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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.
Everyone deserves equal opportunity, right?
How come sexual discrimination seems to be a one way thing with the political classes? Can you imagine the fuss and uproar if someone dared suggest a National Center for Men & [insert vocation with not many men here]? I'm sick & tired of this hypocritical social engineering.
Inch by inch, the social justice warriors are getting closer to the truth that boys dominate these fields because of all of their informal experience. Why? Because boys tend to be more willing to go against peer pressure and do what interests them. Male nerds and geeks may resent peer pressure and bullying, but they'll stick to what they like. Never met a single boy who took the attitude that he couldn't pursue his hobbies because of peer pressure unless those hobbies were things you don't mention in polite society (and maybe even make the avante garde squeamish).
No, girls don't need "more pushing." It would be a problem if a family let the sons fire up an IDE, editor + interpreter, etc. and told the girls that that was forbidden for them. I can pretty much assure you, that in the vast majority of American households, even religious ones, that doesn't happen. What naturally happens is that the boys will say "this is cool" and try it out and the girl will make all sorts of excuses ranging from lack of interest, to what would her girlfriends think.
And no, boys by and large don't put pressure on girls to not share hobbies with them. I've never met a red-blooded male who thought a generally feminine female who shared most of his interests was a bad thing.
Not until the misdeeds of the parochial and bigoted past are properly atoned for. Which, of course, means "never".
The only way to argue against the obvious sexism here in the current political climate of the USA is by saying it is ineffective — appeals to fairness will not get you past the establishment raised by the educators like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.
It has been observed, that "marrying down" costs a woman as much as $25K per year so, instead of saying it is unfair to men, try arguing that the women will be better served by there being more educated men for them to marry...
And hurry, because — with the ancient definition of "marriage" rapidly evolving nationwide — even that argument may become obsolete within a generation.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Currently, just 25 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science to count as a math or science graduation requirement,"
Unless the 'Computer Science' courses these students will be studying is Knuth-level algorhythms, they should take the Math classes. Learning how to 'code' is vocational education, and the math background will be of more value.
>> Google's $50 million girls-only Made With Code initiative
Somewhere inside Google someone made the decision that a near-future class action targeting Google about its lack of women (whatever the number is, someone will be annoyed until it's at least 50%) would cost a lot more than $50M, so there's the budget.
If so, did you miss the dozen or so other articles in the last year that dealt with similar articles, where the comments section was flooded by knuckleheads from /r/KotakuInAction?
What? These aren't "knuckleheads from /r/KotakuInAction" as you claim, these are the actual staple slashdot commenters.
Where almost every comment that tried to discuss sexism
Your kind have shown repeatedly that there is nothing to discuss, since you fail to bring up anything relating to sexism. Instead you choose to bring up irrelevant garbage and then redefine the word sexism to include such garbage. And of course, when people see your shit for what it is and mod your ass down, what do you do? You whine about the patriarchy, and other such SJW-style nonsense. Nobody here is buying it, go whine elsewhere.
Stop trying to force CS on girls. I have eight computers in my house. My son and daughter both teens, have free reign with half of them. Guess who wants to edit skins on a computer for a game and who wants to watch Netflix and text their friends? Encourage kids who are interested, but stop this nonsense. Trying to make everyone a programmer is like trying to make everyone an athlete. It's not going to happen.
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.
Why not learn to wire a house or install plumbing? Why is every program trying to over-saturate IT? I believe the construction industry is a boys only club as well.
No push to train low income girls to become mechanics, welders, machinists, or sort of manufacturing skills?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
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?
It will be very interesting -- and I think they should do a follow-up (but I'm not holding my breath) -- to see how many of these girls are still coding at all in 5-years time and how many are earning a living from software development 10 years from now.
licet differant, aequabitur
Every industry is filled with emotionally stunted people.
If you don't believe that, spend your lunch every working day this week asking your peers about their problems. At least 20% (and I'm being generous here) will be people who can't be bothered to get out of their own way to fix their problems.
I've met sexist men, yes, but I've also met groups of women in the same environment that had a peer support group for being on the Atkins diet (which in that group turned its members miserable).
In one office I worked in, I had one man borderline sexually harass me, and one woman openly try to turn everyone against me (I found out about this because everyone else liked me better than her).
Point is, and I should really make this my sig: if normal people knew how to deal with problems, we wouldn't -have- problems.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Because boys get more informal opportunities for computing experience outside of school,
What is that supposed to mean? Both boys and girls use technology equally outside of school as far as I can tell, in terms of access to technology or use of family laptops...
The only thing I can THINK the mean by this, by the very indirect wording, is that boys play more games. Specifically Minecraft. If that's so, say that,
But, I'm not sure Minecraft is truly a direct bridge to programming some seem to think it is... other games are actually a hinderance to learning to program, rather than a help - anything that absorbs time is to some degree taking away time you can learn to use to program.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can't compare having a natural desire to do or not do programming to a state of being rich or poor. The poor don't WANT to be poor. However, people who have no desire to do programming do not WANT to have a desire to do programming.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...they don't want to. This won't change that in any significant way.
What about low income boys
Everyone deserves equal opportunity, right?
The lead sponsor of this program is the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) .
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.
That doesn't exclude others from sponsoring similar programs for low income boys.
Is that a cricket I hear chirping?
No, most of them aren't. Most are ACs, and the vast majority have recent Slashdot IDs.
"Your kind"?
We can't have an adult discussion here because you knuckleheads insist on shitflooding every single article about diversity with whines about how outraged you are Slashdot is even covering the topic.
And yeah, some, like you, live in denial, absolutely convinced that any woman complaining about harassment and death threats on the 'net is somehow part of some kind of weird conspiracy to cut your balls off and steal your vidja.
Me, I'd like it if we could discuss it. You probably should READ the comments (you don't, except for the ones that agree with you, obviously), but if you're not prepared to do that, go somewhere else. There's no reason to keep shitposting and abusing moderation to silence those who want to discuss it.
What harm does it do to you, seriously, that we discuss the topic?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.