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!
but you can't make her interested in code.
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
In this day and age, basic computer skills should be a mandatory field of teaching. Right? As a side-effect, it solves this issue for every other minority aswell.
Assuming they don't have ergonomic mouses.
Or does K12 mean university level?
Girls have the same opportunity to sign up for these classes as boys do, they simply CHOOSE not to. Like it or not, girls and boys find different things interesting.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
It won't be long before deep learning systems are taught to code. Coding is a dead end. Teach kids fundamentals - math, science, writing.
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.
(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
Don't worry - I'm sure feminists are pushing to widen the definition of rape so far it'll include having sex without getting written permission signed in triplicate beforehand and approved by a lawyer.
The term is so widely abused now its almost meaningless and does a disservice to women who have suffered real rape - not just had a change of mind the next morning after the beer goggles wore off and the guy wasn't as hot as they thought.
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.
Yes and Jezebel is a highly regarded source.
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)."
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.
A significant part of the brogrammer "culture" has been imported. The H1-B program has amplified the problem.
So you're claiming 1 in 3 men rape women?
You do realize that those stats evaporated like a snow cone in a blast furnace right? There is zero academic rigor behind any of those claims.
If you want to engage in a rational discussion on the issue, then I'm more then happy to oblige. However, if you're going to make absurd claims that can't be backed up then it is my responsibility to challenge you to back it up or concede the point.
That is the only way to keep insane theories from becoming accepted. Your argument has about as much behind it as big foot. Just saying.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Also, fyi... when men were asked if they felt pressured into sex by women, roughly the same number of men answered yes to that as women. So you have no practical difference in gender. The stats only look different because they arbitarily treat "made to penetrate" differently then "allowed to be penetrated"... which basically just boiled down to them saying "men can't be raped because after all they really wanted to have sex even if they said they didn't." Which is the sort of insane sexist crap one can expect from that source you're citing.
Seriously... try to make these arguments using any kind of evidence that didn't wilt into nothing the instant it was subjected to any scrutiny at all.
This whole "listen and believe" campaign is an attack on BASIC judicial due process. Everyone has rights and the burden of proof is always on the accuser. This is not something new for women or rape. If one guy says another guy stole his bicycle, then he has to prove that. If one person is thought to have murdered another person... the person being accused as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. This of course is precisely the same for rape. You accuse a person of rape that person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Look at all these bogus rape accusations that have blown up in your face destroying the credibility of REAL rape cases because everyone is so jaded by these lies that they don't know what to believe anymore.
If you really care about women's rights and protecting rape victims. Stop making frivolous rape claims. You are crying wolf.
And when the real rapes happen... everyone is going to doubt those women more then they were doubted before because of people like you. Stop it. You are hurting women and making a fool of your movement.
Be rational or be judged as irrational.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
By their definition of "rape", if my wife had a glass of wine on our anniversary then wanted to get frisky, I would be raping my wife. Many "feminists" also hold this view. Some even go as far as to say all forms of sex between men and women is rape, and these are women with lots of money and power.
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.
Well, you didn't get your acceptance letter from Carnage Mellon University engineering program tossed in the trash without being told until later, didya? Happened to my wife.
I would bet that you've never ever been discouraged from tech one bit. But now you are an expert of how to behave when discouraged? Yeahno.
Feminists seem intent on driving men and women apart and a lot of men and women are sick of these obnoxious harpies.
Actually I was. I had no role models and no encouragement. I was ignored. I was ostracized by my peers. In high school I was told I didn't have the math skills to continue in the honors math track. Not once, but twice. I insisted I was going to stay in that track. I had to take summer school to so. I was also moved from honors biology to regular because "I wasn't honors material". I ended up get a 93% after I was moved. There were universities to which I wasn't accepted. I was touched inappropriately by my professor when I tried to get help with a class I wasn't getting. I've failed classes. I've been told I couldn't take classes that I needed to graduate. But I didn't give up or quit. This is what I want to do and I'm good at it.
The message to boys: "Bring your daughter to college. Bring your daughter to work. Get more girls in STEM.... Boy, you useless P.O.S., if you can't throw a ball or knock somebody down on a ballfield, go smoke some dope and forget about being useful to society."
"Oh, and BTW we are only drafting BOYS not GIRLS the next time there's a big war."
The women aren't sick enough to call these women out. Really the ladies are dropping the ball in a big way. Part of accepting political responsibility is taking some responsibility.
Men police their radicals. We hunt them down and drive them out of the system or otherwise label them as the heretic unclean.
Women don't because culturally they're still in the same place they were before they got rights. When women didn't have political agency there was no need for them to police their own. Women were simply not permitted in politics or taken seriously in politics. Right or wrong they really couldn't do a whole lot.
Now that they have agency, it is incumbant on them to do the same thing men do which is police their own. Men can't shut down out of control women. We are as a gender culturally restrained from engaging women in an aggressive manner. Women however are not culturally restrained from going after either sex.
A relatively small number of women are feminists and very very few of them are the radical sort causing problems. Women need to make it clear that the radical feminists at the very least do not speak for all women. That is literally how the radical feminists represent themselves. And anyone that opposes them is labeled as a hater of women. Not only someone that disagrees but someone that is outright hateful and bigoted. And women in general permit this to happen by not confronting radical feminists.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I am not saying that women can work harder than men can.
I'm saying that the work men do is often given more merit.
I'm also saying that women are more actively discouraged from tech than men are, and men are more actively encouraged to get into tech. Why you would think 'good' in the same thought as 'discouraged' is a mystery to me.
Historically sons are praised for being clever and daughters for being pretty. That is an enormous societal pressure right there.
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
Slashdot is where you would get a very insider view of IT/Programming. They would know better than anyone if some programs existed that excelled at attracting women to programming or to CS degrees.
This sort of folk-knowledge is certainly useful; it's useful for building a hypothesis and can hint at what to research, but that's not the same as data.
Think of how accurate the Slashdot poll is, and that's roughly the quality of data you're getting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."