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Education Programming

Learn-to-Code Program For 10,000 Low-Income Girls 473

Posted by Soulskill from the boosting-the-engineer-population dept.
theodp writes: In a press release Tuesday, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) announced it was teaming with Lifetime Partner Apple and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on its Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to engage 10,000 girls in learning computing concepts. "Currently, just 25 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science to count as a math or science graduation requirement," explained the press release. "Because boys get more informal opportunities for computing experience outside of school, this lack of formal computing education especially affects girls and many youth of color." HUD, the press release added, has joined the Commitment to Action to help extend the program's reach in partnership with public housing authorities nationwide and provide computing access to the 485,000 girls residing in public housing. "In this Information Age, opportunity is just a click on a keyboard away. HUD is proud to partner with NCWIT to provide talented girls with the skills and experiences they need to reach new heights and to achieve their dreams in the 21st century global economy," said HUD Secretary Julian Castro, who coincidentally is eyed as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton, whose daughter Chelsea is the Clinton Foundation's point-person on computer science. Last year, Chelsea Clinton gave a keynote speech at the NCWIT Summit and appeared with now-U.S. CTO Megan Smith to help launch Google's $50 million girls-only Made With Code initiative.
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Learn-to-Code Program For 10,000 Low-Income Girls More

Learn-to-Code Program For 10,000 Low-Income Girls

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  • What about low-income boys? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @09:50AM (#49976921)

    Everyone deserves equal opportunity, right?

    • Re:What about low-income boys? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @09:54AM (#49976953)

      Nope. You're a boy. You are born guilty AND you obviously have it easy in the patriarchy! Ignore all those homeless white men, they're just there by choice.

    • Re:What about low-income boys? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:03AM (#49977065) Journal

      You haven't figured it out yet, have you? This has nothing to do with equality, period.

      • Re:What about low-income boys? (Score:5, Funny)

        by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:29AM (#49977343)

        Boys can't have periods, so of course they're not equal... wait, what?

    • yes, especially, because, according to TFA,

      "Because boys get more informal opportunities for computing experience outside of school, this lack of formal computing education especially affects girls and many youth of color."

    • Re:What about low-income boys? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:08AM (#49977649)

      Everyone deserves equal opportunity, right?

      Nope, low-income boys have to pin their hopes on basketball or football if they want a chance to escape poverty; unless they live in a rural area, in which case it's meth.

      • in which case it's meth

        Don't knock it until you try it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        What's your definition of "low income"? I lived in a household that made less than $25k/year because my dad was trying to go to school, but because he was going to school, our family was not eligible for welfare. My mom tells me of stories where she would purchase a watermelon because it was cheap at the time, and that one fruit had to last her for dinner for an entire week. As a child, we only went to the movie theatres twice, EVER. Jurassic Park was one, I forget the other.

        Now that you have an idea of h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nbauman ( 624611 )

      A column in the New York Times today touched on this.

      Traditional concern with broad distributional justice has given way to narrow movements like feminism, gay rights, black power and disability rights.

      Collective action, where co-workers cooperated with each other as colleagues and allies, has given way to individualism and competition.

      The result is greater inequality and more poverty.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06... [nytimes.com]
      Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up?
      Thomas B. Edsall
      JUNE 24, 2015

    • Re:What about low-income boys? (Score:4, Informative)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:43AM (#49978013)

      Indeed. This program is sexist as hell.

    • What about low income boys
      Everyone deserves equal opportunity, right?

      The lead sponsor of this program is the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) .

      Because boys get more informal opportunities for computing experience outside of school, this lack of formal computing education especially affects girls and many youth of color.

      That doesn't exclude others from sponsoring similar programs for low income boys.

      Is that a cricket I hear chirping?

  • No National Center for Men & Tech...? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @09:54AM (#49976957) Homepage

    How come sexual discrimination seems to be a one way thing with the political classes? Can you imagine the fuss and uproar if someone dared suggest a National Center for Men & [insert vocation with not many men here]? I'm sick & tired of this hypocritical social engineering.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @09:57AM (#49976991)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 )
      " boys tend to be more willing to go against peer pressure and do what interests them."

      LMOL - yeah that explains all those nerd with dates at the prom and giving football players swirlies....

      • Way to miss the point, big guy

        GP was saying that even when picked on mercilessly in social situations, boys will tend to not only stick with their geek-like hobbies, but use them as a shelter of sorts from the outside world... so long as it still interests them to do so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Inch by inch, the social justice warriors are getting closer to the truth that boys dominate these fields because of all of their informal experience. Why? Because boys tend to be more willing to go against peer pressure and do what interests them. Male nerds and geeks may resent peer pressure and bullying, but they'll stick to what they like. Never met a single boy who took the attitude that he couldn't pursue his hobbies because of peer pressure unless those hobbies were things you don't mention in polite society (and maybe even make the avante garde squeamish).

      No, girls don't need "more pushing." It would be a problem if a family let the sons fire up an IDE, editor + interpreter, etc. and told the girls that that was forbidden for them. I can pretty much assure you, that in the vast majority of American households, even religious ones, that doesn't happen. What naturally happens is that the boys will say "this is cool" and try it out and the girl will make all sorts of excuses ranging from lack of interest, to what would her girlfriends think.

      And no, boys by and large don't put pressure on girls to not share hobbies with them. I've never met a red-blooded male who thought a generally feminine female who shared most of his interests was a bad thing.

      I don't think that your conclusions are entirely correct.

      Boys accept being ostracized from the mainstream more readily than girls, and ostracized boys form their own culture. One of those cultures revolves around technology past the point of being a simple user of it. To a degree it's involuntary. There are girls in that culture too, but in my anecdotal experiences many of the girls are there more by choice than out of necessity.

      The nature of manipulating technology lends itself to those that are a

    • Re:Well they're getting closer to the truth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:34AM (#49977387) Homepage Journal

      It's the dream of every young (straight) geek guy to find a real geek girl to share their life with. Most of these guys secretly want a geek girl that's close to equal but just slightly better than them in certain areas so they have someone to push them and compete with.

      These are the same guys wondering why women are so focused on fashion and reality TV, things which are not logical.

      Each of these geek guys secretly wants to be asked by a pretty young thing real technical questions about what they do, not "how can you spend all of your time in front of a computer?" but "exactly what is this compiler you're talking about?"

      I'm 37 years old, I've been a professional geek since I was 18, I have come across these geek girls. The place I came across the most of them was an ISP that attracted young people in general. Even in that place most of the females saw what they did as a job to make a few bucks, but roughly 5% were interested in doing what the slightly older guys did (which included me, one of the older people there at the age of 21).

      I have become convinced from my own interactions that this just is not a female thing. I helped anyone who asked for help, I encouraged learning, self research and gave good long explanations that were fit for a classroom environment. The fact that I have seen women do well, succeed, and run with the men tells me they can. The fact only a few of them would take the initiative to do it when you had someone like me, and my other employees that I encouraged to help and to train any who asked - and did - yet only about 5% wanted to know more than the minimum causes me to wash my hands of it - stop trying to guilt trip me for being good at my job when there are proportionally way less women who can keep up.

      Since that job I've worked with other women, other good women who I consider my level. I've also worked with quite a few affirmative action women who had my job title, usually got paid a little better than me, yet would crawl around in the sub floor to track cables because it was icky, wouldn't/couldn't move any equipment, wouldn't terminate fiber because they didn't like the epoxy, wouldn't put on the asbestos suit and run cable with the guys because it's hot and sweaty. Nope, most wanted to do the paperwork - which I didn't really mind, because I hate paperwork, but other than title and the official list of duties these women were not my direct peers. Even at the worst of these jobs there was usually one or two women would would run with the guys, but for each of them there was two or three that wouldn't. A man taking the same attitude towards work as those others wouldn't last more than a week or two before being let go.

      I'm getting pretty tired of these guilt-tripping affirmative action programs. Instead of giving me more of that 5% or 1 in 3 depending on where I was I'm worried these programs might work and flood the workplace with the 95% or 2 in 3 that the natural dedicated geeks, yes, the men and the women who will run at their level will be expected to carry.

      • It's the dream of every young (straight) geek guy to find a real geek girl to share their life with.

        I take it you've met me and my wife, then. Alas, the only Dave I remember from back then died many years ago....

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I've also worked with quite a few affirmative action women who had my job title, usually got paid a little better than me, yet would crawl around in the sub floor to track cables because it was icky, wouldn't/couldn't move any equipment, wouldn't terminate fiber because they didn't like the epoxy, wouldn't put on the asbestos suit and run cable with the guys because it's hot and sweaty.

        To paraphrase XKCD, this is how it works. If a man is shit at his job and lazy, he's shit and lazy. If a women is shit at her job and lazy, she only got there because of affirmative action.

        Seems more likely they are just victims of the Peter Principal or good at interviewing. Lots of people get into good positions because they interview well, but are actually pretty bad at their jobs in practice.

    • Re:Well they're getting closer to the truth (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fwarren ( 579763 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:51AM (#49977523) Homepage

      I just don't understand. Here is my background.

      Mom was a schizophrenic, my dad an alcoholic. We moved every year or so till I was 13. At that point we were stuck in a crummy motel in central California. This is in the early 80s. So when I was 16 I would walk into K-Mart and local appliance stores, and play around on the Commodore VIC 20's and later Commodore 64s. The local community college had a Commodore PET computer.

      I had no money, no one to show me the ropes, not the best nor most stable education, parents that could not take care of themselves, so I had to watch over them and my 3 younger siblings. I taught myself Commodore Basic, then how to program in assembly. This consisted of writing a program on paper, looking up the opcodes, converting them from hex to decimal and then writing a loader that would POKE those values into memory and then do a SYS call to run the machine language program. From there I moved on to learn FORTH.

      I will admit I am a male. But I had SO many disadvantages and yet I had a desire to learn how to program. Lets not forget wanting to learn how to do this classified me as a geek and meant I had to deal with lots of kids and peer pressure telling me there was something wrong with me on a fundamental level for engaging in such activities.

      Exactly what is holding back any boy or girl in any halfway modern country from learning to program? "Boo Hoo, I would have to buck social norms to learn to program." Well it is not much of a dream or desire if that would stop you. "Boo Hoo, no one will teach me." There are thousands of hours of video on youtube, You can google out books on any programming language you want. If you don't like the teaching style of some video or book, try a different one.

      The world in inherently "I don't give a damn". If you are a former heroin addict and you want to work in pharmacology, well you are going to have some hurdles to overcome. I can't tell you why any particular girl in junior high would decide they don't even want to know about computers. I can't tell you why a girl would decide against a career in programming. What I can tell you from pulling myself up in a world filled with welfare recipients who are just wanting a check is this. If you have to coddle and beg to get people into a program, and work hard at removing every barrier to their success, it hurts the drive and motivation for most people. Without it having some personal cost it has little value to them. Why work hard? If they don't do well, someone will step in and help them. If other things seem more important at the moment, walk away, the program will always welcome them back later with open arms.

      TL;DR - If you are not willing to fight to become something because you want it, what outside program is really going to make a difference.

      • No mod points, but I did want to at least contribute a *slow clap* for this post.

  • Clinton Global Initiative is all you need to know. Why not 4 years ago, 6 or even 10? We're in an election cycle, this is now just a campaign talking point and to deflect criticism away from deleting e-mails, taking money from foreign governments and overall credibility. "Hey look we do something good."

  • Everyone deserves equal opportunity

    Not until the misdeeds of the parochial and bigoted past are properly atoned for. Which, of course, means "never".

    The only way to argue against the obvious sexism here in the current political climate of the USA is by saying it is ineffective — appeals to fairness will not get you past the establishment raised by the educators like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

    It has been observed, that "marrying down" costs a woman as much as $25K per year [nationaljournal.com] so, instead of saying

  • "Currently, just 25 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science to count as a math or science graduation requirement,"

    Unless the 'Computer Science' courses these students will be studying is Knuth-level algorhythms, they should take the Math classes. Learning how to 'code' is vocational education, and the math background will be of more value.

    • Exactly. Programming courses - which is what these are - follow under the business category in high school. It's not computer science. Stop pretending this is anything other than programming. It does not replace math or science - not even close. Need to drop the stupid STEM acronym and go back to Science and Engineering.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )
      If pre-algebra, aka, 6th grade through 8th grade study counts as math for high school graduation, the basic use of logic structures for loops and control in programming may as well count too.

  • All about dodging the class action lawsuit (Score:3)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:12AM (#49977147)

    >> Google's $50 million girls-only Made With Code initiative

    Somewhere inside Google someone made the decision that a near-future class action targeting Google about its lack of women (whatever the number is, someone will be annoyed until it's at least 50%) would cost a lot more than $50M, so there's the budget.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nbauman ( 624611 )

      >> Google's $50 million girls-only Made With Code initiative

      Somewhere inside Google someone made the decision that a near-future class action targeting Google about its lack of women (whatever the number is, someone will be annoyed until it's at least 50%) would cost a lot more than $50M, so there's the budget.

      Well, yes. In a *protected class*-discrimination lawsuit, companies are allowed to tell the jury about all the efforts they made to attract the *protected class* through help-wanted ads in publications read by *protected class*, in hiring interviews at *protected class* schools, in job fairs attended by *protected class*, etc.

      That's why you saw all those help-wanted ads for reactor core designers and electrical engineers in Ms. magazine and the Amsterdam News.

      I'm sure there are woman nuclear engineers who r

  • That way they will be used to the low incomes that developers get competing with people on H1B visas

  • We don't need a sexist training program. We don't need more computer programmers - we need better ones. Society would be better off if the money were spent for training in healthcare professions.

    • This. Why don't we spend money encouraging people who want to learn a particular trade to learn the trade, rather than spend money on people who are not interested in a trade to learn the trade?
      I'm sorry if it is offensive to some people, but women and men are different. I'm all in favor of giving money to women who WANT to be in CS (not to the exclusion of men, though. That would be discriminatory).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        I suppose you also think we should offer food-stamps to the wealthy, because to exclude them would be discriminatory...

        • You can't compare having a natural desire to do or not do programming to a state of being rich or poor. The poor don't WANT to be poor. However, people who have no desire to do programming do not WANT to have a desire to do programming.
  • Out of this 10,000 we got 1 programmer. See it works.

    • >> Out of this 10,000 we got 1 programmer.

      Not a problem. See comment about "avoiding the class action lawsuit" above.

  • Stop it- they're not interested (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:36AM (#49977407)

    Stop trying to force CS on girls. I have eight computers in my house. My son and daughter both teens, have free reign with half of them. Guess who wants to edit skins on a computer for a game and who wants to watch Netflix and text their friends? Encourage kids who are interested, but stop this nonsense. Trying to make everyone a programmer is like trying to make everyone an athlete. It's not going to happen.

  • Why is it always "learn to code" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NominalLoss ( 4146707 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:44AM (#49977469)
    Why not learn to wire a house or install plumbing? Why is every program trying to over-saturate IT? I believe the construction industry is a boys only club as well.

    • Re:Why is it always "learn to code" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @10:50AM (#49977515)

      >> Why is it always "learn to code"? Why not learn to wire a house or install plumbing?

      Because this whole thing is about deep-pocketed companies that employ a lot of mostly male coders avoiding class action lawsuits. Attorneys aren't particularly interested in chasing down all-male but independent electrician or plumbing crews when Google or Apple are ripe for the picking.

    • Why not learn to wire a house or install plumbing? Why is every program trying to over-saturate IT?

      ...mostly because IT doesn't require a whole lot of physical labor and/or physical agility? Sure, you might have to pick up an odd server or router chassis here and there, but even that's only work for the sysadmin server monkeys, not the code monkeys.

    • "Why not learn to wire a house or install plumbing? Why is every program trying to over-saturate IT?"

      Well, if you look at some of the sponsors, and how much lobbying they do to support the reduction of salaries either by increasing supply or allowing cheaper labor, there's one answer.

      One of the problems with IT, both development and systems sides, is that is straddles the line between a trade and a profession. No one in the field wants to think they work in a trade -- they wear a collared shirt to work, wor

  • What about other professions? (Score:5)

    by ksheff ( 2406 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:00AM (#49977571) Homepage
    No push to train low income girls to become mechanics, welders, machinists, or sort of manufacturing skills?

  • Tangentially related: Race-based admissions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quietwalker ( 969769 ) <pdughi@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:02AM (#49977597)

    I was listening to NPR the other day, and this story popped up: Examining Race-Based Admissions Bans On Medical Schools [npr.org] .

    The short version is; certain states have ruled that colleges are not allowed to consider race as part of their admissions criteria, and medical schools are noticing that black and latino graduation numbers have decreased since then.

    The intent was to focus on merit-based evaluations. Seems noble, right? We want the best doctors we can get. However, the effect appears to be to reduce the number of minority students admitted. This, of course, has people outraged, and scrambling to find ways to work around the system - like sending recruiting teams to primarily-black or latino high schools, and hoping that will increase the applicant numbers.

    What shocked me is that everyone is dancing around the race issue (and only certain races; not, for example, Indian or other asians). Everyone agrees the minority graduation numbers have dropped because individuals from a given group don't actually meet the admissions criteria. They're not qualified to be students or doctors. That apparently hundreds or thousands of people's failing grades were ignored because of their race. That prior to the no-race rule, doctors, in this case, were not necessarily the most well qualified individuals for the job. In fact, some significant percentage of them should not have been allowed in.

    This trend isn't new either. When I was a lifeguard back in the 90's, the requirements changed from being able to swim a specific distance in a certain time, to removing many of these fitness requirements altogether. The reason? It was apparently unfairly eliminating people with poor physical ability or handicaps. The new focus was to do all the lifeguarding from the side of the pool: hooks, ropes, and life preservers.

    Heck, just last month there was a minor kerfuffle about fire departments force- and expedited-promotions of minorities over whites.

    I can't help but see this girls-only computer science focus being another of these sorts of ill-considered plans, where capability takes a back seat to minority inclusion and political correctness. Sure, it's not as vital as our doctors, firemen, and lifeguards, but it's the same line of thought. In our rush to be politically correct and all inclusive, we mistake equality for equally fair, and it serves no one well except those promoting our differences.

    Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? Like Harrison Bergeron [archive.org] crazy? I can't be the only one, right?

    • Re:Tangentially related: Race-based admissions (Score:4, Informative)

      by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:24AM (#49977815)

      It's not hard to figure at all. People with shitty family lives in school underperform regardless of their innate abilities. Black and Latino groups are some of the poorest racial groups, so it follows that on average, they'd test worse on enterance testing (given with a grain of salt).

      Grand scheme though, 10,000 is a pretty small number given the millions of people currently in the field. Obviously the end number of individuals who make it to the professional world will be far less, but I'm glad to see there are some programs in place to help those that need the hand.

      For myself, I started out with a lower-middle family, but my Dad was lucky enough to be in a union job where they contributed to childhood post-secondary savings programs enough so that when I ended up going to post-secondary, most of my bills were covered by the program, and a few scholarships/bursaries offered through the schools / donors. If I didn't have the small amount of savings my dad had saved for me, I'd very likely be doing a quite different job (and a far worse path) than I am now.

  • Just curious, because learning to code is simple if you have a computer. There are tons of free courses, development platforms, etc... offering MORE courses seems pointless, and misses the fact that there is plenty of access to education online.

    So... in my mind, any effort to educate the masses (of any sex) comes down to providing that access through hardware. Not tablets (geez, useless as anything but an aid through which you might view books or videos), but desktops or laptops (laptops are more useful if

  • Measure of success? (Score:3)

    by Rudisaurus ( 675580 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:20AM (#49977773)
    It will be very interesting -- and I think they should do a follow-up (but I'm not holding my breath) -- to see how many of these girls are still coding at all in 5-years time and how many are earning a living from software development 10 years from now.

  • Since the aid is targeted at one gender, all the comments so far are complaining about that aspect. However, the bigger problem is _how_ this is being done, not _to whom._

    I have about 20 years' experience in what you could loosely classify as "systems" work, so I'm not a developer. I script, I automate stuff, and do development-y things sometimes, but I don't write software. However, I do see the output of developers on a regular basis because most of my job is systems integration these days. Putting someon

    • I think what they are really trying to do is to get these 10k girls some equivalent to that "informal experience" the boys have... but I don't see how you can ever really come up with something similar delivered by external pressure, rather than innate desire to learn.

      Getting more girls into the coding pipeline early would seem to be more a matter of figuring out ways ad reasons that would naturally draw girls to start learning to code in the same way boys do.

  • So I give them 10,000 low income girls, and they teach me to code?

  • Why is there no outcry about the under representation of girls for Selective Service?

    https://www.sss.gov/fswho.htm [sss.gov]

  • If I see one more article about STEM and young women I am gonna scream like a little girl. Coding is a high-risk career. It may pay relatively well out of college, but beyond that it is NOT a better choice than any other career. Burnout, agism, offshoring, wrist injuries, long hours, investment bubbles, etc. etc. etc. make it a risky career choice. At its best it's a stepping stone into something better, but so are a lot of other fields.

  • How do boys get more "informal opportunity" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @11:38AM (#49977969)

    Because boys get more informal opportunities for computing experience outside of school,

    What is that supposed to mean? Both boys and girls use technology equally outside of school as far as I can tell, in terms of access to technology or use of family laptops...

    The only thing I can THINK the mean by this, by the very indirect wording, is that boys play more games. Specifically Minecraft. If that's so, say that,

    But, I'm not sure Minecraft is truly a direct bridge to programming some seem to think it is... other games are actually a hinderance to learning to program, rather than a help - anything that absorbs time is to some degree taking away time you can learn to use to program.

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