Will Elementary School Teachers Take the Rap For Tech's Diversity Problem? 493
theodp (442580) writes "Citing a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (free to Federal employees), the NY Times reports on how elementary school teachers' pro-boy biases can discourage girls from math and science. "The pipeline for women to enter math and science occupations narrows at many points between kindergarten and a career choice," writes Claire Cain Miller, "but elementary school seems to be a critical juncture. Reversing bias among teachers could increase the number of women who enter fields like computer science and engineering, which are some of the fastest growing and highest paying. 'It goes a long way to showing it's not the students or the home, but the classroom teacher's behavior that explains part of the differences over time between boys and girls,' said Victor Lavy, an economist at University of Warwick in England and a co-author of the paper." Although the study took place in Israel, Lavy said that similar research had been conducted in several European countries and that he expected the results were applicable in the United States."
Stop looking for a single point of failure (Score:5, Insightful)
There are problems at all ages. It starts even before school. Don't try to blame one group. Don't blame anyone, just give them the solutions.
The problem is the "social sciences". (Score:5, Insightful)
There's only one problem here, and it's called the "social sciences".
These are pseudo-academic programs that have been put in place in many institutions of higher learning. While this gives them the aura of legitimacy, the fact remains that their methodologies are not worthy of being called "science", and their standards are quite poor when it comes to performing research.
By lacking the solid foundation that real fields of science like physics, biology and chemistry have, the "social sciences" degrade into debates about the merits of different -isms ("feminism", "communism", "racism", "genderism", and so on), and once that's been discussed to death, they just start making up problems ("diversity in the tech industry") to "investigate".
For some participants it's just an easy way to get money. For others, it's a way to fight back against other inadequacies in their life, like a lack of ability. And for others it's just a power trip.
Regardless, anything coming out of the "social sciences" should be taken with a really big grain of salt. Or better yet, it should just be ignored. It's likely a big load of bullshit to begin with.
Re:The problem is the "social sciences". (Score:5, Insightful)
The ignorance in your statement is mind-boggling and shows a deep bias toward the physical sciences and the number of mod points that it has received just shows how well it panders to this particular audience. The success of physical sciences does not come from their "solid foundation", but from how much simpler their fields of study are. As one moves up the ladder of complexity or murkier sources of evidence, the less predictive they become, not because they are any 'less scientific', but because the science is more difficult. Ecology, behavioral biology, medicine, and archaeologically-based fields all live in the middle of this spectrum and it is evident from the lack of consensus and frequent regressions in those fields.
The biggest problem in the social sciences isn't their practices, it is that their findings are inherently political, so it is very common for them to be used by people with an agenda or even promoted in order to create those tools to do so. While ideologues certainly exist in all academic fields, the murkiness of social science makes it more difficult to discredit their ideas conclusively. Even so, there are large bodies of actionable evidence which must be contended with. Unfortunately, journalists and the lay public rarely have the familiarity with the field or the sophistication to interpret social science research.
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No, the biggest problem in the social sciences is their (often) feeble understanding of Statistics and the heavy publication bias towards positive papers (where significance was found, as opposed to negative papers supporting the null-hypothesis) at conferences and in journals.
Re:The problem is the "social sciences". (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm disgusted, although not entirely surprised, that this has been moderated so high so quickly.
You can't just pick a field of study that you happen to dislike (or perhaps distrust is a better word?) and then heap blame at its feet because you object to the conclusions it makes. There are absolutely legitimate things to learn by studying language, philosophy, history, economics, politics, psychology, etc. Just because the outcomes aren't written as mathematical proofs doesn't render them devoid of meaning. The world is not black and white, and any attempts to force it into such a paradigm inevitably have to discard data in order to make it fit. Even if you pray at the altar of physics and mathematics, you have to respect the fact that at some point even they reach the realm of "maybe," "sorta," and "dunno" so far as we understand them. That doesn't mean quantum mechanics and number theory are meaningless any more than it makes sociology or polsci meaningless. Perhaps more difficult to distil, but not functionally useless. Every field is vulnerable to bad data, conjecture, and ill-fitting conclusions. The social sciences might be more vulnerable than the hard sciences, but it is a tragic mistake to conflate that with a lack of meaning. And do not think that the hard sciences are immune from criticism themselves. The worlds they describe are entirely fictional, idealized approximations of our own. We should not be any less suspicious of their conclusions than of those which attempt to tackle our messy reality.
FWIW, I'm a CS grad and ordinarily a strong supporter of the sciences. But I also studied enough philosophy (minored) to know that a world full of engineers is not utopia, it's a nightmare.
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Why is it even a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's define the basis for this being a problem:
Are we suggesting that in all workplaces, any skew in gender-balance is a "problem"?
There are multiple problems with this position, not the least of which is "free will". Go to any college campus in America or Europe and you will see social sciences and language studies heavily populated by female students. Is this a problem? Should universities limit the amount of women allowed to study Italian? Why or why not?
Hard sciences, mathematics, engineering and computer science on campus are mostly male.
The feminist argument is that this skew in gender balance is the result of prior socialization. But this claim of nurture over nature is not only unproven, it is utterly untestable. Needless to say defining "problems" based on untestable criteria does not pass anyone's logic test. And to pretend that men and women 'would' have the same interests if it weren't for society is to not only discount the empirical evidence of every culture throughout history, but the very real biological and chemical differences between male and female brains.
To suggest that men and women 'would' have the same interests and motivations were it not for socialization despite the empirical evidence to the contrary and the clearly documented biological differences is a desperately unlikely scenario which would need rigorous proof if it were to be accepted. But the cult of feminism -- much like fundamentalist religion -- would rather pretend that it is their platform that is valid despite oceans of evidence that it isn't. Those who 'disbelieve' are infidels and must be silenced.
But let's get back to the original question: Why is it a problem that technology is primarily male?
If it is indeed to be our cultural premise that all careers should reflect a 50/50 gender balance, then what of the 'less sexy' fields which are primarily male? What of the world's most dangerous professions? Logging? Fishing boat crews? Electric powerline installers? Military combat? Mining? Underwater welding? These are no longer strength-related fields. And as we all know, male workplace deaths outweigh female workplace deaths at a rate of 9:1. Where is the feminist outrage against this "problem" of unfair male access to tragic death? (Never mind the fact that it is dangerous work that pays the best, and is a direct contributor to salary imbalances).
But no, "technology" has been singled out. Why? Because it's sexy. It's in the news. And the payouts can be spectacular.
So clearly this isn't about gender equality. It's a power grab.
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A huge percentage of women study "Women's Studies" classes. Why not spend the same hours studying math and comp-sci and stop learning to be victims?
Re:Why is it even a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US, the vast majority of teachers are female at the K-12 level.
There are 3 male teachers out of 40 at the local elementary, and it gets slightly less skewed at the High School level.
So if it is happening at k-12, the issue is with female teachers enforcing the stereotype.
I doubt anyone will accept that in the halls of power, it does not fit the narrative.
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It's like I've said before: every group is its own worst enemy.
Women's quest for equality is going to be hampered far, far more by other women than it ever will by men.
Re: Why is it even a problem? (Score:3)
Feminism has been laying the blame squarely on us evil misogynistic patriarchs for discouraging women from going into STEM subjects. It would therefore be hugely ironic if instead it turned out to be teachers of young children, a field massively dominated by women (where of course the gender imbalance isn't a cause for concern).
Re:Why is it even a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we suggesting that in all workplaces, any skew in gender-balance is a "problem"?
No. The feminist argument is that while men and women are different, they are both equally valuable and both equally deserving of the chance to do the things they want to do. If a woman wants to do computer science but is put off by the environment or behaviour of others specifically because she is a women, then that is a problem. I don't think many people would disagree with that.
The feminist argument is that this skew in gender balance is the result of prior socialization. But this claim of nurture over nature is not only unproven, it is utterly untestable.
No. We can easily test for social factors influencing the number of women in CS, because we have masses of evidence and are constantly running new tests.
For example, as recently as the mid 90s there were a lot more women going in to CS than there are now. That is evidence that the numbers have declined for some reason. If you survey women, as many people have, you hear the same reasons given again and again. Sometimes they are the same reasons that men dropped out, but often the reasons are specifically to do with gender or ones that only or disproportionately affect women.
If you want to run an experiment right now, set up some introductory CS classes for girls. They can be mixed, what I mean is you make an effort to appeal to girls and make them well welcome and like its something girls can be involved in, i.e. try to correct the issues that have been identified. See how many decide to carry on studying it at the end. Compare to the average in normal mixed CS classes. Of course this has already been done, and we can see that back in the late 80s and 90s when more effort was being made on this issue it had a measurable effect.
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If a woman wants to do computer science but is put off by the environment or behaviour of others specifically because she is a women, then that is a problem. I don't think many people would disagree with that.
You must be new here.
Re:Why is it even a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is the best evidence on socialization and gender. Boys were surgically converted to girls at birth, and raised as girls. They nonetheless identified as boys, and engaged in stereotypical male behavior, such as preferring war toys and rough-housing over domestic games and marriage fantasies.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1... [nejm.org]
Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth
William G. Reiner, M.D., and John P. Gearhart, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2004; 350:333-341
January 22, 2004
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa022236
[FREE TEXT]
Background
Cloacal exstrophy is a rare, complex defect of the entire pelvis and its contents that occurs during embryogenesis and is associated with severe phallic inadequacy or phallic absence in genetic males. For about 25 years, neonatal assignment to female sex has been advocated for affected males to overcome the issue of phallic inadequacy, but data on outcome remain sparse.
Methods
We assessed all 16 genetic males in our cloacal-exstrophy clinic at the ages of 5 to 16 years. Fourteen underwent neonatal assignment to female sex socially, legally, and surgically; the parents of the remaining two refused to do so. Detailed questionnaires extensively evaluated the development of sexual role and identity, as defined by the subjects' persistent declarations of their sex.
Results
Eight of the 14 subjects assigned to female sex declared themselves male during the course of this study, whereas the 2 raised as males remained male. Subjects could be grouped according to their stated sexual identity. Five subjects were living as females; three were living with unclear sexual identity, although two of the three had declared themselves male; and eight were living as males, six of whom had reassigned themselves to male sex. All 16 subjects had moderate-to-marked interests and attitudes that were considered typical of males. Follow-up ranged from 34 to 98 months.
Conclusions
Routine neonatal assignment of genetic males to female sex because of severe phallic inadequacy can result in unpredictable sexual identification. Clinical interventions in such children should be reexamined in the light of these findings.
Re:Stop looking for a single point of failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Let us point out that one of the more difficult of the sciences, chemistry, does not have a diversity problem. There are as many women as men in chemistry at all levels of education and employment. So for the rest of the technology and science groups, what is YOUR problem with gender? It's not that girls can't do math, or science, or get steered in kindergarten, it is something else. Figure that out and solve the problem.
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people only say this, when you personally don't want to face the fact the problem is close to you, or you otherwise hold them in high regard.
Because no one has trouble locking up people for 30 plus years for non-violent crimes in this country. When it was "hackers", and the tech industry, no one had a problem lumping us all in one group and blaming us.
No, we need systematic education reform.
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Absolutely. It's inconceivable that there's something specifically wrong with American elementary school teachers. The same thing is happening all over the world, and there isn't a grand global conspiracy to indoctrinate primary, elementary, prep, whatever the local term is, teachers with a male-centric view of IT.
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1. Let's treat and pay teachers like the profession that they are.
Teachers are for the most part union labor. Therefore they cannot be treated like professionals (i.e. better pay for better teachers, layoffs for poor teachers).
Re:^THIS (Score:4, Informative)
Where teachers are not union, or where the unions are weak, teachers tend to get paid less than their union counterparts.
Funding for public schools needs to increase at all levels. Bad teachers need to go, but average teachers need to get paid more than they are.
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Where teachers are not union, or where the unions are weak, teachers tend to get paid less than their union counterparts.
Schools should be run for the benefit of the students, not the teachers.
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Funding for public schools needs to increase at all levels.
Why? How much is enough? The average class size right now is about 22 students (average of elementary and secondary) [ed.gov], and about $12,600 per student [ed.gov]. So that's $277,000 per classroom of funding. Of that, the teacher "cost" is about $6800 per student [ed.gov]. Meaning about half the income goes to the teacher (or $149,600 - for a class of 22) and the other half goes for everything else.
IF this was, in fact, what was happening - as is claimed by the links I provided - then teachers would be exceedingly well-paid -
Re:^THIS (Score:4, Interesting)
Also when trying to weed out "better" teachers from "bad" ones you might actually do the opposite.
That is a load of crap, and anyone who has kids in a unionized public schools knows it. Most teachers are capable and conscientious, but there are some clearly bad teachers than continue to be employed year after year. When my daughter was in 7th grade, her science teacher assigned each student a chapter to teach, and the students taught the class to each other while she sat in the back of the room browsing the web. When we complained to the principal, he just rolled his eyes and said he had been trying to get rid of her for years. That was three years ago, and she is still "teaching". The unions could be a constructive part of improving our schools, but instead they just stonewall any attempt at reform.
Re:^THIS (Score:5, Insightful)
No, pay them in line with the critical role they play in our society. And if you think that teachers' retirement benefits are extravagant, that's because overall (at least in the USA) retirement benefits are a joke, if they exist at all. 401k plans are fine and all, but you're putting your future in the hands of Wall Street, which has no interest in whether you can feed yourself after you retire.
The more you cut teacher salaries, the worse the teachers, because anyone with any brains at all will see private sector employment more and more appealing. Yes, there are bad teachers out there. Yes, they can be fired if they fuck up badly enough, union or no. (I'm sure there are plenty of bad teachers that aren't fired because the powers that be know they won't be able to replace them, because nobody wants to teach.) Being a unionized employee doesn't mean you can't get fired, as much as the right would like you to think so. CBAs ensure progressive discipline, not no discipline. In a nutshell, this means you can't be fired because you gave the wrong kid (whose parents are rich and powerful) an F on a test.
Re: ^THIS (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Fucking. Way.
Do you realize what privatized "public" education would look like? It'd look great at first, until the inevitable consolidation starts in. Soon, we have the school equivalent of Wal-Mart. Then, once the monopoly is established, budgets will be cut and cut and cut, until the teachers are making minimum wage and class sizes are 100+. The company running the school would have a vested interest in finding the schools as little as possible. We all know how well that works in the health insurance industry. So, instead of sending your kids to a school with board members selected by the community, they go to a school where the decisions are made thousands of miles away. Look at private schools (and charter schools, for that matter) now: you can be excluded for the color of your skin, your faith, and especially your income.
Think about Walmart running your local school. Minimum wage teachers that are brought into this country on work visas, who know nothing about America other than the pay is better here, and who may or may not speak English well enough to be understood. No arts classes, no music, probably no Phys Ed (too much liability and the equipment is "expensive", where we define "expensive" as "it costs any money at all"). And what happens when some company like Hobby Lobby starts running schools and decides that evolution has no place in the schools (it's only a theory, after all), because as a non-governmental organization, they are not required to keep the church out of the schools.
Bad, bad, bad idea. If you don't like the schools, there are plenty of excellent private schools already. If you can't afford the tuition, or your kid is the wrong color, you have the choice to home-school. You have choices; you're not required to send your kid to public school.
oh please. I'm tired of this "diversity" bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
If women don't want to work in tech fields, that's their business. Why this is even an issue is beyond me. How is it considered a good idea to encourage more people to work in fields they're not interested in? Why is tech singled out as the one and only important field?
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Obviously because these jobs pay well. No one cares about diversity in construction work because it's dangerous and the pay isn't very good, especially in proportion to the harm one must put himself everyday.
I'm generally for eliminating biases that cause people to feel certain life paths are inaccessible to them. Problem is that the media has singled out a few that are of special interest to them. If, for example, a man wanted to become an elementary school teacher, he'd likely be met with suspicion at
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If women don't want to work in tech fields, that's their business. Why this is even an issue is beyond me. How is it considered a good idea to encourage more people to work in fields they're not interested in? Why is tech singled out as the one and only important field?
Because there's more money in it.
Law is another field where "diversity" primarily means women instead of minorities.
Re:oh please. I'm tired of this "diversity" bullsh (Score:5, Interesting)
Weirdly enough, women were quite well represented in technology before the 80s. Clearly there was an interest - so what's changed?
Women in other countries are somewhat more well represented in technology and more likely to go into STEM fields - so what are those other countries doing differently?
There are a number of things that make a strong case for the reasons women aren't well represented in tech being related to artificial issues rather than natural tendencies.
Tech isn't singled out as the one and only important field, by the way. I'm not sure where you get that idea from, but if you look at most any field with a lopsided gender ratio you'll see concern about the gender imbalance and efforts to remedy it. Nursing programs will aggressively pursue male candidates, same for elementary teaching, for example.
In any case, my guess as to why tech is singled out is not that tech is singled out, but that you're probably primarily reading tech sites where this gets discussed, so it just seems that way.
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Weirdly enough, women were quite well represented in technology before the 80s. Clearly there was an interest - so what's changed?
What changed was the definition of what a technology job is. Before the 80's, technology jobs included things like typists, calculators, vacuum tube changers, telephone operators, etc. These were relatively low skill repetitive jobs that were well suited to women in the workplace which didn't require higher education, physical ability, or advanced trade skills.
Re:oh please. I'm tired of this "diversity" bullsh (Score:4, Interesting)
If women don't want to work in tech fields, that's their business.
In my engineering career I have seen it go from no women whatsoever to women coming in and getting prompt promotion to management level - because the directors are terrified of being accused of anti-women bias. And yes, there are women directors, the sort that are also part-time directors of a dozen other companies, mostly finance and legal ones.
But these women engineers have totally different outlook from the men. The men (I am talking about the graduate engineers) have (or have had) hobbies like tinkering with cars, building boats, building electronic circuits, and amateur radio. We lend each other stuff like compression testers, welding outfits and oscilliscopes. The women "engineers" however do none of this; they look on with contempt and claim they are "too busy with families" (as if men are not), but it seems they did not take an interest even before they had a family.
In fact they do not seem much interested in engineering at all. They have helped to turn the work activity to things like financial planning, work programming, managment training, and (worst of all ) "'Elf and Safety". The whole nature of the work has changed from real engineering projects to perfecting paperwork trails. It is no wonder that the Western world is losing or has lost its technological lead and has turned to navel gazing instead.
Re:oh please. I'm tired of this "diversity" bullsh (Score:4, Insightful)
My female colleagues and managers are WITHOUT EXCEPTION great software engineers. I wonder why your workspace is so bad?
It's hard to blame it on "the women" because then you'd have to explain why places like my workspace doesn't suffer. So it must be something else. Any ideas?
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WTF?
Nobody with any real experience can honestly say 'My * colleges and managers are WITHOUT EXCEPTION great software engineers.' unless they are COMPLETELY clueless about what a great software engineer is.
I suppose if you replace * with 'great software engineer' it might be technically true. Trivial case.
Re:oh please. I'm tired of this "diversity" bullsh (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, talk about a sweeping generalization. I know lots of female engineers who have engineering related hobbies, but naturally they do tend to put those to one side somewhat once they start having families. There are only so many hours in the day, and kids take up a lot of them. The fact that some guys don't really pull their weight isn't really something to be proud of.
Anyway, that is mostly irrelevant to the argument. I know lots of engineers who do something completely different in their own time. They want to get away from work, have a change of pace. It doesn't mean they are bad engineers, they just have different tastes to the ones who spend every waking minute thinking about code or electronic circuits or mechanical designs.
Do you think the best doctors go home and practice surgery for fun or something? Lend each other scalpels and MRI scanners?
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One of the common complaints of modern feminism is that while women have made great strides in the workplace, they're only something like 17% of CEOs. Yes, but they're probably 1% of trash collectors and coal miners, too. Men are at the top of the economy, but they're also at the bottom. The cry for more female CEOs is basically saying "we want only the good jobs!"
Also, uh, you want to join the ranks of greedy sociopaths? "It's mostly men screwing over workers and destroying the environment! We want to be o
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WTF? (Score:2)
Okay.
How the fuck does that happen?
2+2=4 whether you are a boy or a girl.
How is a teacher grading that differently based on the kids' names?
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A lot of math grading has a subjective element. At least when I was in school, you usually had to show your work on math problems, and could get partial credit. For example if you correctly analyzed a word problem, set up the equations correctly, and then made an adding error at the end, you'd get some points despite the wrong final answer. Continues at higher levels, e.g. when doing proofs.
It's possible to reduce some sources of bias by using grading rubrics, specifying precisely what you'll get points for
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The problem is that the anonymous scores were higher for girls.
So without a name, the girls (theoretically) completed more of the problems, correctly.
In order for the boys to score higher the teacher has to give a boy more points for either doing less work or including more errors.
Alice sets up the problem correctly. And completes it correctly except for 1 error.
Bob sets up the problem correctly. And completes it correctly except for 2 errors.
And Bob gets more points.
AND TFA seems to be saying that this in
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Pretty odd that the "outsiders" could pick out and favor the girls without knowing anything about them, even which name goes with which paper.
Of course, it could be down to better hand-writing by the girls, but hey. Handwriting (communication) is very important even in STEM pursuits.
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A willingness to give partial credit for work shown, even if the ultimate answer was wrong, and other things like that. They may be more willing, in this case, to assume that the boy with the wrong answer was on the right track, while the girl with the wrong answer was just flailing around and guessing, even when the provided answers and work were the same.
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By making it an essay test or something subjective, I'd guess.
Not that it really matters - even if there is a pro-boy bias to grading, boys are getting their asses kicked when it comes to pre-college education in the US. And the only reason it lessens at the college level is because colleges can just not accept lower-scoring boys.
But don't take my word for it, go check out any of the myriad of articles asking what can be done about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=boy+girl+education+gap&ie=utf-8&
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***sighs***
You're missing that the exams scored by strangers was NOT the exam scored by the teachers.
From TFA:
BLOCKQUOTE>The students were given two exams, one graded by outsiders who did not know their identities and another by teachers who knew their names.
No, girls didn't do better on an exam scored by strangers than the same exam scored by teachers. They did better on a different exam.
Two "special" exams in the school year. One
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Based upon that I would say that the "study" was fatally flawed.
Photocopies.
I was giving the "researchers" too much credit for knowing how to do basic research.
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Okay.
How the fuck does that happen?
2+2=4 whether you are a boy or a girl.
How is a teacher grading that differently based on the kids' names?
Aw, Billy, you thought 2+2=3. Well, good effort, half credit.
Sally, you dumb slut, 2+2 does not equal 3. See, this is why you're never going to get any farther in life than a stripper pole.
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If you keep repeating it often enough (Score:3)
You might even get people to believe there is a problem. Well at least people that don't work in the field. The rest will be trying to find ways to kill the goose that has been laying golden eggs.
Israel? (Score:4, Interesting)
How is a study on middle and high school students in Israel relevant to elementary students in the US?
Although the study took place in Israel, Mr. Lavy said that similar research had been conducted in several European countries and that he expected the results were applicable in the United States.
[John]
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Obviously, allowing too many facts into a statistical database makes it much more difficult to skew the results.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in large part the problem is the stigma. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a secondary effect to the ostracism from social circles, girls are much more socially adept and interested in social interaction than boys. The general effect is likely to impact girls more than boys.
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This is pretty much bang-on. Also note that nerds are really the only part of the male population who are always portrayed as sexually unattractive by the mass-media (fat guys can be funny, criminals can be 'bad boys' etc.) So from an early age you portray geeks as weirdos and pick on them, then hammer the message to girls that these creatures are as unfuckable as its possible to be.
What would be the result? Hmmm, less women doing science ("I don't want to be seen as an asexual weirdo and spend my working
What do you have to offer others? (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a millenial, I can attest to the fact that growing up interested in technology and science automagically branded you a nerd.
As someone a little older I can attest to the fact that getting branded as a nerd has very little to do with your specific interests and a whole lot to do with how you interact socially with others. I coach kids from 1st grade through 12th and have for over 20 years. What gets them ostracized pretty much never has anything to do with specific interests. People get ostracized for behaving oddly in combination with having nothing to offer others. Nobody gives a shit about the fact that you are interested in technology. What they DO give a shit about is what you can do for them. Can you help them socially? Are you someone who is kind to them when they need it? Can you help them with their homework? Are you fun to be around? These are things that matter in school.
You were picked on relentlessly, harassed and ostricized socially, and generally spent a lot of time avoiding direct contact with interpersonal engagements that did not pass a battery of personal safety tests. Chess club or magic the gathering at school was considered your Turing test for a friend.
I was on our school chess club and played tons of games both computer and otherwise. I spent lots of my free time in the school computer labs and most of my close friends were rather on the nerdy side. I wore thick glasses, was something of an introvert and was painfully shy around girls. I have a name normally associated with the opposite gender and wasn't the most socially graceful kid ever to put it mildly. HOWEVER, I also was the captain of the cross country and wrestling teams. I also made some effort to be friendly and be interested in what others were doing. Sure I got picked on plenty but I also didn't make myself an easy target. I had something to offer others that was unique to me.
EVERYONE gets picked on. I got beaten up on the playground because of my name and the fact that I was a shy, emotional kid by some thugs a little older than me. You know what? I got over it. Anything that makes you stand out is likely to cause you to get picked on. The only thing you can do about it is to adjust your reaction. You can go sulk in a corner but if you are hoping for pity you will be disappointed. Nobody except maybe your parents gives a shit about you except for what you can do for them. Have something to offer. You will not get a job because you are a nice guy who works hard. You need to have something more than that to offer. Things are no different when you are a child. This [cracked.com] is a rather good and frank article about what I'm talking about. Have something to offer the world and you'll find it a much more manageable place to be.
Billy Graham and the moral majority however were convinced you were the devil incarnate for playing the game, which was verboten in many schools despite its keen ability to teach logic and strategy.
I've never seen a school that forbid playing chess and teachers generally only give a shit about other games like MtG when they interfere with classes. Maybe you lived in a place where they were irrational about such things (sadly there are some) but that is certainly not the norm and I've lived in a lot of places around the US. Certainly enough to know that that is not the norm.
I for one wore a lot of black, kept to myself, made excellent grades, and played a lot of doom/heretic.
So you dressed oddly, didn't speak to anyone, didn't have anything to offer anyone else and you wonder why people might have thought you strange and wanted little to do with you? Sounds like you were a real self absorbed buzz-kill.
My prize to claim for having spoken a bit too loudly with friends about a quake match and my affinity fo
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If you were playing the original doom and heretic, I kinda doubt you're a millennial, unless your parents thought doom was appropriate for under 12-year-olds or you couldn't find anything newer to play by 1998...
You have got to be fucking kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
"Men and women are different, deal with it" (rotates between -1 flamebait and +5 interesting)
"That hasn't been proven" (+3 insightful)
"Gamergate is evil" (+3 troll)
"Gamergate is good" (rotates between -1 flamebait and +5 interesting)
"Here's a comprehensive discussion of the merits of this article" (no moderation)
"The patriarchy is real" (+2) "No it isn't"(+4)
Here's my own input:
Slashdot will you PLEASE stop running the sjw story of the day. You're not fooling anyone and it will never come out the way you want until you start actively censoring comments. And pushing clickbait isn't giving you any points either.
Everyone who holds a gender-based opinion on this: PLEASE take half the time you would otherwise argue about this and review the latest studies, but take into account who funded them and the difference in funding dollars for two conflicting points of view.
Everyone else: I hope you see the obvious agenda-pushing that has been happening these last few months and inoculate yourself against it with knowledge.
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I agree with you.
A suggestion, though. I would like to end use of the term "SJW." To those unfamiliar with the term, it sounds like someone who actually fights for social justice. They do not understand that is being used ironically, as a SJW does not fight for social justice, but uses social justice rhetoric to self-aggrandize and manipulate.
I think a more descriptive term will better explain the dangers of these people. They are "female supremacists."
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So anything about women in science is clickbait. Everything on this site IS clickbait, they want you to read the articles. What exactly is Slashdot getting out of this one? 1 article out of many is certainly going to....what make their ad revenue skyrocket? Or simply make a bunch of chauvinist people who can't takes their heads out of their own asses to see other perspectives uncomfortable. Heaven forbid they think women should be treated equally and fairly without being seen as sex objects and put on pedes
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Blame will never go to the teachers (Score:2)
Boys and Girls are different (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in Middle School in the mid 80s, everyone knew that computers were going to be a major part of the future. At that time, personal computers did not yet have an OS To Rule Them All, and the amount of things one could actually accomplish with a home computer was relatively limited. Pretty much any home computer of that era booted straight into BASIC, and most people perceived computers primarily as things in which people wrote software for to tell it what to do.
At that time schools were trying to make use of computers in the curriculum (beyond Apple IIs playing Oregon Trail and entering LOGO instructions to move the Turtle), and what most schools went with was BASIC programming. Our school had recently "upgraded" from TI-99/4A to Color TRS-80 (which was upsetting to me, because I owned a TI and could program for it very well). So my entire grade of 7th graders spent an entire semester programming in BASIC. Every boy, every girl - all of us. We always worked in teams of two (mostly boys paired up and girls paired up, as is typical at that age). Further, this was commonplace in most schools of the era.
So here is what we *should* have seen. Since we had boys and girls all being equally submersed in the writing of software for hundreds of thousands of children, if boys and girls equally relate to, identify with, and enjoy programming, then we should have seen a surge of that generation of girls also becoming computer scientists. But we did not. When I was in college less than a decade later, my fellow majors in CS consisted of only two females (and I'm friends with both of them on FB still). One does not do anything related to computers at all. The other is still involved in technology, but is more interested in and active in designing artistic elements at the company where she is CTO.
I think we're seeing the overall, general difference between male and female here. I think it's obvious that different talents and thus careers seem to carry with them trends in certain kinds of personalities. Generally, do musicians, artists, executives, managers and computer science people each seem to have personality tendencies that go along with their career? Those tendencies aren't "learned" by being in the career - those individuals had those traits before they entered their profession. So it is my belief that, generally, the typical female does not relate to software development. Perhaps it is because male and female brains are indeed physiologically different in various ways, and it is more enjoyable and / or natural for a male brain to think in a single-track mode required to deeply delve into one specific thought process for a long time while developing software. Or maybe it's for other reasons along that line.
Regardless, my point is simple. Why is anyone trying to point fingers at our educational system instead of just admitting men and women are different, and women just simply may not like software development?
"pro-boy biases" (Score:2)
Girls consistently outperform boys in school. In all subjects.
The education system doesn't work as well for boys.
Re:"pro-boy biases" (Score:5, Insightful)
Pro-boy bias?
As a parent of a 4th grade boy I would say the idea of a pro-boy bias is absolutely laughable.
In elementary school, girls are a teacher's dream -- polite, hard-working, focused. Boys are their nightmare -- boisterous, easily distracted, physically busy and fidgety.
When you walk through the halls and see the student work on the walls, the girls' writing is neat, their sentences well-structured and complete and if there's an artwork component, it's also very neat, colorful, etc. The boys work (with a small handful of exceptions) is almost always the opposite of this.
About the only thing that could justify a "pro-boy" bias would be that boys' end up monopolizing teacher time because they're like herding cats and the girls generally don't need as much attention to get the expected results. But calling this "bias" isn't at all accurate as it implies the teachers have an agenda in favor of boys rather then needing to give them some extra attention because otherwise they won't learn at all.
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Well, girls only outperform boys in 95% of subjects, so until they have 100%, it's proof of a pro-boy bias. After that, though, the fact they aren't outperforming boys by an even greater margin will be because they are held back by the pro-boy bias.
Am I Missing Something? (Score:3, Interesting)
But wait... (Score:2)
But wait, girls excel at math and science according to test scores in elementary schools, so it must be the teacher's fault that by high school and college they drop from it. Of course it couldn't have anything to do with a culture that hypersexualizes young women. Look at the upcoming 50 Shades movie. Obviously, a young woman can't be complete and productive unless she is first an object of desire.
If you want more women in science and math, you need to change the culture that tells them that their primary
If there's on rap the teachers should take (Score:2)
Conditionals are one thing they'd have to learn and so too branching etc. But those are simple concepts that even a kid can pick up.
Wow (Score:3)
I've already given the answer to the problem. We have to force them into tech jobs. Determine the proper gender match, have a lottery, and the losers .....eeerrrrrm winners go into STEM .
The really big problem with the idea that the teachers and schools are part of the grand conspiracy is that if you take a look around schools these days, there are precious few males in the picture. Teacher gender balance is rather askew in favor of women.
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Your assumption boils down to "teachers are women and therefore don't have a gender bias against girls and maths"
??? Weird. That assumption is counter to common sense and my experience (as a male teacher).
Yawn (Score:2)
Tech take the rap for elementary school diversity? (Score:2)
Talk about a field with a diversity problem: In the US, 87% of the teachers are female. In my own country of Switzerland, it's 82%. What a scandal!
Make Barbie an android instead of a doll.... (Score:2)
.
"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I was a victim of the stereotype (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously where is the conspiracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, where did this idea come from that there is a conspiracy to keep women out of the tech field? I work in a school with both high school and primary students (as the IT manager, not a teacher) that offers advanced computer classes (compared to other schools in the area). And not once have a I heard a teacher say no girls or this is geared for guys etc... (yes I know anecdotal evidence bla bla)....Hell even when I was in high school people did not ever say this profession is men only/women only...or even hint maybe you should not go into this field because you are a man/woman. In fact everybody is always told (falsely IMHO) you can do annnnnnything you want with your life (nice fairytale).
Why is this not a major issue in other male dominated fields? Like car mechanics? Or trucking? Taxi? Miners? People who cut trees for a living?
You want to know why? Because companies like Google, Apple and other tech giants are probably looking for another way to bring down salaries of IT workers by trying to recruit from another pool of workers.That is what, IMHO, it comes down to. Outsourcing and H1B visas (or wtv they are called, not from the US) are not very popular policy and are getting harder and harder to increase/justify.....So they are looking at the next best thing: get more women involved! In a perfect scenario it should hypothetically double the number of IT workers and nothing can be done to stop it (if you did how dare you you sexist), unlike the other methods.
It's all about the benjamins my friends, nothing more nothing less. If Apple really gave a shit about society & fairness, it wouldn't be using slave labor to manufacture the goods that lead to the hugest income reported EVER by a company. Hypocrites.....
There is teacher bias, but it's not against girls. (Score:4, Interesting)
A study by researchers from the University of Georgia and Columbia University [uga.edu], which evaluated 5,800 elementary school children, came to the opposite conclusion as these Israeli researchers. Researchers analyzed data from 5,800 elementary school students and found that boys performed better on standardized exams in math, reading and science than their course grades reflected [huffingtonpost.com].
From the above-referenced study:
The gender differences in grades emerge early in all subject areas and favor girls in every subject. Because boys out perform girls on math and science test scores, it is surprising that girls out perform boys on teacher grades in math and science by nearly 0.15 standard deviations. Even more surprising is that the girl boy gap in reading grades is over 300 percent larger than the white black reading gap and the girl boy gaps in math and science teacher grades are about 40 percent larger than the corresponding white black grade gaps.
and
the inconsistency between test scores and grades is largely accounted for by non-cognitive skills. White boys who perform as well as white girls on these subject-area tests and exhibit the same attitude towards learning as white girls in the classroom are graded similarly.
So, in short, if a boy acts and has a similar learning style as girls, he will get the same grades as girls. Women dominate the teaching profession - 84% of teachers are women. In Kindergarten it's even worse - 98% of teachers are women. Therefore, women apparently value students whose learning style is similar to their own.
In another study, boys were awarded lower grades by women teachers than by external examiners. [nzherald.co.nz] Whereas male teachers gave girls the same marks as external examiners.
On the political side, in 1972 there were 17% fewer women graduates of college programs than men and this was considered something of a crisis and Title IX was passed to ensure equal opportunities for education regardless of gender. Today, 25% few men than women graduate from college and President Obama calls this a "great accomplishment." [cnsnews.com]
When will we blame... (Score:3)
Re:Pointing fingers at problems (Score:5, Insightful)
That answer is unacceptable. They must choose science and technology. We must force them to choose because we have these quotas that must be filled.
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You can't force choices onto people because it becomes an obligation when you are forcing it.
Counterpoint: in real life, you sometimes have obligations to do stuff you don't wanna do or choose between less than optimal options.
Re:Pointing fingers at problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct. We must have gender equality and balance in all fields of employment. Unless, of course, it's a dirty or dangerous job. Men can have those.
Re:Pointing fingers at problems (Score:5, Insightful)
We must have gender equality and balance in all fields of employment. Unless, of course, it's a dirty or dangerous job. Men can have those.
Yep. I have yet to hear a peep from feminists complaining that there aren't enough women garbage collectors, miners, or fishermen. They only want the GOOD and EASY desk jobs.
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They exist. Easier to deal with drunk women. Men are still not allowed to 'beat up girls'.
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Except, you know, that in other societies women are interested in science and technology.
So no. You are quite simply wrong.
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Perhaps, but that wouldn't explain the results of the difference in grading
Did anyone ever stop to think that boys are better, and more interested, in some things than girls (and vice versa)?
I'm getting very sick of the daily "It's our fault that there aren't more women in tech" SJW blame-fest here on Slashdot. Are there fashion industry sites out there with a daily "It's our fault aren't their more straight men in fashion" blame-fest? Because, if not, then STFU and accept that some groups are just more attracted to certain fields than others. What do you propose as an alternative
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Well, yes, but this wouldn't explain why, when the papers were anonymous, girls did better.
Re:Pointing fingers at problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, but that wouldn't explain the results of the difference in grading
Did anyone ever stop to think that boys are better, and more interested, in some things than girls (and vice versa)?
I'm getting very sick of the daily "It's our fault that there aren't more women in tech" SJW blame-fest here on Slashdot.
And I'm getting very sick of the anti-SJW "I refuse to read the article, but will expound about how awful SJWs are because of my truthy gut feelings" bullshiat. You didn't read the article. The post you're responding to pointed out the difference in grading, and if you had read the article, you'd realize that GP was referring to:
Beginning in 2002, the researchers studied three groups of Israeli students from sixth grade through the end of high school. The students were given two exams, one graded by outsiders who did not know their identities and another by teachers who knew their names.
In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names. The effect was not the same for tests on other subjects, like English and Hebrew. The researchers concluded that in math and science, the teachers overestimated the boys’ abilities and underestimated the girls’, and that this had long-term effects on students’ attitudes toward the subjects.
Now, because you're clearly the slow kid who needs to have everything spoon fed to them, let me repeat: the students took the same test twice, and it was graded by different teachers. If the teachers did not know the gender of the student, the girls scored better. If the teachers did know the gender of the student, the boys scored better. These are farking math tests - there's a right answer and an infinite number of wrong answers. There's no reason that someone should score better or worse based solely on whether their name is Dick or Jane, unless the teachers are consciously or unconsciously discriminating.
So, now do you understand how your comment, "did anyone ever stop to think that boys are better, and more interested, in some thing than girls" is not just irrelevant, but totally wrong? The only thing you've shown is that you are worse than everyone who actually bothered to read the article.
Re:Pointing fingers at problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you hit the heart of it there. If that study is true, I can't help but ask WTH??? Unfortunately, the two sentence summary makes it sound really badly done. But as usual, It may just be bad science reporting. Can someone find the original study?
The quick summary makes us ask:
1) Were there really two tests? If so, why?
2) Why would something as objective as a math test be graded subjectively? Were they giving partial credit or something like that?
3) Which scores were correct? The teachers, or the outsiders?
4) What were the results of outside graders when they didn't know the names?
One could not conclude gender bias on the part of the teachers based solely on what they printed. For all we know it was a handwriting issue, and when someone knew the children's gender they forgave the boys for bad handwriting. There's too many possibilities here. It is tough to blindly trust this since it violates our inherent sense of justice, and gender bias is so political that the studies themselves are sometimes gender biased.
We really can't judge the study without more details...
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The difference in grading is because they were two different tests. How about repeating the experiment where the same test is graded by different people? Also, perform the test in the US instead of Israel before claiming the results are applicable to the US education system, which is nothing like the Israeli education system.
Clearly the researchers were girls who did not get a quality education in science. The poor nature of this study is proof that girls lag behind boys in the sciences.
Re:Pro-Boy Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is absolutely correct, I have kids and the school system is definitely set up for the women.
Boys get in trouble just for being boys. All of the ages things are learned at is in sync with when girls mature and are ready for the teachings.
School is not biased towards the boys at all.
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"School is not biased towards the boys at all."
What's worse is that people up and down the chain, going as high as the President, thinks this is a great idea!
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012... [pjmedia.com]
"“In fact, more women as a whole now graduate from college than men,” Obama wrote. “This is a great accomplishment—not just for one sport or one college or even just for women but for America. And this is what Title IX is all about.”"
The article continues...
"So if a 17% deficit was a catast
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How do you explain the research that certainly strongly suggests there is such a bias?
Easy. Those are studies performed by people with a vested interest in getting the grants that are looking for those results.
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The anti-science crowd's go-to way to dismiss any science you don't like.
Re:Pro-Boy Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you explain the research that certainly strongly suggests there is such a bias? And given that the bias is assumed to be unconscious, how can you be sure that you don't also have similar biases, affecting your judgement?
Well, for one - the study and research were done in Israel, not in the United States. Despite the author's conjecture that "The results should apply in the United States as well" - Israel is NOTHING LIKE the United States in education, culture, or....well, a lot of things.
What if I visited the Ivory Coast, or the Congo, or Nigeria, and did a study on elementary schools? The headline would read, "New Research Shows lack of White students affects diversity."
Then I wrote a research paper about how there's not enough white children in schools. I'd give that study about the same merit. Israel has radically different social bias - they are virtually a country of martial law - justifiably so because of the daily threats they live with. Their educational system reflects that. Applying it to the United States is bollocks. Israel doesn't learn about slavery and the U.S. civil war, or about our political system or national pastimes in school. Seriously, bollocks.
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So that's how it all started. Not quite the scenario that Claire Cain Miller has in mind.
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This isn't about equal opportunities, this is about equal outcomes.
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I have a skill level of 15. My skill is represented by this string:
000000101111100010001101101011001
You have a skill level of 16. It is represented by this string:
111100001110010100100111001001001
Our team's skill is represented by this string:
(bitwise AND of the two above)
111100101111110110101111101011001
As you can see, we have a combined skill level of 23.
This is a very basic answer to how having a diverse team can help.
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> everything you do pre-calculus is pretty trivial
Which is really sad for those who don't believe in made-up infinitesimals...