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Wired: IBM's School Could Fix Education and Tech's Diversity Gap
theodp writes: Wired positively gushes over IBM's Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), saying it could fix education and tech's diversity gap. Backed by IBM, the P-TECH program aims to prepare mainly minority kids from low-income backgrounds for careers in technology, allowing them to earn a high school diploma and a free associate degree in six years or less. That P-TECH's six inaugural graduates completed the program in four years and were offered jobs with IBM, Wired reports, is "irrefutable proof that this solution might actually work" (others aren't as impressed, although the President is drinking the Kool-Aid). While the program has only actually graduated six students since it was announced in 2010, Wired notes that by fall, 40 schools across the country will be designed in P-TECH's image. IBM backs four of them, but they'll also be run by tech giants like Microsoft and SAP, major energy companies like ConEdison, along with hospital systems, manufacturing associations, and civil engineering trade groups. They go by different names and are geared toward different career paths, but they all follow the IBM playbook.
So one can get a 4 year HS degree and 2 year AA, now combined into a 6 year HS+AA degree. Brilliant!
Which diversity ratio is perceived to be out of balance, and why does it need artificial programmes to fix?
Children : Adults?
Hispanics : Asians?
Men : Women?
People who drive to work : People who cycle?
Geniuses : Morons?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The issue is most minorities never get the oppertunity to raise to the top. They do not have access to the same sources as everyone else. If given those same supports that others have taken for granted they tend to raise as you say in the same numbers and percentages ... and often higher percentages than others.
Is that the main reason the black community struggles much harder today (proportionally) than it did in the 1950s and 1960s is the total collapse of the nuclear family in many areas. Every reputable study of marriage and family life has shown that kids from even semi-stable nuclear families tend to be significantly less prone to the pathologies common in the black lower class (where out of wedlock birth is the norm, not exception). Ever deal with white trash (not rednecks, white trash; there is a major difference)? It's the same sociological situation and even the same set of behavior problems and stunted options despite "white privilege."
A large part of the problem is that there is an active segment of society that doesn't want to deal with the moral issues that lead to this situation, denouncing that as "moralizing" and instead wants to focus purely on politics as though it's not all intertwined. Yet those issues are precisely the personal choices, enabled by public policy and culture, that lead to the destruction of the stable nuclear family in much of the black community. Blaming external factors for everything, which is the politically correct solution, is like Josh Duggar attempting to blame porn and Satan for why he graduated from molesting his sisters to serial adultery against his wife.
Is that the main reason the black community struggles much harder today (proportionally) than it did in the 1950s and 1960s is the total collapse of the nuclear family in many areas.
You know, we actually HAVE real statistics instead of wild imaginings culled from whatever websites you are glued to... your theory that the "black community" struggles today vs. the 50's and 60's because of the collapse of the nuclear family is directly contradicted by statistics (from the National Center for Health Statistics, a CDC arm), which show that the birthrate amongst unmarried black women is currently about half what it was at the end of the 60's, and this trend has continued despite a steep drop in black marriage rates over the last couple of decades.
... significantly less prone to the pathologies common in the black lower class (where out of wedlock birth is the norm, not exception).
Nor is "out of wedlock birth the norm"; the married birthrate is about 40% higher than the unmarried.
Ever deal with white trash (not rednecks, white trash; there is a major difference)? It's the same sociological situation and even the same set of behavior problems and stunted options despite "white privilege."
So, are they "pathologies common in the black lower class", or are they perhaps pathologies common amongst all low-income residents, and race has nothing to do with it? Making me wonder why you brought it up...
Yet those issues are precisely the personal choices, enabled by public policy and culture, that lead to the destruction of the stable nuclear family in much of the black community. Blaming external factors for everything, which is the politically correct solution,
Wait a minute... these personal choices are "enabled by public policy and culture" (which certainly appear to be external factors to me) but at the same time blaming said factors is the "politically correct" (and by implication, wrong) solution? Which is it? Is everything all the fault of those short-sighted black folk making bad decisions, or does public policy have something to do with it after all? I'm so confused...
The issue is most minorities never get the oppertunity to raise to the top. They do not have access to the same sources as everyone else.
Neither does some poor white kid in Appalachia. Is IBM going to give him a job too?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"Individuals have different potential and interests, but over a population of millions it averages out."
It doesn't mean that the averages over sub-populations are the averages over the whole population. Potentials and interests may well be multi-modal.
"Or are you saying that some races and genders are just inherently inferior?"
Why are you dragging value judgements like "inferior" into this?
Mashiki, this is getting old now. Like clockwork, you make your second standard mistake: assuming that women are not interested in tech.
Care to explain why in the past more women went into technology than do now? Or why these courses are generally quite successful at attracting girls to study them?
A pure bit of conjecture here. During the mid 70's the first group of women who were liberated frmo their traditional roles were entering the fields. I worked with many of them in a university research environment. There were indeed a number of men who had difficulty accepting them, although most of us had no issues.
Those guys who often were actually real nasty to these women? They either ignored them or the put the guys in their place. After a few years, those guys either came to respect the ladies, or simply had to retreat to let their misogyny fester in private.
Regardless, the ladies in general displayed abilities comparable to the men.
And we tended not to think a whole lot about gender - at least as applied to work.
Over the years however, the numbers of ladies there dropped off somewhat, finally settling down to today's anemic representation
Why?
Efforts to get young ladies interested in the fields were out and out failures. The polling results showed that tech fields were just about at the bottom of the career preferences. And these were the daughters of Scientists and Engineers.
In our workplace, we attempted to attract as many women and treat them as well as possible. I voluntarily gave up a number of promotions in order to free up promotion space for a woman (silly quota system)
But still the numbers shrunk.
Why?
In the end, I came to the conclusion that after an initial period of time when women were trying out different careers, they eventually as a group settled on careers they actually liked.
I do not buy the idea that the anemic reasons given that young ladies are kept out of STEM by dongle jokes or pictures of Playboy model's faces, or all of the other lame reasons given that end up painting an exceptionally offensive picture of women as incredibly weak people, who can be cowed by any criticism or anything that they don't agree with. Those first generation liberated women I worked with at the time, would have laughed at that idea.
People can disagree with me, but my observations are based on experience and trying to get young ladies interested, not some modern male pushback against third wave feminism.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The course doesn't exclude white children from disadvantaged backgrounds, in fact it includes them. So yeah, they might give him a job if he can meet the required standard.
Instead of complaining that there isn't enough charity to go around so no-one should have any, why not try to improve things yourself?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It means that justice - mercy = truth
It doesn't mean that the averages over sub-populations are the averages over the whole population. Potentials and interests may well be multi-modal.
Do you have any evidence to support that hypothesis? Remember that you are the one arguing against what is being done, the onus is on your to make your case. At least IBM is trying to prove their position by making it happen, with some success.
Why are you dragging value judgements like "inferior" into this?
Because you dragged value judgements into it when you started talking about potentials. I was answering your claim that different individuals have different potentials, which is true but misses the point that over a population it would average out at similar to other populations, unless that population has inherently lower potential.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC