Girls Take All In $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative 548
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video).
Re:Before you start complaining... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a woman and ex-coder, I'd say I got out of software development because of immoral companies like Google with their boot-licking race to the bottom when it comes to respect for the individual. My aversion to the field is an aversion to macho culture only to the extent that "might makes right" (i.e. "we do it because we can") is macho culture. I don't think they're appropriate in the workplace, but I'm not put off by sexist jokes, assumptions that I will fail (if anything, I've been treated too "delicately") and what-have-you.
Re:Before you start complaining... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Want to code? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what women would have you believe, but they are experts in manipulating men to feel we're in charge. It's not the case, women have been running the show for the entire time. They are just smart enough to understand the value of subtle action, and humble enough to not demand credit.
Re: Want to code? (Score:4, Interesting)
You sound so put upon. I don't see many male politicians talk about vasectomies or the fact that women have held any rights in America for less than 100 years.
"Catharine Esther Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher, the preacher and revivalist, feared that woman suffrage heralded an imminent national crisis challenging the “most sacred interests of woman and of the family state.”
She pointed out that under New York State law women had more advantages than men had.
A woman had unlimited and independent control of her property but regardless of how rich a wife was, the husband had to support her and the children. It had also become easier for a woman than for a man to obtain a divorce."
"Almost immediately after the April committee meetings, Helena Gilder detailed the reasons she opposed woman suffrage in a long letter to her dearest friend , Mary Hallock Foote...
She , like many other anti-suffragists, believed in an inextricable link between military service and voting; only a person able to sacrifice himself on the battlefield earned the right to vote."
"In view of the privileges they already had women did not need political rights. Mariana Van Rensselaer articulated her particular views about women in articles for the New York World in May and June 1894;...She considered the enfranchisement of millions of women a risk not worth taking. Women already held more privileges than men under the law.
Specifically, Van Rensselaer wrote, a woman had control of her earnings, her personal property, and any real estate she owned. She could carry on a business or profession, she had no responsibility for her husband’s debts, and she was not required to support him.
She could sue and be sued, and she could make contracts. She had no obligation to serve on juries. With her husband she had equal rights to their children and, yet, he was obligated to support her and her children. Women were entitled to alimony in the event of a divorce, while a man could not ask for alimony.
She was entitled to one third of her husband’s real estate upon his death, but he was not entitled to her property after death if there were no children. Van Rensselaer concluded that the distribution of labor and privileges between women and men seemed fair, that the different roles of women and men were critically important, and that it was “slander” to claim that men did not already take good care of women."
But when someone invests in a minority cause
Except women are literally in the majority in the US. Men are the minority.
Re:Before you start complaining... (Score:1, Interesting)
The flip side of that is that NO western job is worth the prevailing wage, except in ultra competitive fields with international mobility like movie or basketball stars. For all other jobs, cooks, engineers, doctors, street vendors, architects and bankers etc., you will always find some equally qualified individual in some developing country ready to work for (significantly) less.
So what ? The wage is the way we chose to organize our society and reward the individual contribution, according to our social contract. Some people are better off and some are worse off, but the base prosperity level of the society is a shared and common result of our combined effort. You cannot just go around trading your citizens for members of other, less functional societies anymore that you can switch your baby for a more beautiful one you found in the park, reasoning that babies are babies and it's merely by chance that yours was so ugly.
Re:Before you start complaining... (Score:2, Interesting)
according to our social contract
Show me this "social contract". I think a big part of the problem here is delusional reasoning based on imaginary things that don't actually exist. I grant that there is cooperation in a society, it is an inherent and necessary component. But to claim that is a "contract", requires that the thing be voluntary and agreed to. That generally is not the case.
I find that most of the people who use the term, "social contract" want me to do things for them, but can't be bothered to come up with reasons aside from vacuous, moralistic bullshit for doing them. My view is that these "social contracts", such as they are, are driving societies into the ground by creating all sorts of hefty obligations without providing the empowering means for satisfying those obligations..
Re:Want to code? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll stop playing my tiny violin when literally 99% of rapists are no longer men.
If you're using rape stats to justify discriminatory programs against men, then do you also support discriminatory programs against blacks, since blacks are disproportionately more likely to commit rape?
Re:I have a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Focusing on the escapes isn't focusing on the problem. Tell me, which sex is more likely to be diagnosed for medical "treatment" than the other? The current schooling environment is hostile to boys. *That* is the reason they aren't good at it, they are not taught how because the teachers are predominantly female and don't know or want to know how to teach boys. So the boys escape.
Re:Grace Hoppper would be PISSED (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not sure that calling someone an object is all that flattering.
Sexual partners.
My goal was to speak the truth, not to flatter.
I think most adults want to be treated modally, so to speak. When we're on the way to the bedroom, we want to be sexually desired. When we're on a conference call, we want to be seen as smart and competent and put-together. When we're on the sports field, we want to be seen as tough.
That's why I don't have a problem with someone being seen primarily as an object of sexual desire in the right circumstances. The problem is when a person only sees others as sexual objects.