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.

Comments

$949/week?

[goose-incarnated]

Suddenly this push for segregation makes sense - "Fools and their money..."

Re: $949/week?

[Anonymous Coward]

My son wouldn't be interested anyway. He's at the all male nursing camp.

Not that he's interested in nursing, but as long as we're willing to force kids to do things they hate, why not start with my kid? It's just his life and all.

Re:$949/week?

[Stellian]

Daddy, daddy, computer camp was so great, we uploaded Justin Bieber videos, we connected to Wifi while riding a pony and I even convinced a really gross dork to fix our computers ! All the girls were just like me, cool, popular, white and totally not poor.

Re: $949/week?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing they're all so stunning and beautiful

Re: $949/week?

[buddyglass]

I force my kids to do things they hate every day. Go to bed, brush their teeth, take a bath, not stick their arms out the car window, buckle their seat belt, etc. No, I don't think "learning to program" is as important as those, just to head off that obvious response. My point is only that, generally speaking, "making your kids do things they hate" is an integral part of being a parent.

Re:$949/week?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey, I know we just clipped the far side of the road over there, but you shouldn't be over-steering in the other direction"

"False equivalence, shitlord"

*crash*

And..

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, I'm betting she still doesn't like computers.

Re:And..

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Somehow, I'm betting she still doesn't like computers.

Some rich parents have this attitude, that if their children don't do well in school, there must be a problem with the school. They can't accept that their children just don't do well in math, biology, Latin, or whatever.

It seems here that the parents are trying to push their daughter into something where she has no interest at all. How about if they ask their daughter:

"We would like to send you to a summer camp where you can learn something. Where would you like to go . . . ?"

Re:And..

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get to be CEO by accepting reality. If you don't think you can mold the world as you want it to be, you're not even going to become middle management. Luckily for the offspring, there's enough money to make up for their parent's delusions.

Re:And..

[Xest]

"Some rich parents have this attitude, that if their children don't do well in school, there must be a problem with the school. They can't accept that their children just don't do well in math, biology, Latin, or whatever. "

I'm not sure it's necessarily wrong though. My parents aren't rich, but I didn't do well in math at school. I did however end up getting a first class honours degree in maths all the same though.

The problem is that there was a massive disconnect between how the school taught and how I learnt. Throwing a textbook at me and telling me to solve 40 meaningless problems achieved nothing and I learnt nothing. When I eventually sat down in my own time however and wanted to figure out how to build me a 3D engine, suddenly all the calculus and stuff had a purpose, it meant something, it could achieve something.

I'm not saying schools should teach 3D engine programming, but the point is that schools do very often get it wrong, they do an incredibly bad job of teaching for lots of kids. Mindless repetition of meaningless equation solving works well for kids who are capable of doing boring, repetitive tasks without asking, but some kids have a thirst for understanding and explanation, they want to know that what they're doing has some meaning, what it's for, where they'd use it. Statistics is an obvious one - teach boring stats for the sake of teaching boring stats and you'll have a problem getting through to many kids. Create a scenario whereby they're running a business selling shirts, and they need to figure out what sizes are going to optimise profit letting them know how much the overhead penalty is for creating additional sizes, and give them a bunch of data on measurements of people and you'll teach them not just the stats, but about business, about problem solving, and optionally even about team working.

So I do agree with what you're saying, but I think we should also be careful not to give bad schools and bad teachers (which for subjects like Maths is the vast majority of them in my experience) a get out clause for their incompetence. I did well in maths in spite of my teachers at school, not because of them. It was only at university where the teachers really seemed to get how to teach, and even that wasn't a universal truth.

Re:And..

[AmiMoJo]

Actually I read TFA. I see you didn't which is why you are confused.

Wojcickiâ(TM)s daughter at first had a negative experience, and it took some elbow grease on Wojcickiâ(TM)s part to get her to stop turning her nose up at computers.

Once she sorted out the thing that gave her daughter a negative experience (being the only girl in a class full of boys who were not nice to her) she seems to have been fine with computers.

Her mother identified an area where her daughter was weak. Her daughter most likely didn't like computers because she had had similar negative experiences at school. She arranged for a class for girls, and with the barriers removed her daughter changed her attitude towards programming.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Re:And..

[fahrbot-bot]

She arranged for a class for girls, and with the barriers removed her daughter changed her attitude towards programming.

Perhaps Mommy can arrange a girls-only life for her daughter too so she doesn't have to deal with, you know, stuff.

Re:And..

[quantaman]

Seems simple enough to me. The girl will have a wildly unrealistic idea of what being a software developer is like, so that when she enters the working world, she will be totally disillusioned and hate it, and have to re-focus her education in her mid 20s.

As opposed to the boys who go to computer camp and spend all day in meetings and screwing with build errors, merge conflicts, and management changing the requirements mid-project?

Segregation not the answer

[beaverdownunder]

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

Re:Segregation not the answer

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Hey, well let's give segregation an experimental try on Slashdot. A few years back, on April 1st, Slashdot featured a "girlie" motif with pink ponies. Slashdot could revive this again as a parallel site. Then after a few months, we could ask the female users on the parallel site if they like computers better now.

Re:Segregation not the answer

[epyT-R]

If it's sexist to girls to keep them out of computer science classes, then it's sexist to boys to keep them out of computer science classes. If girls feel uncomfortable being the odd ones out, then, being equally human, the same thing can be said for boys who are not allowed to have their own spaces to pursue the same interests. Therefore funds should be divided to service both camps. Any other position is sex discrimination. If funds are being diverted from classes where everyone is welcome to classes where only those with certain traits are welcome, especially traits that are argued as not being relevant in the first place, then that's systemic discrimination against those who are not welcome. You can't argue for 'safe spaces' for some and not others while arguing for equality. We're either all entitled or Either we're all entitled to 'safe spaces' or none of us are.

I have a better idea. Leave the camps open to everyone. This way kids learn that life is about getting long with the opposite sex, and that society is not obligated to isolate them from those they find 'uncomfortable' for whatever reason. If girls choose to opt out where they can't get privileged treatment, then that's a character flaw they need to work on. After all, this is what we tell boys (and men) all the time.

Re:Segregation not the answer

[AthanasiusKircher]

Segregation is the answer. Sometimes groups need a space where they can be away from the things that are giving them problems, with the goal of later re-integration.

You heard it here first. Up next, white only bathrooms, and asian only programing camps.

We already segregate in education.

We segregate by age, often sorting kids into arbitrary "boxes" depending on their birthdays. It's usually quite difficult and disruptive to break out of age segregation in the public school system.

We segregate by ability level, placing students in "honors" classes or better "sections" of students, which has both benefits (teachers can tailor lessons more) and drawbacks (once a kid gets sorted in the "lower" section, it can be difficult for him/her ever to catch up to the higher section, even if very motivated and a "late bloomer" in terms of interest/ability).

These types of segregation are based on particular beliefs about age-based schemes of development and supposed goals of tracking based on previous student performance. They're well-accepted as legitimate, but obviously they fail to provide the best benefit in many cases of particular students.

The question about segregation is whether or not the overall differences justify the separation. Generally, the differences in black and white humans, for example, would NOT justify separate bathrooms (obviously).

We know that boys and girls develop physically, psychologically, socially, and intellectually on somewhat different timescales as adolescents. We know that adolescence is often a time of heightened sexual tension and awkwardness, which can result in significant differences in behaviors between segregated sex groups vs. mixed ones. We have studies that have shown both benefits and drawbacks of segregating sexes in education -- for one example, adolescent girls often are more deferential or less likely to assert their own opinions in a mixed group compared to an all-girls group. This can impact whether girls speak up to ask questions or to offer their opinion in class exercises, etc.

So, the question is not whether we should allow segregation -- we already allow segregation according to some schemes based on broad criteria (like age). If we got rid of age segregation and went back to a "one-room schoolhouse" model, it would inevitably be beneficial to some students, fo example. (Many private schools and Montessori-based schools take this approach, having classrooms that span 2-4 "grade levels," which often benefits both the young kids, who learn by watching older kids, and the older kids, who reinforce their knowledge through teaching and explanation.)

The question is whether the differences in behavior, interest, and educational quality coming from segregation by sex in this particular education context are enough to justify the separation. I don't know whether they are or not, but acting like "all segregation is bad" or refusing to acknowledge that we already do it is needlessly inflammatory and unproductive.

Re:Segregation not the answer

[penandpaper]

Segregation is the answer.

No, it isn't. In the real world men and women have to work and compete together. How far into adulthood are you willing to coddle these children? We have safe spaces in college, we should expand that. It is totally normal for an adult to run from their problems and revert to a child-like state hugging a stuffed animals to cope with all the potential rapists/murderers/men and scary ideas, right?

Company's should be segregated too because safe spaces. How else can these employees work when there are different ideas in the same work environment?

It doesn't disadvantage boys...

Tell me more about all those male-only scholarships.

...it merely helps girls get past some issues they face

Because girls are too weak to overcome those "issues" without segregation? Good job modern feminism; arguing like the KKK because women are weak.

Re:Segregation not the answer

[penandpaper]

Until adulthood. Children can't be held to the same standards of behaviour that adults can be. Once they become adults, if they made women feel unwelcome then they will be expected to correct the behaviour. Of course it's not a binary thing that flips at age 18, it happens gradually over the teenage years, I'm just stating the principal.

If only there was a place to learn how to deal with these social interactions. With authority figures to guide and discipline bad behavior that is not conducive to learning/working... Like a school! If the boys made the girls feel uncomfortable, then discipline accordingly. Just like the real world. The difference you won't lose your job or face a law suit.

Wrong metric. What is important is the number of scholarships going to each gender, and the effect that has on the number of students of each gender. Until men are getting less than 50% of all available scholarships and are achieving less than 50% of the academic success (number of graduates, grade averages or whatever it is you use in the US) then women-only scholarships are just reducing men's privilege, not disadvantaging them compared to women.

Congrats, we have beyond FTM ratio in colleges. Those scholarships have done their job. Lets reverse it as you say. Males don't have the privileged in the university because they are no longer > 50%... They also make up more of the grads too!!! Academic success

See how you made that comment about girls

No, you made this about girls. when you said: "Segregation is the answer." and the segregation was for the sexes and how you feel girls need a safe space to learn CS from those icky boys because privilege... Context is king.

Re:Segregation not the answer

[Gryle]

I can't. Please explain it to me. Why is female-only education acceptable, but male-only social space not acceptable?

Re:Segregation not the answer

[stdarg]

Yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"A place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability; a place where the rules guard each person's self-respect and dignity and strongly encourage everyone to respect others."

"The concept originated in the women's movement, where it "implies a certain license to speak and act freely, form collective strength, and generate strategies for resistance...a means rather than an end and not only a physical space but also a space created by the coming together of women searching for community.""

So, a place where boys can be fully self-expressed... that means if they want to openly talk about how mean girls are for rejecting them, or talk about how useless girls are because they don't know math and can't code, or whatever... they can do that without feeling uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe. They can speak and act freely. They can form collective strength (meaning... boys against girls). They can generate strategies for resistance, which could be political or social... so stuff like talking about how women "trap" men with pregnancy or rape accusations.

You think that sounds crazy? I've seen safe spaces for women and LGBT people, and yes, absolutely fucking crazy things are said there. But that's what it is.

I swear...

[EmeraldBot]

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"?

Re:I swear...

[EmeraldBot]

The hilarious part is that the mother is so completely clueless to her daughter's feelings and she can't possibly comprehend that her daughter might simply not like working with computers. What if she instead insisted her daughter became a fashion model, and upon being told that she really wanted to be a scientist, would this story support her if she denied her daughter and insisted the fashion model camp be more approachable? There's a basic incompatibility here, her daughter doesn't want to become a programmer, and her mother is laughably misguided if she can't recognize this is not going to work out. The seriously sad part is thqt this lady's an executive, which means she's supposed to be able to make long term strategic decisions; if she can't even see something as basic as this, I'd bet that's one pretty lousy executive.

Re:I swear...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a hint.. this has nothing to do with her daughter and everything to do with her mother.

Clearly her mom doesn't care what the daughter wants to do, she just wants to get her name in the paper with a "positive role model" spin, which she did.

Re:I swear...

[spire3661]

"Association of Black Students isn't racist for only allowing black people to join."

YES IT IS. If you form groups based on race and exclude others, its RACIST. Now the degree of harm that racism causes varies, but its ABSOLUTELY racism to exclude others based on race alone and its wrong. What is the point of forming a Black Students association? Why would it exclude people? Why would you make a group with its sole intent of being exclusionary?

Hmm I wonder

[GeekWithAKnife]

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!?

And...?

[LaurenCates]

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.)

Re:And...?

[Nutria]

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.

I wonder if that's really the case. My two teenagers go to single-sex Catholic high schools (the public schools s-t-i-n-k) and they seem to be able to function well around teenagers of the opposite sex. (Note, though, that I don't push either into tech, and neither shows interest in it.)

Thus, I blame parents for coddling their kids too much.

Re:And...?

[LaurenCates]

Fair enough. However, I also went to single-sex Catholic high school, but having been more comfortable around boys, the whole business made me four years' worth of miserable.

Agreed on the coddling, though.

like boys and sports

[ILongForDarkness]

This is the equivalent of fathers that insist that their boys play a sport. Sometimes the kid really isn't interested in computers.

Re:like boys and sports

[I'm New Around Here]

You play Magic the Gathering too?

Re:Hedy would approve

[dickplaus]

It's Hedley

Re:Wow!

[goose-incarnated]

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 don't like computers either

[OrangeTide]

And I'm a software engineer!

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah

[sideslash]

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?