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Learn-to-Code Program For 10,000 Low-Income Girls
theodp writes: In a press release Tuesday, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) announced it was teaming with Lifetime Partner Apple and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on its Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to engage 10,000 girls in learning computing concepts. "Currently, just 25 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science to count as a math or science graduation requirement," explained the press release. "Because boys get more informal opportunities for computing experience outside of school, this lack of formal computing education especially affects girls and many youth of color." HUD, the press release added, has joined the Commitment to Action to help extend the program's reach in partnership with public housing authorities nationwide and provide computing access to the 485,000 girls residing in public housing. "In this Information Age, opportunity is just a click on a keyboard away. HUD is proud to partner with NCWIT to provide talented girls with the skills and experiences they need to reach new heights and to achieve their dreams in the 21st century global economy," said HUD Secretary Julian Castro, who coincidentally is eyed as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton, whose daughter Chelsea is the Clinton Foundation's point-person on computer science. Last year, Chelsea Clinton gave a keynote speech at the NCWIT Summit and appeared with now-U.S. CTO Megan Smith to help launch Google's $50 million girls-only Made With Code initiative.
Let me guess... you also want there to be a National Association for the Advancement of White People, don't you?
This is only true for Western countries. In many other cultures women are dominant in engineering and computer science. For example, Iran (70 percent), Philippines (52 percent), Thailand (51 percent) and Kazakhstan (50 percent).
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://www.unescobkk.org/educa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Therefore, it is a cultural thing and I doubt that it will improve any time soon. First, most programs address people at the end or after school. Then it is too late. If you want to "fix" it, you should start changing education in nursery and primary school. And yes, you should stop offering them dolls and fostering stupid girlie behavior, like "oh cool shopping".
BTW: In eastern European countries the percentage of women in STEM was higher during "communism", as they do not indulge in such "being a toy"-stuff. however, since the end of "communism" this changed, due to new/old role models emerging.
I was listening to NPR the other day, and this story popped up: Examining Race-Based Admissions Bans On Medical Schools .
The short version is; certain states have ruled that colleges are not allowed to consider race as part of their admissions criteria, and medical schools are noticing that black and latino graduation numbers have decreased since then.
The intent was to focus on merit-based evaluations. Seems noble, right? We want the best doctors we can get. However, the effect appears to be to reduce the number of minority students admitted. This, of course, has people outraged, and scrambling to find ways to work around the system - like sending recruiting teams to primarily-black or latino high schools, and hoping that will increase the applicant numbers.
What shocked me is that everyone is dancing around the race issue (and only certain races; not, for example, Indian or other asians). Everyone agrees the minority graduation numbers have dropped because individuals from a given group don't actually meet the admissions criteria. They're not qualified to be students or doctors. That apparently hundreds or thousands of people's failing grades were ignored because of their race. That prior to the no-race rule, doctors, in this case, were not necessarily the most well qualified individuals for the job. In fact, some significant percentage of them should not have been allowed in.
This trend isn't new either. When I was a lifeguard back in the 90's, the requirements changed from being able to swim a specific distance in a certain time, to removing many of these fitness requirements altogether. The reason? It was apparently unfairly eliminating people with poor physical ability or handicaps. The new focus was to do all the lifeguarding from the side of the pool: hooks, ropes, and life preservers.
Heck, just last month there was a minor kerfuffle about fire departments force- and expedited-promotions of minorities over whites.
I can't help but see this girls-only computer science focus being another of these sorts of ill-considered plans, where capability takes a back seat to minority inclusion and political correctness. Sure, it's not as vital as our doctors, firemen, and lifeguards, but it's the same line of thought. In our rush to be politically correct and all inclusive, we mistake equality for equally fair, and it serves no one well except those promoting our differences.
Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? Like Harrison Bergeron crazy? I can't be the only one, right?
If you need to be "nurtured", you don't deserve a career that involves anything more complicated than saying "Do you want fries with that?".
The word "nurturing", when used by an adult in relation to an adult (read: college student or older person, who can vote, drive and have sex), reeks of the kind of person that whines about their needs not being met, and holds everyone but themselves responsible for the task.
Professional careers, especially ones that require a lot of motivation for self-teaching and rapidly move and change in under a decade, and especially ones that command a high salary, don't benefit from people who need to be "nurtured". They benefit the greatest from people who don't need mommy and daddy figures to do inventories on feelings.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Equality for girls. That's how you fix these kinds of problems. It's nearly impossible to fix all inequality in some giant atomic update that gives everyone everywhere the same opportunities.
Look, if I start a soup kitchen for the poor in some predominantly black community, it doesn't mean I'm a racist who hates white people. It just means I only have the resources for one soup kitchen and because I live there or have ties to that community I wanted to help those people with my limited time and money. I'm not going to protest if you open up a soup kitchen in some predominantly white area, in fact I'll be happy to help you and maybe we can pool our resources and share ideas.
It's really coming to something when victim culture is so bad people get upset when helping other people makes them feel like it's some giant feminazi conspiracy to keep them poor and uneducated.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC