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Girls Take All In $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video).
As a woman and ex-coder, I'd say I got out of software development because of immoral companies like Google with their boot-licking race to the bottom when it comes to respect for the individual. My aversion to the field is an aversion to macho culture only to the extent that "might makes right" (i.e. "we do it because we can") is macho culture. I don't think they're appropriate in the workplace, but I'm not put off by sexist jokes, assumptions that I will fail (if anything, I've been treated too "delicately") and what-have-you.
I'll stop playing my tiny violin when literally 99% of rapists are no longer men.
If you're using rape stats to justify discriminatory programs against men, then do you also support discriminatory programs against blacks, since blacks are disproportionately more likely to commit rape?