New AP Course, "Computer Science Principles," Aims To Make CS More Accessible 208
theodp writes: "CS Principles," explains the intro to a Microsoft Research talk on a new Computer Science Toolkit and Gaming Course, "is a new AP course being piloted across the country and by making it more accessible to students we can help increase diversity in computing." Towards this end, Microsoft has developed "a middle school computing toolkit, and a high school CS Principles & Games course." These two projects were "developed specifically for girls," explains Microsoft, and are part of the corporation's Big Dream Movement for girls, which is partnering with the UN, White House, NSF, EU Commission, and others. One of Microsoft's particular goals is to "reach every individual girl in her house." According to a document on its website, Microsoft Research's other plans for Bridging the Gender Gap in computing include a partnership with the University of Wisconsin "to create a girls-only computer science Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)."
yeah (Score:2)
LAWSUIT!
Confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this the same crowd that says there ARE no differences between boys and girls and therefore girls should be in represented equally in STEM careers?
Yet the way they intended to remedy the imbalance is to create curriculum specifically for girls, who are no different than boys.
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this the same crowd that says there ARE no differences between boys and girls and therefore girls should be in represented equally in STEM careers?
Yet the way they intended to remedy the imbalance is to create curriculum specifically for girls, who are no different than boys.
No, that only applies to sports. See, girls are dumb when it comes to computers so they need to be nurtured, like a flower. Next companies will have to have girls only IT sections with pink keyboards and ponies, you know, to keep them interested because girls don't like IT or business.
I cannot believe this crap. Computer programming isn't so hard that you have to start learning in middle school. Just stop the social engineering and let kids be kids until they graduate high school. If it were up to me, kids wouldn't touch a computer until high school. What do you really need a computer for that wasn't achieved by teacher and books? Hell half of them don't know how to read. Let's concentrate on that.
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Book are for grownups. A slate and a piece of chalk is all you need before your 18th birthday.
Large data sets (Score:2)
What do you really need a computer for that wasn't achieved by teacher and books?
The ability to apply an algorithm to larger sets of data than can be done in reasonable time through pencil-and-paper calculation. Of course, you can teach computer science without the aid of a computer, as the late Dr. Dijkstra pointed out [utexas.edu], but that happens not to be in fashion.
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I disagree on the "hard" part. Actual reality is that most people cannot learn to do it well, as it requires a lot of talent. The myriad of people in software creation without that talent is the root-cause why so much software is so bad.
Those that have the talent do indeed not need to start that early. It is not a question of learning how to do it. It takes the right kind of mind.
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Right,
I have said it before. I don't think this "girls only" stuff sends kids the right message at all. (young) Girls don't see this kind of thing as an opportunity (not my nices anyway). They see this oh computers must be really hard and it must be kinda "weird" for girls to do otherwise the adults would not be so bent on pushing it on us as a career. Its kinda like "eat your vegetables" kids know if the adults thought it was going to be a pleasant experience for them, they would let them discover it
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Cough, cough, so I gather you would ban all advertising targeted at children across the board. Children don't decide, psychopaths with doctorates in psychology and their equally psychopathic corporate executes decide for those children via the nastiest possible peer pressure campaigns to turn child against child when their parents can not buy what they have been told they need. So trying to figure out what boys and girls actually want, first, separate them from totally corrupt main stream media and do it t
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
there ARE no differences between boys and girls
If anyone is saying that, they are clearly idiots. The internet has copious data regarding the differences between boys and girls. Even after eliminating the porn sites, you end up with various physiological and psychological differences. We're very different in general, the extent to which and whether it's nature or nurture will no doubt rage on for the rest of our lives. There is absolutely no reason to think men and women are the same...
The question of equality is where they are asserting men and women can perform the same. Until evidence exists to the contrary, we have to assume this is true. This is not to say that men and women will do the same things to establish this equality, or will acquire knowledge or even perform the function identically. Only that in the end they will produce the same results.
to create curriculum specifically for girls, who are no different than boys
Accepting the above, which I believe with conviction, this then falls apart. However, where I would direct my nerd rage is at the conclusion that lead to creating a gender specific curriculum as a solution. It must have been something like "CS education as it exists is incompatible with female psychology; a CS education program which can target both genders is impossible, ergo we need to fork a new curriculum". I can't imagine the kind of data that existed to justify this. If it did exist, it seems like a likely assumption than the genders will probably require dedicated education on other topics as well, and maybe we should go back to having boys and girls schools across the board.
Personally I think the problem is entirely social and cultural, and we're wasting our time with this stuff.
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
The question of equality is where they are asserting men and women can perform the same. Until evidence exists to the contrary, we have to assume this is true.
I would say the copious evidence that women seem to prefer some jobs, and not prefer others-- like comp sci and IT jobs-- and the general lack (so far as I am aware) of any particular barriers in those areas indicates that there are natural tendencies. Im really not convinced that such a natural tendency is a "problem" that needs to be fixed; if you can show instances of discrimination or barriers to women in the CS field, lets remove those-- but I dont see why we need to attempt to force the gender ratio to be 50:50 in CS because that is wholly unrealistic. Only someone living in an ivory tower could think that women are equally likely to enter computer fields to men, just like only someone living in an ivory tower could think that men and women have the exact same set of skills (statistically).
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There are differnences in PEOPLE. Usually these differences cut across conventional "seggregation" lines. There may or may not be different distributions of characteristics in genders or races. A lot of this stuff is just nonsense cultural baggage.
It has to do more with indoctrination than actual characteristics and again the "geeks" are the tail end of the problem and the least relevant "perpetrators".
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While I agree primarily that people are different and male and female people t the core of their being are not fundamentally different, the hardware you run on plays a major role in your interaction with the environment. Quite a few emotions (if not all) are body-things and do influence the overall hybrid being. The problem with some feminist fractions is that they think they can ignore what the body contributes to the being. That is just plain stupid. Eliminating the influence of the interface that _every
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The question of equality is where they are asserting men and women can perform the same. Until evidence exists to the contrary, we have to assume this is true.
Why do we have to assume one way or the other? Why not just admit we don't know and let people do what they want instead of trying to push them to do what we think they should?
If men and women aren't that different but we assume they are, we'll start making rules about what fields women and men should enter.
If men and women are significantly different but we assume they're the same, we'll spend forever trying to correct a problem that doesn't exist and can't be 'corrected' without significant heartac
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Why do we have to assume one way or the other? Why not just admit we don't know and let people do what they want instead of trying to push them to do what we think they should?
So I agree, no one should push you into a career you don't want to be in. The question is whether something is pushing them out of STEM, even if they do want to be in it. I don't think that's answered by the horseshit in TFA. The question is whether these people are lefties because that is their dominant hand, or because all they h
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Bah, Logic! That is a male mental defect! Of course what they do is fair, adequate and effective. After all, it is _them_ doing it and they can do no wrong.
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Look at it this way. Computer Science Principles is the tough class, much tougher than simplistic programming. Thus girls take the hard classes and boys take the easy ones.
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the assumption made that it is a problem that women are underrepresented in CS? Are we specifically assuming that we are getting sub-standard cs majors because of that gap? Or are we making the fantastic leap of assuming that there are scores of women wanting to break into CS, but are held back by various factors?
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Why is the assumption made that it is a problem that women are underrepresented in CS?
Because there used to be a greater proportion of women in CS, and current students tell us that certain social issues put them off pursuing something they otherwise would like to.
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Do you need EVERY statement cited? This isn't Wikipedia. Google it. But here's a start:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding
Re:Confused. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because there's money to be made and control to be gained by solving a made up problem?
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Same logic by all the men complaining that they can't carry a baby to full term ...
oh wait ...
*crickets*
Re:Confused. (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't this the same crowd that says there ARE no differences between boys and girls and therefore girls should be in represented equally in STEM careers?
Yet the way they intended to remedy the imbalance is to create curriculum specifically for girls, who are no different than boys.
The last fifty years or so of social history appears to have passed you by.
Yes, having failed to correct left-handness in many people but succeeding in correcting black women's hair so that it can be straight we decided about 50 years ago to take on the task of correcting women so that they have the same professional and sexual goals as men. We've made a lot of progress but we still have a long way to go. A lot of women may complain and object, but we know what's best for them so we'll make those decisions for them.
How (Score:2)
I can imagine the kinds of comments that are coming, but I have to say that I approve of these women targeted programs because I believe they do create an environment that encourages more participation. Most people feel comfortable around similar people especially at younger ages, and telling a girl that she will be in a class with other girls as apposed to a class filled with men could be the difference in her decision making.
Put another way, if a nerd was told they would be working with other nerds they
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I doubt it. I know quite a few women that are engineers or in IT, several with a PhD. Their explanation for the low numbers universally is that most women are too lazy to study a demanding subject and rather look for an easy way out. (This statement is usually delivered in scathing language.) The easy way out of course being to find a male that works for them.
Now, I am not saying this is a shortcoming of the female personality. In fact, I think that the same amount of males would like to do that. However, b
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This is silly. Girls already do way better in school than boys, on average, and US colleges are majority-female. If girls are so uncomfortable with boys in their class, how come they are kicking our asses in school?
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bummer (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish my sons had access to such things. They have the interest but these classes tend to be awfully expensive, plus I no longer have "open" computers they can play with (tablets are great at what most people spend time with, but they are also limiting).
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It sucks that your sons don't have access to these educational resources (although if they are interested a Raspberry Pi is really cheap and well supported), but never the less it sucks more for girls. This sort of thing is trying to address a specific problem, which doesn't lessen yours but doesn't increase it either.
Re:bummer (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you clarify what the specific problem is? Im not aware of mobs of girls clamoring to enter CS who are being prevented. What im seeing is an addiction to political correctness and an outrage that in reality women tend not to enter computer fields as much.
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There is evidence that girls do want to enter CS but are being prevented. For example, the higher proportion of women in CS 20 years ago. When asked why they dropped out of CS courses they give us very specific reasons other than lack of interest.
This has all been covered before in great detail, just google it.
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> (although if they are interested a Raspberry Pi is really cheap and well supported), but never the less it sucks more for girls.
How is it harder to girls to get a Raspberry Pi?
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I no longer have "open" computers they can play with
For one thing, why have you allowed this to become the case? For another, AIDE [android-ide.com] runs on reasonably modern Android tablets.
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Exactly, start building computers again instead of buying tablets.
Have you built a laptop recently?
Sorry, poor Appalachian white boys (Score:3)
GIRLS AND MINORITIES ONLY! Back to your trailer, white trash!
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Most racism is less blatant any more. There are no "whites only" signs and blatant discrimination can get you sued. A lot of the problems of the "oppressed" are self inflicted and are the lingering effects of institutional discrimination that for the most part is now banned.
Of course any true egalitarian should object when blatant discrimination is practiced. It doesn't matter what the lame excuse is.
You either believe in equality or you don't.
Computer careers and gender (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you can find a way to break this cycle, I don't see anything else working as much more than a band-aid to the problem.
I'm actually in favor of gender-segregated junior high. Give the kids a chance to learn how to deal with their new hormones when there's not really much option to showboat for the other gender.
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A lot of boys who have became interested in many other topics also have problems relating to girls.
I went to Grad school part time after about 10 years of professional experience. I was taking some classes in the Business wing of the college. And I see all the undergrads who are in their late teens and early 20's trying to talk to the opposite sex. I was just waiting for the classroom to empty and I just feel awkward just watching them trying to impress the opposite sex.
Computer careers and gender (Score:3)
In fact I'm pretty tired of going over to talk to a (male) colleague and they either can't or won't answer the questi
Re:Computer careers and gender (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Computer careers and gender (Score:4, Insightful)
Experience has taught me that capability and knowledge takes a back-seat to being liked by the people making the personnel decisions. Drinking buddies, flirts, camping cliques, fellow sports fans, all move up faster than those that have the best technical knowledge.
At the risk of being labelled "Troll", maybe that's not so bad. The folks with social skills move on to positions that require unscripted social interactions, the folks who are really good at the technical aspects of the job keep on doing their own thing.
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If those positions really did include social aspects to them then maybe you'd have a case, but more often than not the differences are between entry-level, mid-level, and senior-level technical positions where the job doesn't supervise and doesn't report t
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I've also seen alpha-nerds placed into management positions where half the underlings either quit or transferred out of the department within six months.
This isn't some alpha-nerd v. social butterfly thing; it's all about fitting the right person to the right job.
FWIW, it's pretty easy to find posts from tech people around here who, on the topic of a nerd-centric work environment, say, "Suck it up, that's how we roll." The counterpoint, of course, is that if you want management to notice you and think you'r
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It actually works against women much of the time. They tend to be less interesting in the things the male majority are, so that pretty much leaves flirting...
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And then there are those brilliant guys I've worked with which I still can't figure out their code
I would argue that those guys are not brilliant at all.
Any programmer can solve a complex problem with a complex solution. The brilliant programmers are the ones who can take a complex problem, distill it down to well-organized chunks, making the solution appear straightforward and obvious (even when the solution was anything but obvious).
When you get a dev on your staff who writes clear, straightforward code, you keep that dev in high morale and you don't let him or her go.
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It isn't like we're putting them in barracks together.
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I don't know about the rest of you, but I found dating as an adult to be a hell of a lot easier than as a minor, as post-high-school one isn't in this weird microcosm where all types of individuals are represented in small numbers with cliques avoiding each other, instead in
Plessy (Score:4, Insightful)
Again with the girls? (Score:3)
Can someone please explain to me what this whole "Let's convince/force/cajole/firehose women into CS" thing is all about?
*Why* is it so frikkin important all of a sudden? Why is there no similar push in any other field (think firefighter/truckdriver/constrution)?
Have I missed something important? Are women no longer considered smart enough to make their own choices regarding careers? Must we big smart men carefully explain to them why they *want* to go into CS?
What happens when this magical girls-only experience ends and suddenly the real world rears its ugly head with (God help us) *men* in the actual workplace? Perhaps we need to have some girls-only workplaces as well? But wait, what about when the workday ends? There might still be some *men* out and about. We need a girls-only city to make sure no disgusting boys hang around with their home-grown CS interests...
And now I'm all out of sarcasm. Thanks internet.
I guess my question boils down to: "Why force this interest? Why force this new brand of 'make-no-sense equality quotas' to *everyone's* detriment?"
Re:Again with the girls? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I agree on that. And currently what they can get in supply from the male half of the population is not driving labor costs low enough, so they are trying to get women as even cheaper labor, and all that under the guise of "equality". Fact is that likely most women with an interest in IT are already there. There are no magical barriers preventing them from going there, or at least not really more as the men are facing.
In the side of technology, the problem we have is that there are too many people with low
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*facepalm* (Score:5, Insightful)
So... when you *specifically* want to create a class *for girls*, your though is "Hey, let's take out the hard parts, and make it more of a course about all the stuff *around* the actual hard part". You just basically told girls "don't worry yourself about the really hard parts. This is what *you* need to know." Are you sure you don't just want to make it a typing class instead?
Fuck that noise.
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That's standard practice for introductory/taster courses. Give the students something they can achieve fairly quickly and easily to show that they can get interesting results and pique their interest in the subject. It doesn't have anything to do with gender.
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The course was specifically designed to "increase diversity". MS developed the course material to go along with it specifically for girls. Read for detail and comprehension next time.
The goal of this course is not to attract males with varied interests,and you know it.
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I wasn't arguing that it was. I was making the point that developing introductory material is standard practice, not just for girls. I'm not sure how you managed to not comprehend that.
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Forget reading other's text for comprehension, you can't even read what you wrote.
>> That's standard practice for introductory/taster courses. Give the students something they can achieve fairly quickly and easily to show that they can get interesting results and pique their interest in the subject. ***It doesn't have anything to do with gender.***
Right there, starred so you can't miss it. They straight up admit it has everything to do with gender, right in the headline. Twice.
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The fact that it is an introductory course rather than a more advanced one has nothing to do with gender, it's the normal way these things are done. If it were a course to encourage boys to take up CS it wouldn't be at a higher level.
I'm not sure I can make it any clearer.
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Indeed. This is a terrible regression. Equality is about equal opportunity, not about giving the same certificate for different skill-levels. And if most (but not all) women do not want to study a demanding subject like CS, that is their prerogative. Gender equality demands that we do keep the opportunity open for women that want to take that challenge, not that we make it so easy for them that there is in fact no equality, just statistical numbers that look good. Gender equality also demands that we expect
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Ding ding ding. What I say to that is "Tough shit, do without your third summer home and pay people what they're worth."
Data flow in Cookie Clicker (Score:2)
they want E and I devices, cookie clicker and kesha.
Tell me with a straight face that doing well at Orteil's Cookie Clicker doesn't need a knowledge of data flow [wikia.com].
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Cookie clicker just needs Firefox or Chrome and some debugging knowledge.
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In order to use an in-browser debugger, you still need to understand data flow.
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I don't believe that lowering average programmer salary is either the sole or primary motivator for this trend, even for businesses alone, much less other groups.
Businesses need more developers, and they haven't got them. It's as simple as that. The focus on women is simply the most efficient way to do it since they're vastly underrepresented in the field - every dollar spent on encouraging women nets more potentials than on men. It's just good ROI. The fact that it's a social currency is just icing on
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There are lots of jobs in CS that don't involve writing low level code. Pretty much anyone of average intelligence can be taught to write useful apps in modern languages, just like they can be taught school level maths or language skills.
Complaining that they may not use those skills in real life is ridiculous. How much of the stuff people learnt at school do they use in their every day life? My knowledge of how sea shores erode isn't of much use to me any more. It certainly broadened my horizons though.
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No. Most people cannot be taught that skill. Not at all. Just as most people cannot be taught to use Math beyond very simple things. And yes, I have experience in that area. These "useful" apps create far more problems than they solve. In fact, your attitude is the root cause for the ongoing software crisis: Too many wannabes doing things that critically require competent engineers. It is really no surprise that most software is f*cked up these days.
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Right on the mark. We do not have to few people in CS. We have far too many, and hence too many mediocre ones and they create most of the problems.
Hmmm ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, why all of a sudden are we taking input from Microsoft and Google on the education system?
These are companies, with their own agendas, and who only see the world through their own myopic view of making money with technology.
In what way do we consider either Google or Microsoft to be qualified to be involved in education?
The same clowns who are driving usage of foreign workers are suddenly going to cure the world by making sure more girls know how to code? Why, so they can not get hired because they expect a higher wage than someone in Mumbai?
Sorry, but taken as a whole, Microsoft is doing as much to undermine the point of getting an education in CS .. because they're actively part of the bits of using H1Bs, colluding to keep wages down, and making it more difficult for workers to be mobile.
So you'll excuse me if I see this as little more than some self serving PR.
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Education policy is not the domain of those who understand education - it's decided by politicians at nearly every level. Everything from what will be taught, to the books we use, to the structure of classes and rating systems meant to produce specific results without any real understanding of how those results are achieved or the real impact of them. They also can't make radical leaps - anything that might fail would result in losing their position, so they stick to minor modifications to existing system
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Large corporations often do contradictory things because they are made up of many departments and individuals. When their goals align with the social good we might as well take their money, while still fighting their abuses.
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>> In what way do we consider either Google or Microsoft to be qualified to be involved in education?
Seeing as the primary goal of education for most people is "find a good career" and the primary goal of education for most businesses is "teach the skills I need for a productive workforce"... whose *external* input would you rather have?
Look, academia, education for education's sake, and deep research will be pursued by those who desire it whether it's encouraged or not. It's the people getting degre
Equality = girls-only? (Score:2)
"to create a girls-only computer science Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)."
Oh yeah, brilliant answer to equality in IT.
Don't suppose we could find enough common sense to short-circuit this process before the lawsuits start flying...
You could start... (Score:2)
...by telling us what "AP" and "CS" mean.
Nah, just kidding this time. About CS, at least. AP I don't know.
One of Microsoft's particular goals is to "reach every individual girl in her house."
Oh, I see, it's okay when Microsoft says it, but I get a lecture from the cops. Typical!
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AP == Advanced Placement [wikipedia.org].
Well that's inconvenient for the dominant theory (Score:3)
Feminists are always saying there are no mental differences in men in women. And because of that, the gender disparity in CS must be due to sexism.
Now they're altering the content of CS curriculum to appeal to women, and it is apparently working [npr.org].
So if women do actually need to be taught CS differently, why is all that dark matter sexism still necessary to explain it?
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These feminists are stupid. There are physical differences in men and women and they are quite enough to explain the gender disparity. While CS, on the surface, seems to be a purely mental activity, the larger situation matters. One thing is that CS is _hard_. Quite a few women these days still sell their reproductive capabilities in exchange for a meal-ticket or at least go for a less demanding education because they know that have this fall-back option. Yes, it is not politically correct to say so, but it
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Indeed. Being a victim is _convenient_. You do not have to change anything on your side. (Well, you should if you want to get your agency back, but that is not the public perception...) It however has extreme drawbacks, such as far less control over your life. No smart person goes that way.
What a waste (Score:2)
Some fundamental questions need to be asked in earnest - and obviously haven't - foremost among them:
Why do you give a shit that there aren't many girl or minority programmers? I mean, it's not as though they lack the opportunity. Christ, the entry barriers don't get much lower than programming.
Will throwing money from the top-down really fundamentally change anything?
Why are you conflating programming with Big Dreams? Or even little dreams? This is an error.
The main thing that's needed is patience. This
So what's it good for (Score:3)
The point of an AP course, in particular, is to get college credit for work done earlier. What college is going to give credit for a course like this? Maybe towards some sort of "Sociology of Computing" degree?
There are gender differences (Score:4, Interesting)
There are gender differences; you don't see it so much in ability scores, but you do tend to see it in how boys and girls learn. There are, I believe, some advantages for separating boys and girls for some classes, but certainly not all. The tricky bit, however, is that, on an individual basis, some kids simply don't fit the gender stereotypes. Some girls like being hands-on and active; some boys prefer to get their answers from reading and watching.
In a perfect world, you'd pair the right kid with the right teaching method, but that's not always possible, so you make compromises ... like gender-specific classes -- which can also help boys in some cases. FWIW, a couple years ago, news and infotainment stories based on all-boys programs were all the rage in Canada (specifically that elementary school education had become too feminized with too many female educators), so, while the current media frenzy is focusing on girls' achievements, there is a degree of parity in the overall arc of the coverage.
As for the current controversy, Google and MS aren't in the business of being SJWs; they're in the business of making money. And the research strongly suggests that:
The financial benefits of greater gender equity are undeniable. Extensive global research conducted by Credit Suisse, Catalyst and McKinsey & Co. examining the link between women on boards and stronger financial performance of Fortune 500 companies has been cited in numerous publications. Examining the return on sales, return on invested capital, and return on equity, their research confirmed that companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those with the least number of women by significant margins in each category.
Source (with cursory review of the literature): http://www.theglobeandmail.com... [theglobeandmail.com] Note: Credit Suisse is not some backwater, liberal college spouting pseudo-scientific gibberish; they're a well-run capitalist organization that makes no bones about being in it for the money.
You want people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences working together. It might take longer to reach a decision (or finish a project), but it's likely that the decision will be better for it. Monocultures are suboptimal for decision making (the research from WWII on is quite solid on this). Google and Microsoft are not pushing forward with trying to get more girl coders from some sense of goodness and charity; they're doing it because they see a business case for it. The gender equity aspect is veneer slapped over a business decision to make it 1.) seem like a good thing for society and 2.) make it easier to shake money loose governments to improve their own workforces.
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I would agree with the business case for female coders. Females represent a large portion of the purchasing decisions for goods and also a large percentage of the user base for applications from business tools to iPhone apps. As time goes on we need women who know how to think like women so that applications and electronics are designed in ways that appeal to women. Technology products should be strait forward and gender agnostic whenever possible, but there will also be many applications and technology pro
It's not really a gender thing, it's perception (Score:2)
Everyone seems to be pointing to this as a gender issue, but the way I see it, it's a way to get more students interested in the stuff that _most_ of them will be doing with a computer science education.
The world has changed significantly since I graduated college almost 20 years ago (with a STEM degree that wasn't CS.) In 1997, the year I got out, the dotcom bubble was just inflating and all the protocols and "glue" that make Web applications work were just starting to be enhanced and built out. Fast forwa
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It's about self-confidence in bench skills (Score:3)
Girls drop off the tech track (CS, engineering, etc) because they are intimidated (wrongly) by the boys who come in with "bench skills" already formed -- the boys have been tinkering and taking things apart and building and coding and have their own toolbox (literal and figurative) already. The girls see that, and don't think they will be able to compete -- an inaccurate conclusion, because success in engineering school does *not* depend on having the resistor color code already memorized, nor on having memorized the API's to three dozen Python libraries already. Success comes from the deeper analytical skills.
Girls need tinkering opportunities that will build their bench skills. When they have their own toolkits (literal and figurative) then the boys will no longer intimidate them.
Math is a different issue. The critical years for developing the self-perception that you belong with the math crowd is the same years that girls are trying hard to fit in. The population density of girls in the USA (and it seems to be a problem for us, not for other parts of the world) who enjoy math is low enough that it is hard to fit in socially and be "mathy". For my daughter, we found a math camp (Mathpath.org) where the population of girls was high enough that she found a peer group of girls where it was *cool* to like and be good at math. That made a huge difference.
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You are quite right. It's because most parents don't involve their daughters in workshop and construction projects, but they do involve their sons.
Not every girl is going to groove on helping assemble a new set of bookshelves form Ikea. Neither is every boy. But both can benefit from being taught about fasteners and tools.
More to the point, we are talking about why girls fall off the tech track, not what gets them on the tech track in the first place. Girls simply don't get appropriate mentoring at a yo
Stop the special exclusion, kill H1B (Score:3)
There is no systematic barrier to women becoming programmers. They are free to do it and have equal opportunity to do so by law. In fact, I know some, and am glad that they did it. If there are not as many women programmers as men programmers, its due to the fact that no as many women want to do it. If more woman would rather do something else than program than men, why force them to, let them do what they are most predisposed to. We should have the same standards and educational program for men and women, that way everyone has equal opportunity and is free to choose their field without some sort of barrier being set up. If you make things EASIER for one group what you do is you disadvantage another group by creating all sorts of benefits they cannot access. This is wrong. It is a sick, disturbed mentality that we should discourage people who WANT to program from doing so, to try to shoehorn people who are not inclined to program into doing that.
Part of what is going on is mentally ill liberals who are unwilling to let go of victimization and guilt complexes that seems to be such a part of the Liberal mental complex that they cannot live without it, even though for the most part their original grievances have long been properly addressed. This is why well after we have created extensive legal gaurantees for equal opportunity, it is never enough for these people, which is why their agenda becomes ever more insane and shrill, they ran out of legitimate causes long ago. The mentality is that they are addicted to conflict just for the sake of it, that they have to pick new fights, since the legitimate issues are gone, they have gone beserk now demanding retribution and discrimination of their own against men, white people, American citizens, etc. They are unwilling to let go of the victimization complex even though for the most part in reality it is long past, with decades of equal opportunity legislation. In the process they have become what they claim to be against, they have become monsters who are out for blood and who have a hatred of and a malicious intent against men, and in some cases what approaches genocidal ambitions, for demonized majority groups. You can see this behaviour everywhere, by creating controversies and crisis where there is none, such as in Ferguson, just to keep the conflict alive when its legitimate beef has long been addressed and laid to rest.
Another fact which relates to this and to H1B Visas, is that numerous studies have shown that there is NO IT labor shortage in the US and that in fact we have large numbers of American college graduates who cannot find jobs becuase these jobs are being stolen by the H1B Visas. The H1B program is about suppressing wages and trying to replace american computer programmers with foreigners, this will actually discourage ALL americans, Men and Women, from going through the trouble of the CS degree when they are constantly being undermined by the corporate cronies. Microsoft would love to pay CS people minimum wage if they could, all they are concerned about is profits and are willing to ruin the lives of American CS degree holders by pulling the rug out from under them. Its not only CS but its also the Medical field as well.
You have American doctors who did the right thing by taking on the debt to spend $100,000 on a medical degree only to have their wages suppressed to where they are pushed into poverty, making far too little after they pay their loans to make it all worth the trouble, by third world educated labor who spent 1/9th of what an American has to on a medical degree. I know doctors who have watched the profession and the reward for the effort for american graduates destroyed by the third world H1B visa labor, it is killing them, the third world labor is poorly educated and did not have to obtain the same level of training as an American medical student and yet they are given medical licenses and allowed to basically steal jobs right out from under better educated American doctors. Add to this the Obamacare nightmare
Gender specific courses are wrong... (Score:2)
... unless we segrigate the genders again which I think might be reasonable from grade school to highschool.
The hormones and learning patterns are different enough that it is problematic to have a one size fits all education program for both.
The boys operate under different rules especially at that age. Separate them out and it could improve all sorts of things. I think most of the experiments with sexually segregated education have shown dramatically improved educational performance. So... no reason not to
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You don't need basic computer education early. You need basic math education early. You need people to learn the basics of arithmetic early enough that you can move on to other things later, but still before high school -- other things including Boolean logic and alternate number bases as well as algebra, geometry, trignometry, and the usual.
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We're dealing with inculcated social gender differences
Are you speculating, or do you have an actual basis for this?
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In every nature vs. nurture argument I've seen, no one has ever taken the position of 100% nature. People are, at least in part, defined by their experience.
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The AC's assertion is that the differences being discussed (preference for engineering vs other pursuits) are inculcated, not natural. That is different from what you're saying.
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One of the state universities by me is offering a "pre-intro" CS course that focuses more on the absolute basics before stuffing them in a programming course: CSE 110 [stonybrook.edu] It seems to me that this is a good way to scare away people who don't actually want to do CS, and to fill in gaps in knowledge that today's students would have. It's interesting that this is different from the high level survey course for non majors, and it's only a "suggested prerequisite" for the more programming and logic-heavy traditional
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It could also improve the general state of CS knowledge. If people are less ignorant or frightened of technology then that is not a bad thing. Not all CS education has to be directed at code monkeys.
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I don't think so. Look at the general state of knowledge in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, etc. Most people cannot reach or do not want to reach a state where they actually start to understand complicated (yet critical) things. They want the easy solutions, the simple viewpoints and the warm, fuzzy feelings that come with them. Just look at the drivel politics is selling. Most of that is so obviously nonsense that any smart and educated person can immediately see it. Yet most people eat it up.
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Very much this. We have far too many bad CS graduates, and they are destroying the work that the few good ones are doing. We also have far too many bad programmers. We need less and better people in these fields, not more.
I also think you cannot even teach critical thinking, you can just encourage those that have the talent to use it.
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Indeed. Being female is not a valid excuse for laziness.