Slashdot Mirror
Girls-Only Computer Camps Formed At Behest of Top Google, Facebook Execs
theodp writes: Reporting on Google exec Susan Wojcicki's appearance at DreamForce, Inc.'s Tess Townsend writes: "The YouTube CEO said her daughter had stated point-blank that she did not like computers, so Wojcicki enrolled her in a computer camp. The camp made her daughter dislike tech even more. Wojcicki reported her daughter came back saying, 'Everyone in the class was a boy and nobody was like me and now I hate computers even more.' So, mom called the camp and spoke to the CEO, asking that the camp be made more welcoming to girls" (video). Fortune reported last July that it was the urging of Wojcicki and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that prompted iD Tech Camps — which Wojcicki's and Sandberg's kids had attended — to spin off a girls-only chain of tech camps called Alexa Cafe, which was trialed in the Bay Area in 2014 and expanded to nine locations in 2015. Earlier this month, Fortune noted that Wojcicki's daughter attended the $949-a-week Alexa Cafe summer camp at Palo Alto High, which was coincidentally hosted in the multi-million dollar Media Center (video) that was built thanks to the efforts of Wojcicki's mother Esther (a long-time Paly journalism teacher) and partially furnished and equipped by sister Anne (23andMe CEO) and ex-brother-in-law Sergey Brin's charitable foundation.
Suddenly this push for segregation makes sense - "Fools and their money..."
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Somehow, I'm betting she still doesn't like computers.
I think Hedy would approve.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Not convinced segregation is the answer here -- if girls aren't "getting it" then a lot of the boys won't be "getting it" either...
Besides, my junior high school computer science class 25 years ago was one-third girls and everybody learned Pascal just fine =P
We're reverting back to the the 1800's again, this is barbaric. Would it be acceptable if a pair of white parents said that a bakery wasn't unwelcoming towards whites and therefore proceeded to buile one with a big "Whites Only" sign on the front? No, it wouldn't be permissible in today's soxiety, yet this atrocity is. Or is it perhaps okay because the two camps are "seperate but equal"?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Did Sergey Brin go to computer camp?
How about Carly Fiorina or Sheryl Sanberg?
What is "computer camp" all about anyways? dumping your kid somewhere so you can have some time to yourself?
Maybe Wojcicki should ask her daughter which "camp" she wants to go to if any!?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Some women (like Sandberg, who I'm fairly certain wasn't raised in girls-only environments) push for this sort of thing, neglecting a vital truth of the matter: the workplace requires just as much in the way of soft skills as it does hard ones.
If it's true that boys are a "distraction", or at least "different enough" to be a problem* then girls-only camps serve only to kick the can down the road: girls don't know how to deal with boys. So what's to happen when they go into environments with boys? They get disappointed and leave.
*which, if the environments are so hostile to women, why are we setting girls up for failure by asking them not to worry about it instead of training them from a young age to deal with it and make it more natural? Or for that matter, teach boys that it's natural for girls to be in this environment either?
(Yes, I know as well as any of you that these "progressive" measures are not about equal rights for anyone but about flooding the marketplace of job applicants and driving down wages. But Slashdot seems to not be getting that feel-good crusades like this one aren't rooted in practical concerns.)
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
This is the equivalent of fathers that insist that their boys play a sport. Sometimes the kid really isn't interested in computers.
Wow! The only reason this is happening is because we've managed to fuck things up badly enough over the last two decades that we effectively have boys only computer camps currently. Do you go full "Dan's Brown's Body" for girls schools as well or do you reserve such an extreme reaction for computer camps?
Why single out computer camps? I'll feel the same repugnance if the girl in question was forced to go to fashion camp. We've spent the better part of the last 30 years convincing girls that they can do anything they want to, and now you expect us to applaud this behaviour?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
It seems you're saying that education has been structured to disadvantage girls. As a student who saw schools in the 1980s demand feminized curricula, I disagree. The prevalence of women in universities and middle-class jobs show that the modern curriculum aids girls. In fact, the evidence over the last decade is that modern school curricula severely punishes boys.
If you arguing the workplace is structured to disadvantage girls, you may be correct. But schoolgirls aren't in the workplace so that can't be why they hate computing. As pointed out in earlier slashdot threads, computing is an anti-social skill, which in a large part comes from students spending an overwhelming number of hours in solitary self-education to gain computing skills. In professions driven by group learning, such as teaching, nursing and medicine, women form the majority of the workforce. That would indicate what changes need to be made to computing skills classes.
Wojcicki made her career in marketing, after studying history and literature. She evidently didn't like computers either. But now she sends her little girl to computer camp?
Seems to me the girl wants to step into her mother's footsteps: she doesn't like computers, but she has already figured out which buttons to push to get her mother to jump.
And I'm a software engineer!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There'd be calls of sexism, racism, every kind of -ism imaginable. People would be protesting at Google headquarters.
I, along with anyone from the 21st century, should have a strong distaste for anything like this where if you swap out the groups it becomes incredibly distasteful. It's like having women only gyms but look what happens when you try to have a men only gym.
What about the Hispanic and black males that are even more under represented than women in CS? Why is it ok to throw them under the bus
Score 10 points for disengenuous arguments! No one has thrown anyone under the bus. This camp only adds to the things available. Nothing has become less available to men, white, black or hispanic as a result of this camp.
So, women and black and hispanic men are undrerepresented in CS. Someone's doing something about 1 of those three. Instead of complaining about how no one's doing anything about the other two, how about you actually do something rather than arguing to prevent anything being done.
That there really are gender differences and women in general may not be interested as much in computer science as men until the social aspect changes and that's perfectly OK
You literally contradict yourself there. If there are innate differences, then why will they become as interested when the social aspects change?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Sergy Brin went to CTY a program promoted by Johns Hopkins and Princeton. Also affectionately known as Nerd Camp (and the subject of an upcoming movie).
Our daughter is enrolled in CTYOnline and will be going to camp next year. This is a wonderful program. There is no gender/race bias and while somewhat costly, there is financial aid for low income families. However this is a tough program to be admitted to, you need to take special testing, and you better be in the top 2% of the population test score wise.
The real education crisis here in America is that parents just expect the school to do everything for them, and don't challenge their children outside of school. Without extra study and help outside of school especially in math topics and vocabulary, no way would our child have qualified for CTY. Cut down on the TV watching and game playing. Demand a lot of reading and keep your kid at least a grade ahead in math -- that is the way to a secure future. That said our daughter still has time to play with friends and watch all the Disney movies as they come out. We just don't let her rot her brain watching TV 6 hours a day. Its not a total ban on TV, but it's less than an hour a day on average.
Letter To Iran
Hello butler,
Hello poodle,
Here I am at
Camp by Google.
Camp is very
Highfalutin
Cause it's all-a
'Bout computin'.
"Try to like it",
Mama told me.
If I diss it,
Then she'll scold me.
All the boys are
Banned from coming
Since Mom finds their
Presence dumbing.
Since they do this
Just for funsies,
Makes us look bad --
Hence the shunsies.
This is stupid
I lack interest.
I would rather
Be on Pinterest.
'Stead of sitting,
Making faces,
Can't a boy just
Trade me places?
...to open a 'Boys Only' computer camp and watch the feminists rail against it's exclusion of girls, as they should...
Ken