Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2,500; Teach Boys, Get $0

theodp (442580) writes "'Public school teachers,' reads the headline at Khan Academy (KA), 'introduce your students to coding and earn $1000 or more for your classroom!' Read the fine print, however, and you'll see that the Google-bankrolled offer is likely to ensure that girls, not boys, are going to be their Computer Science teachers' pets. 'Google wants public high school students, especially girls, to discover the magic of coding,' KA explains to teachers. 'You'll receive a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code for every female student who completes the [JS 101: Drawing & Animation] course. When 4 or more female students complete it, we'll email you an additional $500 gift code as a thank-you for helping your students learn to code.' While 'one teacher cannot have more than 20 of the $100 gift codes activated on their DonorsChoose.org projects,' adds KA, 'if the teacher has more than 20 female students complete the curriculum, s/he will still be sent gift codes, and the teacher can use the additional gift codes on another teacher's DonorsChoose.org project.' So, is girls-are-golden-boys-are-worthless funding for teachers' projects incongruent with Khan Academy's other initiatives, such as its exclusive partnership with CollegeBoard to eliminate inequality among students studying for the SAT?"

Comments

Sex discrimination.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this not sex discrimination? Or does the US not have such laws against discriminating based on gender?

Re:Sex discrimination.

[squiggleslash]

Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!

It might be worth determining why "sex discrimination" is an issue, and seeing whether the concept is a problem in this case for the same underlying problems, rather than simply jumping on it and implying it's wrong because it's discrimination.

In particular, we are NOT in a situation where men/boys feel they're unable, or that it's undesirable, to follow a career in the computing fields, and the policy above doesn't and will not change that. Should that change, should men genuinely end up being excluded and unable to enter a legitimate career field like this one, then we obviously need to re-examine the policies in question.

We often say "X is wrong" as shorthand for "X, when done with the effect of Y, is wrong". We say, for example, that kidnapping is wrong. That doesn't stop us from non-consensually grabbing suspected kidnappers off the street, handcuffing them, stuffing them in the back seat of a police car, and after following a lengthy legal process to make sure we got the right person, sticking them in an 8x8 cell they can't escape from. How is that not kidnapping? Well, it is kidnapping, but it's considered acceptable for a reason...

Re:Sex discrimination.

[Thanshin]

So if you are a white straight male, or in some cases a male period, you are not a "protected class"

Think of the male periods!

Re:Sex discrimination.

[CrankyFool]

You misunderstand the concept of a "protected class."

Employment law indicates that discrimination or harassment based on protected classifications is illegal. A protected classification is something like "gender," but not "being a woman." So if you discriminate against someone because she's a woman, that's illegal because you're discriminating based on a protected class (gender); and if you discriminate against someone because he's a man, that's ALSO illegal because you yet again are discriminating based on a protected class (gender).

Same thing about race, national origin, and a few other classifications (military service, in a few states sexual orientation, etc).

That doesn't mean, however, that you can't have a charity that focuses on one gender or race, or an organization focused on one gender (e.g. girl scouts or boy scouts); it also doesn't mean that an entity seeking to donate money must donate money equally to all genders -- protected classifications are an area in employment law, not every facet of life.

Re:Sex discrimination.

[MightyYar]

If I chose to go to a strip club, I would feel appropriate tipping the (female) dancers but not the (male) bouncers with my privately owned dollars.

No, man, you have to get a random dance from either a dude or a lady. And they have to be a random age and weight. No discrimination allowed :)

clearly google wants women developers

[kcmastrpc]

...so they can pay them less. amirite?

Why is that a problem?

[walterbyrd]

> There is a problem with the number of girls who go into technical fields such as coding and engineering and that problem needs to be solved.

Why?

I know five nurses, all woman. Two of them earn over $100K a year. Very few men work as nurses. Is that a problem that needs to be solved?

Re:Discrimination of girls is bad and unethical

[LWATCDR]

So a program that would pay basketball programs for having more white players would be okay? How about one for straight male fashion designers?
Sorry but this is discrimination in the form of incentives. I would rather see money spent on putting good tech teachers and technology in low performing schools so you help everyone in an area to have greater opportunities. I agree that teachers need to provide the same opportunities to everyone but putting a bounty on one group will by it's very nature cause that group to get preferential treatment.
I often wonder if the the cultural issues are more the women not going into tech at an early age vs men. Hopefully people like Jerry Ellsworth and Marissa Mayer cand help turn that around.

Premise for a movie

[korbulon]

A geeky guy suddenly find himself out of a jahb - victim of downsizing, outsourcing, H1B1-jeebies etc etc - and thinks up a plan to take advantage of this new program by dressing up as a woman and teaching inner-city girls all about the ins-and-outs of programming, and in the process learns a little bit about something called life.

"He taught them how to code, but they taught him how to live."

From the producers of Mrs Doubtfire and I Spit on Your Grave, this summer Paramount Pictures brings you a feel-good, down-on-your-luck, rags-to-riches, local-boy-make-good, shaggy-dog, fish-out-of-water, girl-meets-boy, boy-turns-into-girl story.

Michael Cera in Class Act.

Politically correct sexism

[Tridus]

This is so flagrantly sexist that it's absurd. But luckily for Google, it's the politically correct form of sexism. It's been decreed that programming being male dominated is bad, and thus taking sexist action to fix it is okay.

This of course totally ignores that university education as a whole has become majority female, and many professions are becoming majority female that didn't used to be. That by and large we're doing a lousy job of educating boys is not considered a problem, so making that problem worse by trying to exclude them from one of the areas they still do well in is considered okay.

Sure, it's total BS. But it's PC BS, and that's good enough, right?

Re:Discrimination of girls is bad and unethical

[Opportunist]

If the teacher can only hope to get paid if he teaches girls, it pretty much means boys are disallowed from participating.

Tell you what: Try to start a contest like that with the stakes reversed. I.e. get paid for boys and get jack for girls. Then watch the shitstorm.