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Interviews: Ask Adora Svitak About Education and Women In STEM and Politics
samzenpus writes Adora Svitak is a child prodigy, author and activist. She taught her first class on writing at a local elementary school when she was 7, the same year her book, Flying Fingers was published. In 2010, Adora spoke at a TED Conference. Her speech, "What Adults Can Learn from Kids", has been viewed over 3.7 million times and has been translated into over 40 different languages. She is an advocate for literacy, youth empowerment, and for the inclusion of more women and girls in STEM and politics. 17 this year, she served as a Youth Advisor to the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC. and is a freshman at UC Berkeley. Adora has agreed to take some time from her books and answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
To what extent do you believe child prodigies are merely products of their environment?
Dear Adora Svitak,
At 17 years of age, you do not have enough life experience to say anything of real importance about anything involving the greater issues facing society. It doesn't matter how brilliant you are or think you are. It doesn't matter how much of a rep has been manufactured for you by spinmeisters. You are simply too young to have any real perspective or ability to identify the machinations of those around you.
One of the most dangerous things in the world is for someone to believe their own hype. Don't make that mistake.
Incidentally, What Adults Can Learn From Kids ~ {null}, which is why society would function much more smoothly if the voting age were raised back to 25.
He has a point. Every story about women in STEM is plagued with posts trying to disrupt any effort to improve things. Typical arguments include:
...
- There is no problem
- Girls just don't like computers
Is it possible that either of these are true, even in a general sense? There are gender disparities in several fields. The median salary for nurses is $65,470, whereas the median salary for IT Technicians is $42,992, but you don't hear a whole bunch of FUD over the fact that 90% of nurses are females. And when it comes right down to it, nurses are far more valuable to society than IT techs. Meanwhile, oil rig workers, about 95% male, make on average $99,175. Why no big push for women in that field?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
- There is no problem
There is because women tell us they are interested in IT and STEM but get put off by certain behaviour or find systematic bias against them. Unless they are all liars I suppose.
- Girls just don't like computers
Why did there used to be more women in IT than there are now? The timescale (back to the 80s/90s) is too short to account for anything other than changes in society and in schools/jobs. Also, women tell us that they do find computers interesting.
So, I don't think there is any realistic argument that those two things are true. I'm not saying we will ever get to a 50/50 ratio, I honestly don't know and can accept that women may be less interested than men (statistically), but the fact that we can identify specific problems and know that in the past more women were in IT makes it hard to deny that there is a problem.
As for gender disparities in other fields, they are a problem too. Nursing is a good example, because there is a recognized lack of male nurses and a demand for them. Primary school teaching is another area where there is a severe shortage of males, and a concerted effort to correct the problem. Young children need male role models at school.
In other areas like oil rig workers, where there is apparently little to be gained by society from having more women there, the main issue is barriers to women who do want to enter the field. I have no idea if many women are interested in oil rig work... To be honest I'm not sure how many men are "interested" exactly, it seems more like an unpleasant job that you accept because of the money, but if a woman says she wants to be an oil rig worker and could become one on her own merits were it not for discriminatory hiring practices, lack of facilities for women on the rig, or the attitude of her co-workers then that would be a problem.
I'm hesitant to say it because I feel you are being genuine here, but your arguments are bordering on sophism. Do people really have such a superficial understanding of the issue that this kind of argument seems reasonable? Perhaps that's where we are at, and I'm not blaming you for it, but it's depressing that after all these years we can't even get to the basic definition of the problem without a lengthy explanation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC