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!
With laptops available under $300 (cheaper than many smart phones!) there is essentially no barrier to learning to code.
If they don't have the desire to learn to code on their own they won't cut it in the work place, their resumes will be screened out on the first pass. Why bother?
Some business people, after trying this, find they're better off paying for native talent.
New UW Study: "College undergraduates who were not computer science majors (in order to focus on recruitment) entered a classroom in t(he computer science department at Stanford University, which was decorated in one of two ways (Cheryan et al., 2009). For half the participants, the room had objects that other undergraduates associated highly with computer science majorsâ"Star Trek posters, science fiction books, and stacked soda cans. For the other half of participants, the room contained objects that other undergraduates did not associate with computer science majorsâ"nature posters, neutral books, and water bottles. Women in the room that did not contain the stereotypical objects expressed significantly more interest in majoring in computer science than those in the room that did fit the stereotypes. For men, the environment did not affect their interest in computer science (Cheryan et al., 2009)."
A significant part of the brogrammer "culture" has been imported. The H1-B program has amplified the problem.