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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).
No, you can't come to a conclusion based on a failure to achieve a goal.
You just know that method didn't work. Not that you can't make a lightbulb.
Are you a girl? Great! Here's all kinds of grant money to help people make that happen.
Are you a boy? Get out of my classroom, if we have too many of you it will threaten our grant money.
That's "progress" for you.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
End of story.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Another part of the "whatever" could be students visiting workplaces and finding out they've all switched to open-plan work environments with extremely high noise levels, constant interruptions, and zero privacy, and students are switching to other majors where they can have a career path that doesn't cap out by the time they're 35 and in which they have a work environment conducive to concentration.
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.
So now Google thinks they need to pay women to learn to code? What an absolutely sexist campaign. Women are plenty capable of learning to code, they don't need cash payouts by patriarchal companies; this is akin to prostitution and Google should be ashamed.
It's never too early to start complaining. The criticism of "separate but equal" in education was that the "equal" part is a myth. Now we are experimenting with "separate and explicitly unequal" in education. Awesome.
And I think you're wrong about what a successful outcome of this experiment suggests. If you provide a different environment for women to study CS, and then they like it, they may just like the new environment, not the CS part. A credit is a credit. If you have to fulfill some science/math requirement (based on a recent article that said CS qualified as a science credit for high school graduation in Georgia from what I recall), you'll take the awesome course with extra funding that gets you field trips and free pizza whether you like the subject or not.
Who knows if there's something genetic but there's obviously something cultural. Most women don't strive to immerse themselves in a culture that is predominated by socially awkward beta males. I don't understand why nobody accepts this obvious explanation for the lack of women.
Ah, the good old days, when civil rights activists fought for equality. Much better than today where the fight is typically for special rights and inequality.
There's been an ever-increasing push over the last 10 or 12 years to get more girls and women into tech, with almost no visible results; in fact, the number of women in tech has been declining for decades. This seems odd at first, but the reason this push is constantly being attempted at all is that it's part of a larger effort to increase the pool of applicants and decrease salaries. It's the same reason that Facebook, Google, et al. want to increase the number of H1-B visa workers.
There is nothing stopping a girl or woman from learning programming/networking/etc. if she wants to, and these increasingly bizarre, desperate, and creepy attempts to lure in women will end up pushing away the ones who might have pursued tech careers otherwise.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
I don't blame misogyny for girls not getting into programming, because I don't think computer programming is necessarily characterized by social interaction. The lone "cowboy[/cowgirl] coder" is much more of the norm than our zealous gender imbalance adjusters think.
When I was getting into programming in the 90's I certainly didn't rely on anybody else's affirmation -- I learned how to program sitting by myself at my computer(s) with very little in the way of two way communication with the outside world. I realize it's not the 90's anymore, but the argument that says you have to have a vibrant Twitter presence and go to local programmer meetups to be a coder today is, quite frankly, hogwash. It's about the code, friend.
Here's another theory that I will probably be flamed for -- maybe girls don't get into programming as often for the same reason that female deer don't bash heads against each other as often as the males do. Maybe it boils down to testosterone. Males of many species have an impulsive drive to accomplish certain things, and in humans' case this is largely independent of intellectual aptitude. Yes, girls are smart. Many could be good programmers. But do they want to? Are they driven to? Am I (at least partially) driven to my peculiar lifestyle of being glued to a screen and eschewing much social interaction because of testosterone? ("Yeah, you'd like to _think_ so" I can hear my naysayer naysaying.) But these are questions I honestly ask.
Maybe because the socially awkward arrested-development cases so common in IT don't want to face the fact their they're the problem.
Because sexualization of women whenever the topic of women in IT comes up is a great way to interest more women in IT?
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
She would most likely start cutting down one of her microseconds to strangle some folks. We don't need to do stuff like this we need to get kids to learn from the beginning that
1 Girls are not SEX OBJECTS
2 Smart and Pretty are not exclusive of each other
3 Some girls can do Math and some boys can't do Math (and science and tech and...)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before, instead of trying to "lean in" on what feminists perceive as "soft skill white collar" industries.
Sounds good?
Maybe the "whatever" is that we are importing a steady stream of H-1B workers to reduce salaries, and that you're about as likely to find a job in IT after 45 as you are to find one in the NBA.
Maybe the "right environment" is where we only allow H-1B visas when unemployment is below 4%, and make it a felony to fake job postings to give jobs to foreigners instead of Americans.
45-year old guy here says you are full of it. Unless we are confining the job search a very narrow area with a history of ageism (Silicon Valley), I call bs on that kind of statements (statements I've been seeing for the last 20 years). Some of my colleagues/ex-colleagues are approaching their late 50's and are still getting well-paid, 6-figure gigs (both perm and contract).
If you are worth your shit, you will get a job in IT regardless of your age.
Seems to me that IT workers aren't worth that have been paid.
Some of them aren't. Some of them are worth more than what they are paid. Same in all careers and walks of life. Welcome to this thing that we call life.
... wait to see if this increases the number of women taking these courses and going into CS. If it does then that suggests that women are interested and just needed the right environment or some encouragement. If it doesn't we can conclude that they just are not interested because of genetics or whatever.
Sorry, but women aren't interested or not interested in CS, or any other topic. A woman might be interested, and another woman might not be interested. But implying that women as a class are or aren't interested is sexist in the extreme.
No matter what we do, many women will never be interested in such geeky stuff, just as many men aren't. To be successful, we should introduce any subject to young people in general, and encourage those who find it interesting, regardless of their sexual organs (which really have little to do with their mental abilities ;-). And for the others, find subjects that they find interesting and encourage them to follow those.
(Of course, to function well in modern society, we should try to instill a bit of understanding of a lot of topics in any young people able to understand them. But that's a different topic than finding those who can go deeply into a specific topic.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If you're in the world, since the beginning of time, a lot of you are not worth what you're paid.
FTFY
It's obvious even in that little social microcosm of society we call high school. The beta males cliques gather in the library or the computer lab or wherever to do their nerdy things...maybe play Magic, or D&D, or whatever. At best there's what? Maybe there's one or two equally beta females hanging out with that group (if any). And it's certainly not because they're conspiring to exclude girls. In fact, they'd be happy if there were more among them. I know this because I was one of those kids and so were a lot of us here.
Some of the leading computer pioneers already have. ;) Willingly or not.
I know a couple trans women from Canada who use the phrase "tall woman with a laptop" as code for other trans women. Because apparently if you see a tall woman using a laptop in a public place, odds are abnormally high that she's trans. ;)
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
All males are beta in high school. They turn into release candidates once they go to college.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm just one guy, but I'm definitely going to try to teach my girls to code when they're old enough. I won't force them if they're not interested, but I'm going to work pretty damn hard to show them how fun it can be before I give up.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Asian males and white males get screwed.
http://www.thisismetis.com/rub...
Surely that should affect males and females equally though.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
One of the side effects of white-knighting is that now and then you'll find yourself tilting at windmills, as you're doing today.
Nobody is complaining about competition; the problem is the tech giants' efforts to undermine skilled workers pursuing a career doing what they love in favor of less-skilled (read: cheap) ones who are only in it for the money. There is no regard for the quality of code produced, no effort to ensure that American tech companies remain relevant in a global economy, just the race to the bottom, and no amount of warm-and-fuzzy cooing about girls being just as good as boys or pastel websites about how awesome grrrrl coders are will change that.
Please also keep in mind that not only do women and foreigners tend to work for far less money than American men, they are much less likely to "talk back" or "make waves" or whatever else you want to call it, which is why there are concentrated, industry-wide efforts to push more women and H1-B's into tech, and no such efforts for more African-American or Latino-American men. It doesn't really get much more obvious, cynical, or self-serving than this, regardless of how desperately you want to believe in your own anecdotal evidence of a shortage that we all know simply does not exist. If your company can't find enough quality workers, then your company sucks at compensation, or recruiting, or advertising open positions, or anything else involved in the process of attracting, growing, and retaining talent.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
Why? Studies have shown that females far more than males dislike bad jobs that are particularly enjoyable and painful.
Bad working conditions is correlated with female uninterest.
next you are going to tell me that the high level of physical danger inherent to all fishing jobs is not what drives women away from the industry?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Tokolosh differentiated between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
Equality of opportunity is close to human rights, freedom from prejudice. e.g. everyone gets an education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Equality of outcome is a political concept, an arbitrary target is set (e.g. with sex/gender often a 50:50 participation outcome) and individuals are supported unequally to achieve this outcome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
I agree, equality of opportunity is worthy of intervention, equality of outcome is not.
Agreed with all but this one bit:
...a career path that doesn't cap out by the time they're 35...
Not everyone in IT is a developer, eh?
At one month shy of 45 years old, I'm drowning in recruiters wanting me to talk to people, testing on my part has shown that employers are hella eager to speak with me, and they all see "20 years of experience" right at the top of my frickin' resume.
Seriously though - where in the hell does everyone get the idea that just because your beard turns gray you're suddenly worthless in IT? Sure I've seen IT folks who are, in all honesty, well past their expiration date - but this is mostly because they've either mentally checked-out, burned-out, or they're deluded prima donnas with demands that no other employer with a brain would want to even contemplate. The prima donnas are usually considered to be rock stars within the little company where they've worked for 15 years or so, but discover to their horror that the sweet little deals they have with their employer is something no other employer would want to buy into. The first two are fucking helpless whenever something new or unusual comes along. None of these, single or combined, make up the majority, and judging by my own experience, most employers know it.
Assertions aside, there's also the hordes of graybeards out there who not only read and write COBOL, FORTRAN, et al, but along the way write their own effing paychecks. Why? Because they know the ancient languages which the trend-chasing .NET and Ruby-on-Rails s'kiddies apparently can't be bothered to learn. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
As someone who tutors in CS while finishing up his bachelors, I think this is great. Too many times I see women who have the skills to be a good programmer but don't have someone pushing them hard to be a great programmer because it's assumed that the field just "isn't for Women." Women can be just as good at engineering, programming, math and science as men and I think the industry as a whole can stand to get a bit more even in terms of gender representation. If anything, encouring the women in our country to get into these more technical fields could help drive the men who are competing with them to work harder and perhaps we'll be importing less tech savvy people from other countries. My $0.02.
Sorry, you're worth (in your job) exactly what you're paid, by definition.
It is filled with socially awkward beta males because they are working on their computers Saturday nights while the teen girls are banging the alpha males. I can tell you that if more girls would have wanted to have sex with me in high school, my technical skills would have been far lower.
So, the non-mysoginist explanation of what is deterring women from the field is that women are not being deterred. They are just not being attracted to the field because they are at a disadvantage due to the fact that they spent their youth treating men as sex objects instead of studying technology.
My daughter was coding when she was 8 (IBM Logo :) ). She's gone through programming to being a DBA and has recently entered Computer Security.
I will say that initially, she was a bog-standard office worker. But since she grew up around me (coding, etc), she was always asked about computer problems. She had no _desire_ to be in computers (initially anyway) but eventually bowed to the fact that she's a damned sight smarter than her co-workers with regards to computers.
On the other hand, my younger daughter had absolutely no interest in computers and is currently a motorcycle mechanic. :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Show me this "social contract". I think a big part of the problem here is delusional reasoning based on imaginary things that don't actually exist.
It's a metaphor. Read and learn. Yes, the social contract is an "imaginary" contract. It's based on the idea that for society to exist, we all have to agree to some principles. There's lots of disagreement about what those principles are (i.e., what the "contract" consists of), but there has to be some sort of implicit agreement. Otherwise, it's in my best interest to go murder you and steal your food and clothes and money when no one's looking, because it will benefit me.
Instead, we as a society have decided it's probably better not for everyone to go around randomly killing and stealing from each other, so we pass laws intended to enforce this implicit "contract."
But to claim that is a "contract", requires that the thing be voluntary and agreed to. That generally is not the case.
Again, it's a metaphor. But if you don't like the "contract," move somewhere else that has a different set of laws more in line with what you want. Otherwise, by remaining a member of a society governed by laws, you implicitly agree to abide by them.
I find that most of the people who use the term, "social contract" want me to do things for them, but can't be bothered to come up with reasons aside from vacuous, moralistic bullshit for doing them.
Well, as I said, there's a lot disagreement about what is necessary to create a just society. Reading the GP's comment that you were responding to, it sounds like he/she was invoking something like John Rawls's concept of the veil of ignorance, i.e., the "original position" where this hypothetical "social contract" is "negotiated."
Brief summary: Imagine you're going to play a game against opponents you have never met before. You have the option to make modifications to the rules in advance, if you wish. You have no clue how strong or skilled or whatever your opponents might be -- they could be physically disabled, mentally retarded people, or they could be the strongest, biggest, smartest, fastest people you have ever met in your life.
How do you determine the rules of the game? How do you figure out what would be "fair" play?
Now imagine that you have the same problem, except it will determine how you can live your entire life. That's the "veil of ignorance" -- you don't know before you're born if you're going to come into a society naturally as the brightest, most beautiful, most talented person who has ever lived, or as a person near the bottom of the talent pool, who will always struggle to keep up.
Rawls argued from that "thought experiment" that we'd want to negotiate a fair "social contract" with protections for those who might -- by chance -- come into society with fewer skills or abilities than others. He argued that fairness dictates we should build in certain protections to ensure that we don't exploit them or force them into degrading impoverished positions -- because, from the perspective "behind the veil of ignorance" they could have been US. By accident of birth, maybe we could be born into a different society or at a different time when our skills were just as stupid and crappy as theirs -- and what would we want to protect us from being exploited and run over by the "better" members of that society?
That's why we need a "social contract." The exact terms are up for debate, but most people who have thought about the issue agree that, in fairness to all, we need protections for everyone. And sometimes we need to build in protections for those who need it most.
Indeed, I'm 35 and my career is really taking off. 30 seems to be the age where things really start to move these days, the point at which you have enough experience to start getting the into the more senior positions.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I believe it goes beyond appearances. During the sexual revolution the en masse influx of women to the workforce put a depression upon wages (primarily entry level positions) as employers now had significantly more applicants. Women born after 1978 now are the majority of students of college campuses, attain higher levels of education than their male counterparts, and are likely to earn more over the course of their lifetime than men born during the same time. Unfortunately for companies like Google, they're not flocking to computer science degrees. Google and others don't have a candidate pool as large as they want to drive down the large costs of paying employees, so they're working on increasing H1-B visas and bringing in additional applicants that wouldn't otherwise choose the field (e.g. women).
I agree that women should feel that computer science and related fields are potential careers, but Google's approach only serves to help underprivileged girls at the expense of underprivileged boys. Children of privileged families already have the capability of sending their children to these programming classes, but children of underprivileged families may not be able to afford these classes. The opportunities that Google are being offered on a sexual discriminative basis, with the qualifications being completely out of control of the child.