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Programmer Father Asks: What Gets Little Girls Interested In Science?
nbauman writes Programmer David Auerbach is dismayed that, at a critical developmental age, his 4-year-old daughter wants to be a princess, not a scientist or engineer, he writes in Slate. The larger society keeps forcing sexist stereotypes on her, in every book and toy store. From the article: "Getting more women into science and technology fields: Where’s the silver bullet? While I might get more hits by revealing the One Simple Trick to increase female participation in the sciences, the truth is there isn’t some key inflection point where young women’s involvement drops off. Instead, there is a series of small- to medium-sized discouraging factors that set in from a young age, ranging from unhelpful social conditioning to a lack of role models to unconscious bias to very conscious bias. Any and all of these can figure into why, for example, women tend to underrate their technical abilities relative to men. I know plenty of successful women in the sciences, but let’s not fool ourselves and say the playing field in the academic sciences or the tech world is even. My wife attributes her pursuit of programming to being a loner and pretty much ignoring wider society while growing up: 'Being left alone with a computer (with NO INTERNET TO TELL ME WHAT I COULDN’T DO) was the deciding factor,' she tells me."
Turn her into an unhappy misfit.
(ex. Give her a home-built Linux computer while all her friends play fun games on their Dells.)
But if he gets an answer, get back to me so I can try and apply it to my g/fs 13 year old son that wants to be a princess.
Turns out, it's hard work learning various languages and proper elocution, history, religion, proper manners, protocol and etiquette, art, diplomacy and international relations, and everything else that goes into a well-rounded education to not be a bore and be able to properly fit in with whatever future king your parents arrange for you to marry, or if you are in one of the more progressive kingdoms, the throne itself. I would say you should encourage her to be a proper princess.
I knew one promising kid. Was building apache forks by the time he was two, built his own mircokernel when he was three. But then around three and a half some troublemaker in daycare slipped him a copy of Visual Studio and a VB.net book during naptime. By the time he hit four he's writing VB.net webapps for mars bars, six months later it's Windows Phone apps for smarties.
Poor kid never even made it to five, he got wet-willied trying to swipe a chocolate milk carton at lunch.
What a waste.
I stole this Sig
Hairdresser Aubrey Spetsnatz is dismayed that, at a critical developmental age, her 4-year-old son wants to be an astronaut, not a stylist or makeup artist...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The women in the world chess league don't feel "safe" around male players. Those muscle-bound grandmasters are so prone to roid-rage and aggression these days that women need a "safe space" where they can play chess in a separate but equal arena with no patriarchy -- and one where women are guaranteed to win. ...Also, losing in chess may constitute rape in some states, so it's important to separate them.
/ more sarc
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )