Slashdot Mirror
WA Pushes Back On Microsoft and Code.org's Call For Girls-First CS Education
theodp writes On Tuesday, the State of Washington heard public testimony on House Bill 1813 (video), which takes aim at boy's historical over-representation in K-12 computer classes. To allow them to catch flights, representatives of Microsoft and Microsoft-bankrolled Code.org were permitted to give their testimony before anyone else ("way too many young people, particularly our girls...simply don't have access to the courses at all," lamented Jane Broom, who manages Microsoft's philanthropic portfolio), so it's unclear whether they were headed to the airport when a representative of the WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction voiced the sole dissent against the Bill. "The Superintendent strongly believes in the need to improve our ability to teach STEM, to advance computer science, to make technology more available to all students," explained Chris Vance. "Our problem, and our concern, is with the use of the competitive grant program...just providing these opportunities to a small number of students...that's the whole basic problem...disparity of opportunity...if this is a real priority...fund it fully" (HB 1813, like the White House K-12 CS plan, counts on philanthropy to make up for tax shortfalls). Hey, parents of boys are likely to be happy to see another instance of educators striving to be more inclusive than tech when it comes to encouraging CS participation!
Stop trying to spend money to get girls to code. The ones that want to will. Spend that money on BOTH genders to promote CS.
Good-bye
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade
And of course the sad ending
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw
--- Rush 1978
Remember, you can never make yourself better by having someone else chop the other person down. Very powerful song - still resonates today.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Boys are systematically falling behind women across academia and they are obsessed with getting more women into one of the few areas where boys are still doing well. No equivalent zeal for the question of why boys are falling behind on most other subjects. If the roles were reversed with legislators assaulting the few academic strongholds where girls were still excelling, the center and left would be frothing at the mouth about the obviously misogynistic priorities of the government.
There should be absolutely no government concern for women in CS until boys are back up to parity with girls in public education and universities. None. Women already are starting to dominate Law, Medicine and other big former bastions of professional men. The idea that girls face any meaningful barriers to getting an education that leads to a career in a field with solid remuneration is a very sick joke.
Women, particularly feminist women, need to do some serious "privilege checking" on the education issue.
Wow, I didn't know it was so easy to manipulate female students. No wonder society is so quick to remove all agency and responsibility from them.
These companies aren't really concerned about a lack of coding talent. They are concerned that pay is too high and will use any excuse to flood the market with people of these skills especially H1B visa holders and women who traditionally have been easy prey when it comes to pay disparity. Microsoft couldn't careless about your child. There plenty of women in my CS classes in college many of them thought they would be rich developing websites. I have a had 3 women co-workers that became school teachers so they could spend more time with their kids. There are many reasons for the disparity. Lack of opportunity isn't one of these.
The real kicker that's going to bake your noodle in 3 years time: After millions of dollars and at the expense of thousands of young boys, the demographics don't change (or perhaps they change but not in a direction you thought it would). What do you do then?
Let's face it - you've marketed this "thing" to girls at great cost in money and at great cost to society on the evidence-less assertion that all the girls need are more appealing marketing to find CS desirable. What the hell are you going to do come 2018 and the girls still aren't interested? More aggressive marketing? More exclusionary policies? More money? All three?
Or will you just give up? For a long while now I've been pointing out that those societies which are more oppressive towards women (Iran, India, etc) have more women in CS. That's right - in countries where women have no choice they are found in CS. In other countries, such as most western countries, where women are told from birth that they can do whatever they like they go ahead and do something other than CS.
That data point alone illustrates that the situation is more complex than you think, and simply spending money, excluding boys and general misandry might noe be enough to get girls to go into CS. All over the world, girls with no choice or say in the matter go into CS, and girls with choice and say in the matter choose something else.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Women in the room that did not contain the stereotypical objects expressed significantly more interest i
Given my own experience with being a CS major, I can't think that anyone superficially motivated by posters (one way or the other) would have maintained interest long enough to graduate with a CS degree...
I don't understand why this study was done though. In real life none of my CS classes were in places with Star Trek posters or the like - they were in classrooms that when our class was not held, were used by other classes - so they were basically boring plain classrooms. So in theory that should mean more women in my CS graduating class, right? Yet there were only two.
All of my work was done on computers in labs similarly unadorned, just computers that you customized how you liked for your login.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley