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Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist?
theodp writes "What's wrong with this picture?" asked Code.org at its launch earlier this year, lamenting the lack of Computer Science students in a race and gender reference-free infographic. But as the organization has grown via public/private partnerships and inked agreements to drive the CS curriculum for the Chicago and NYC school systems, the same stats webpage has adopted a new gender and racial equity focus, positioning Computer Science education as "a chance to level the playing field" for women, Hispanic and African American students. The new message is consistent with the recently-forged Code.org partnership with the NSF-funded Exploring Computer Science (ECS, "a K-12/university partnership committed to democratizing computer science") and Computer Science Principles (CSP, "a new course under development that seeks to broaden participation in computing and computer science"). According to The Research Behind ECS, an "insidious 'virtual segregation' that maintains inequality" is to blame for keeping the number of African Americans and Latino/as CS students disproportionately low. So, what might the future of Code.org's proposed equity-based U.S. K-12 CS education look like? "Including culturally relevant instructional materials represented a driving focus of our course development," explained ECS Team members who now advise Code.org. "Cultural design tools encourage students to artistically express computing design concepts from Latino/a, African American, or Native American history as well as cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more. These types of lessons are important for students to build personal relationships with computer science concepts and applications – an important process for discovering the relevance of computer science for their own life." And — ironically for Code.org — it could mean less coding."
Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist?
Well, no. Unless there are roaming gangs of white nerdy kids beating up anyone with the wrong color that I haven't heard of.
I don't see anyone complaining that nursing or primary school teaching is sexist, yet those professions have a definite bias towards one sex.
So men tend to like computers more than women, does anyone seriously think this is somehow the industry keeping women from participating? (well, ok, but only because a lot of the "men" in the industry tend to be about as mature as the primary school children I referred to earlier!)
Racist? I can't answer that so readily, but I know a lot of foreign chappies working in IT, and my last company actively discriminated against white guys by only hiring Indian developers - though admittedly they were located in India, and cost a lot less. The one previous to that recruited a lot of Lithuanians, so they could hardly be said to discriminate against the usual native causcasian population.
Now ageist... that is definitely a problem in IT.
- There are crazy stock valuations of computer companies that have almost no revenue.
- People claim that everyone should write computer software including those with minimal STEM background and minmal interest in such.
- When crazy articles about computer science racism starting appearing.
Computers science is a poor fit as a vehicle to level the playing field. Its not the sort of job you can do well if you don't have some sort of inherent interest or curiosity in.
Certainly any group can have members that have such an interest in programming. Finding those individuals would be a good thing. I just have severe reservations against trying to push anyone into this field. I've seen too many programmers who got into the field not because they have any inherent interest or curiosity rather somebody told them it was a good career path. They don't do well.
Should some sort of CS or programming classes be availably to anyone in K-12 that is interested or curious? Sure. It would be a great elective class.
You don't need an above average IQ for CS, you just need to think you have one.
This is totally bullshit and it's being done for bullshit political reasons. Nothing good comes from the politicization of science and yet the politicians cannot resist making a political issue of the lack of "diversity" in CS education. In my own CS experience nobody gave a shit about whether you were black, white, asian or latino and yes we had all of those races represented in the program. What mattered was whether or not you could hack it and continue advancing through the curriculum. The grades were always on a curve and the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out. In CS, as in other sciences, people respect knowledge, ability and intelligence, not the color of your skin or your cultural background. If you wanted to major in foo-fa the Humanities department was on the other side of campus.
"Cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more."
As a black software engineer I am tired of needing things dumbed down (or "hipped up") to be made more acceptable to minorities. We don't need skateboarding, "graffiti art", or dancing to teach a kid how to code. Just like we didn't need a substandard English (Ebonics) to teach kids how to properly read and write.
If under representation of minorites in computer science is racist, I'd love to know what they think of the under representation of non-Asian minorities in all science, medicine, and technology fields. By their metric there would be rampant racism.
Racism is a real thing, and a very terrible thing, and it's offensive to assume a lack of minority representation automatically means racism. I came from a culture that shunned academic excellence of any kind, and I think that's the reason there is under representation. But nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room which is asking people to blame their perceptions and beliefs instead of their environment. Racism makes a convenient enemy when the enemy is within.
But perhaps the white males who thrive in CS do have one quality that enables them to succeed where others fail: the ability to assimilate into an alien culture without considering yourself a victim of its unfamiliarity. I suspect that all humans are born with this ability, but some people are taught that every difficulty they encounter in life is some form of victimization.
Little girls, given the choice between dolls and building blocks, overwhelmingly choose the dolls. You can't reverse biology, and it's idiotic to do so.
That's not to say women can't do CS. Plenty can. Most choose not to do so.
The barrier for entry in learning to code is virtually nil. You need a computer - it doesn't even have to be a good one - and access to the Internet.
That's it. If you have that, you have all of the resources, tutorials, books, exercises, and help documentation needed to start learning CS.
Oh yes - and the motivation to do self-start and learn something yourself.
Interesting how biasing hiring towards women is not considered sexist yet biasing towards men, is? All in the name of 'equality' of course.
no.. Girls innately prioritize socialization, which, for whatever reason, is given more respect these days than abilities (like computer programming) that actually accomplish something. Give girls toy trucks, and they treat them like dolls, anthropomorphizing them.. Give dolls to boys and they'll treat them like space ships, or have them fight or whatever..
Gender is not a social construct. Society is a gender construct.
I don't have personal relationships with concepts and applications. I have an intellectual relationship with them. I have personal relationships with people.
I don't know how much of girls liking dolls, and boys liking building blocks is due to genes or culture, but your blanket statement that demonlapin's statement is false, is itself false. We known it isn't entirely cultural because primate studies show that our closest non-human relatives also display this tendency. However it seems less that females like certain things, and males like certain things, but that males tend to like certain things to the exclusion of others, and females don't have as much exclusive preference.
Primate Study
Additionally, in girls with with a disorder that increases androgen production to be more like boys, toy preference also shifts, despite social pressures.
Androgen Study
My dad tried with my sister.
When she was 16 she could change an alternator herself, admittedly only to prove her little brother wrong.
Then she learned how to stand on tip toes and then drop her heals to the ground, causing her boobs to bounce...it was over in six months. Learned helplessness.
BTW once you notice the, tip toes, drop heals to make boobs bounce thing, you see it everywhere. Anybody got any alternative explanations for this body language? It's always related to a girl wanting to get her way.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Here's a classic, often-cited study. To summarize it, some boys are born with an abdominal defect that leaves their bladder or genital organs exposed and malformed. Years ago, surgeons weren't able to reconstruct male organs, so they "converted" the infants at birth to females. They told the parents to keep this secret from the child, and bring them up as girls. So this was a scientific experiment of bring up boys as girls, to the greatest extent imaginable.
As it turned out, most of the boys rebelled against being brought up as girls, and followed male rather than female behavior. Even as infants of a few months of age, they preferred male toys, such as weapons, and male playing, such as aggression and fighting. As they got older, the preference for male behavior, such as fighting and construction toys, was even more noticeable. Boys played with toy guns. They didn't play with tea sets. And they had strong preferences for male clothing.
Any reasonable person would have to admit that this is strong evidence that sexual behavior is largely innate, not environmental.
If you can surgically change a boy to a girl, bring him up as a girl, and have him insist on following male behavior instead, then you could expect the same results from a similar experiment with bringing up girls as boys. If girls have an inherent preference for (or against) certain careers, you'll find more (or fewer) women in those careers, even without discrimination against women, and even despite all the affirmative action and encouragement in the world.
I don't object to women studying engineering; I encourage it. But I would expect that even with the best gender-free STEM education in the world, you're not going to have equal results of as many women in every discipline of engineering as men. It seems to max out at 10%.
Science magazine has also published a lot of work on gender in science and science education. There are some efforts that succeeded and other efforts that failed. Women in biology and medicine, success. Women in engineering, relatively rare.
The evidence goes against somebody suing an employer and saying, "There are more male than female engineers, therefore you're discriminating, and not giving us opportunities, and you should pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars." Which happened in many industries in the 1970s.
********************
Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth
William G. Reiner, M.D., and John P. Gearhart, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2004; 350:333-341
January 22, 2004
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa022236
Background
Cloacal exstrophy is a rare, complex defect of the entire pelvis and its contents that occurs during embryogenesis and is associated with severe phallic inadequacy or phallic absence in genetic males. For about 25 years, neonatal assignment to female sex has been advocated for affected males to overcome the issue of phallic inadequacy, but data on outcome remain sparse.
Methods
We assessed all 16 genetic males in our cloacal-exstrophy clinic at the ages of 5 to 16 years. Fourteen underwent neonatal assignment to female sex socially, legally, and surgically; the parents of the remaining two refused to do so. Detailed questionnaires extensively evaluated the development of sexual role and identity, as defined by the subjects' persistent declarations of their sex.
Results
Eight of the 14 subjects assigned to female sex declared themselves male during the course of this study, whereas the 2 raised as males remained male. Subjects could be grouped according to their stated sexual identity. Five subjects were living as females; three were living with unclear sexual identity, although two of the three had declared themselves male; and eight were living as males, six of whom had reassigned themselves to m
When I started learning programming, back in the early 1970's, there were 3 main races that I could see - Indians (from India), Caucasians (from Europe/America) and East Asians (Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese)
As the years gone by, more races were added, from the African continent and from South America (mainly Argentine, Brazil, Chile and Peru)
As for those "hyphenated-Americans" such as "Latino-Americans" or "African-Americans", yes, I saw them too, but their number is small.
Their number is small not because of racism - as far as I know, we in the tech field treasure people with skills, not people with a particular skin-hue - the main cause of their number is because of their culture do not care for people with brains.
I have had co-workers from the Latino-American and African-American communities and they told me of their struggle to "survive" the daily gauntlet from their own people - taunts, bully, threats and physical assaults.
It's okay to be a nerd if you are a white, an Indian, a Japanese, but if you happen to be an African American, a nerd is someone to be stepped on, to be pushed around, to be beaten.
If there is "racism" related to computer-science, the "racism" came not from the nerds, but from those who want to kick the nerds around.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Some feminists are misandrists, in particularly some really famous ones are(the press loves misandry all the drama of misogyny with none of the backlash). Feminism and feminists in general are generally not. Overall in my life I've encountered far fewer misandrists than I have misogynists, casual or otherwise, you're a pretty good example for instance. You get your hate on for feminism because a few members are a bit misandrist and you use it as an excuse to denigrate attempts to genuinely improve the lot of women because you can tar those efforts with the "feminist" label and then push it back.
There are a hundred thousand reasons why there are very few men in teaching, particularly primary school teaching, the most important being that it's incredibly poorly paid. There's also the fact during the second half of the last century male teachers religious and otherwise actually being kiddy fiddlers was tragically common. It's not feminists pushing men out of primary education it's parents and they have some justification, not all men like to abuse children, but for decades men who do have been gravitating to school teaching.