mercyhurst Preparatory School in Erie, Pa. said they didn't see enough validity in Summers' claims.

"One thing he used were SAT scores. But they're not really a good predictor of how good a scientist you will be. They judge your ability to take the SATs not your ability to be a good scientist," junior Dann Cuneo said.

And while the students felt that posing such questions isn't necessarily wrong, the way the questions are posed is important too.

"An inherent point of the scientific method is having hypotheses. It was a part of his response. I think that is one argument in his defense. But he could have done it in more sensitive ways," 18-year-old Tom Martin said.

6. How did the young women respond to Summers' comments?

But others felt Summers' comments inspired them to prove him wrong.

"I'm going to major in science - maybe a pre-med program. The remarks inspire me to work harder. I think there are differences between men and women because I do pretty well. I do better than a lot of men in school here," senior Kelly DiMattio said.

"I thought that it was interesting - he's so influential. It can be discouraging to women who want to peruse the sciences. It makes me want to go there and show them that he's wrong," 17-year-old junior Kelly Miele said.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What is your opinion of President Summers' comments? Explain.

2. Are there things that women do better than men or men better than women? Explain your answer.

3. Have you ever felt like someone implied that you were good or bad at something because of your gender? What was the situation and how did it make you feel?

4. Is it wrong to bring up controversial ideas or hypotheses? Why or why not?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.