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Education Math Science

More Compulsory Math Lessons Do Not Encourage Women To Pursue STEM Careers, Study Finds (phys.org) 239

Posted by msmash from the getting-to-the-bottom dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The demand for employees in STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and math) is particularly high, as corporations compete to attract skilled professionals in the international market. What is known as "curriculum intensification" is often used around the world to attract more university entrants -- and particularly more women -- to these subjects; that is to say, students have on average more mandatory math courses at a higher level. Scientists from the LEAD Graduate School and Research Network at the University of Tubingen have now studied whether more advanced math lessons at high schools actually encourages women to pursue STEM careers. Their work shows that an increase in advanced math courses during two years before the final school-leaving exams does not automatically create the desired effects. On the contrary: one upper secondary school reform in Germany, where all high school students have to take higher level math courses, has only increased the gender differences regarding their interests in activities related to the STEM fields. The young female students' belief in their own math abilities was lower after the reform than before. The results have now been published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
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More Compulsory Math Lessons Do Not Encourage Women To Pursue STEM Careers, Study Finds More

More Compulsory Math Lessons Do Not Encourage Women To Pursue STEM Careers, Study Finds

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  • At least the program was a success (Score:5, Interesting)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:04PM (#54152839)

    The needed more STEM people, and while the number of female students stayed the same, the number of male entries increased, so that's a good result.

    • Re: At least the program was a success (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Did you RTFA? Women were demoralized. It was not a success you racist, sexist xenaphobe.

      • Re: At least the program was a success (Score:5, Insightful)

        by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:13PM (#54152933)

        Women were demoralized

        People who get demoralized by math, probably shouldn't pursue a career in a STEM field. The earlier you can sort out who's interested and who's not, the better. That applies to both men and women equally, by the way.

        • But here's the real deal ... men and women being different must because of sexism!

          • Re: At least the program was a success (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:23PM (#54153029)

            Yep. On average women have bigger breasts than men. No way could there also be an average difference in the brain. That's unpossible! It's like people who think it's racist to point out there actually are statistical differences between races (primarily skin colour!)... stupidly wrong.

            Instead of trying to open the doors for women who want to be in these areas, have the aptitude for them, and may tend to get extra resistance because they're in the minority, it seems there are people who are hell bent on proving women aren't just equal in the philosophical sense, but actually the same. Even then, I'd be OK if they'd just work more on honestly figuring out if and how much of the difference is nature and how much is nurture before insisting there's something wrong if 50% of any given job market is staffed by women.

            • Err... "isn't staffed by women".

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Zemran ( 3101 )
              There is an average difference in brain size that is directly related to the simple fact that men are, on average, larger than women. Therefore they have larger brains.

              • OK, but we're talking functional differences here. You could scale me up 50% and I still wouldn't be able to intuitively grasp relativity.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bricko ( 1052210 )
            Holy crap - you mean men and women really are different - better keep that quiet the SJW's wont be nice to you

        • That's the real danger (Score:5, Interesting)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:43PM (#54153241)

          People who get demoralized by math, probably shouldn't pursue a career in a STEM field.

          I think this is in fact the real danger of an effort like this - because what you are saying may be conventional wisdom but it is TOTALLY wrong.

          The thing is that math is pretty much taught one way across schools and if that way does not agree with you, that says nothing about your ability to be good with various STEM fields or even math for that matter.

          I was a late bloomer, as it were, in my relation to math. I didn't really enjoy it pre college, and had trouble with in in college until somehow near the very end it all just clicked and I was fine.

          But I was programming, and enjoying programing, long before that point. And even while I was having lots of trouble with basic courses like statistics and calculus, I was getting A/A+ in things like algorithm classes that also required math...

          It seems to me that other STEM fields need people who like "traditional" math even less - like biology.

          So what an effort to make more math classes mandatory could be doing is actually driving away people from STEM fields who would otherwise like it. It seems more like what should be done is to make a variety of classes that make each STEM field as interesting as possible in order to draw you in to the topic, so that you enjoy the math required to enter the field because now it's not just pure concepts but has some grounding.

          • I was a late bloomer, as it were, in my relation to math

            Sure, there are always exceptions, but if you want to be smart about doing the most with a limited education budget, it's smarter to go by general rules that apply to 99% of the people. And rare geniuses among the 1% will probably find their way in the end.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by balbeir ( 557475 )
              He's probably less of an exception than you would assume.

              Have you seen the "surge" of ADHD cases in high schools ? One of the major causes of that is that different parts of the brain grow at different rates for different people and for many of these AD(H)D cases the issue "fixes" itself when they get older. But that is after they flunked their SAT and finished high school with a 2.5 GPA

              So the system is rigged against late bloomers and only the lucky ones that somehow struggled to get past all these ea

              • He's probably less of an exception than you would assume.

                Have you seen the "surge" of ADHD cases in high schools ?

                That's because we want to drug children so they aren't troublesome.

                I would definitely be a candidate for Ritalin if I were in High school today. I fidget, my mind works on several things at once, I was impatient as all hell when I was in School. I'm still like that, but I'm also annoyaing as all fuck, so thy would have drugged my up right nice.

                I was concerned when we had our son, but Ice Hockey kept him calm in school. Exercise and an outlet for aggression beats the shit out of drugs.

            • Sure, there are always exceptions, but if you want to be smart about doing the most with a limited education budget, it's smarter to go by general rules that apply to 99% of the people.

              So many of the best programmers I have seen have had similar mixed bags with math that I tend to think people are are really into math and good at coding, are more the exception than the rule.

              Part of the reason that is, real programming is not as "pure" as math. Some of the most advanced math students I know (like mathematic

          • The thing is that math is pretty much taught one way across schools and if that way does not agree with you, that says nothing about your ability to be good with various STEM fields or even math for that matter.

            I completely agree. I actually was good at maths at school, but the vast majority of what I was taught was completely useless and a lot of what my students were taught at school was actively harmful. Mathematics is a process for solving problems, but most teaching at school involves memorising steps in an algorithm and applying them mechanically. In the UK, we spent two years teaching teenagers to increase the speed at which they can solve a differential equation by about an order of magnitude. At the e

        • People who get demoralized by math, probably shouldn't pursue a career in a STEM field.

          When I hit a wall taking Introduction to Calculus, I bailed out on becoming a mathematician and later went into computers.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

          People who get demoralized by math, probably shouldn't pursue a career in a STEM field.

          Ha!

          Have you *seen* the maths syllabus in the US?

          I like maths. My job often involves maths. Sometimes I do some recreationally (I'm trying to prove a particular quantity is transcandental). I have a friend where we occasionally meet for coffee and fill pages with mathematical scribble just for entertainment. I've also bumped into the US school-maths (it's an insult to call it maths) syllabus, when I did some tutoring for a

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by flink ( 18449 )

            I've also bumped into the US school-maths (it's an insult to call it maths) syllabus, when I did some tutoring for a friend's kid.

            It wasn't just demoralizing. It nearly made me lose the will to live. It is that bad.

            Can you elaborate a little? I have a 5 year old daughter, live in the US, and I confess to being ignorant to how mathematics are taught abroad. If there are things I could be doing to make the learning process less painful in the future, I'd love to know about it. We are currently working with basic set theory, shapes, counting, and simple addition/subtraction and everything seems to be going well so far.

            • Can you elaborate a little?

              Sure, read, e.g. this https://www.maa.org/external_a... [maa.org]âZ

              It gelled heavily with what I saw.

              and I confess to being ignorant to how mathematics are taught abroad

              I don't really remember much from my schooldays in that regard. The US maths tutoring is a recent scar.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          People who get demoralized by math, probably shouldn't pursue a career in a STEM field.

          While I agree that not everyone has to or should pursue a STEM career, I can't agree with this particular avenue to not doing STEM.

          Demoralization doesn't tell you anything certain about a person's intrinsic ability.

          Math skills have to be built in sequence, and what produces failure in math for otherwise intelligent students is a failure to detect deficits in prerequisite skills before they generate a humiliating string of failures. Cramming more humiliation into the last two years of schooling is hardly a

        • Women were demoralized

          People who get demoralized by math, probably shouldn't pursue a career in a STEM field. The earlier you can sort out who's interested and who's not, the better. That applies to both men and women equally, by the way.

          But how do we appease the people that believe that male and female minds are identical, and that the only thing keeping women out of math intense fields is men? This is actually a serious question, because these people have no intention of changing their minds as to the cause of the imbalance.

          I'm convinced that as a generality there are some differences in the way male and female brains are wired. There are definitely outliers in each gender, but if we are going to have the same number of females in STEM

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Why the love on maths, physics make much more sense, whilst yes there is maths involved the formulas all tie in together much better. Maths formulas if you can remember them are a real hassle, physics if you have the basics you can construct the more complex ones. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPh... [reddit.com]

  • force them (Score:4, Insightful)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:05PM (#54152847)

    So, if you force people who are not good at math to do more of it, they will eventually figure out that they are not good at it and avoid it? Well, lets just do other things to force them into a field that they will not be good in. Anything but admit that there might actually be valid differences in the sexes.

    • Not what happened (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:46PM (#54153283) Journal

      So, if you force people who are not good at math to do more of it, they will eventually figure out that they are not good at it and avoid it?

      Actually, bizarrely, that is not what happened. If you RTFA it seems that the extra course decreased the gap in the maths skills between the men and women i.e. the women benefitted from the course more than the men but still ranked lower on average. However it decreased the women's confidence in their maths skills whereas for the men it was unchanged. So paradoxically the course did a great job in better preparing women for STEM careers while simultaneously making them think that they were unsuited for a STEM career.

      What is needed now is some psychological study to figure out why women developed such a gap between their actual maths skills and the perceived maths skills while the men did not. If someone could figure out that perhaps we can develop a better way of teaching maths and physics that imparts the required knowledge without the drop in confidence.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slew ( 2918 )

        Actually, bizarrely, that is not what happened. If you RTFA it seems that the extra course decreased the gap in the maths skills between the men and women i.e. the women benefitted from the course more than the men but still ranked lower on average. However it decreased the women's confidence in their maths skills whereas for the men it was unchanged. So paradoxically the course did a great job in better preparing women for STEM careers while simultaneously making them think that they were unsuited for a STEM career.

        What is needed now is some psychological study to figure out why women developed such a gap between their actual maths skills and the perceived maths skills while the men did not. If someone could figure out that perhaps we can develop a better way of teaching maths and physics that imparts the required knowledge without the drop in confidence.

        My completely hairbrained idea on why the gap in confidence exists is that more men have a "fake-it-until-you-make-it" mentality which can often be a boost to confidence (or over confidence), where women have a tendency to be more deferential to other people judging them. I doubt this is genetic (because there are quite a few exceptions to this), so my conclusion is that it is basically a "nurture" issue.

        The problem with math and physics is there is a big disconnect on what is required vs what is taught.

      • What is needed now is some psychological study to figure out why women developed such a gap between their actual maths skills and the perceived maths skills while the men did not.

        There are a few known reasons for this. One relates to early education. Girls tend to develop empathy earlier than boys. If the teacher is confident, then everyone benefits. If the teacher is female and frightened of maths, then the girls pick up on this and internalise it, the boys don't. If the teacher is male and frightened of maths, the girls pick up on it but don't apply it to themselves, the boys are oblivious. Around puberty, there's a whole lot of differences in confidence in relationship to e

  • The misogynerd narrative! Push it! I need more misogynerd narrative! Tell me why sexual harassment is the only reason! Tell me why I'm a rapist who merely hasn't been caught in the act yet!

    Wall Street must be absolutely free of sexual harassment! Nobody ever gets sexually harassed on Wall Street! Otherwise we'd hear about how sexist Wall Street is and how there's a huge push to get more womyn-born-womyn investment bankers!

    Build it up! Build it up! Build it up!

    When abortion becomes illegal, this will

  • Class sizes versus curriculum (Score:3)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:13PM (#54152945)

    In post-secondary education, class sizes are often at least partially based on the nature of what's being taught and if the subject requires student to student interaction or not. Some classes can have as few as a dozen students even for undergrad studies, and other classes may have 150+ in a lecture hall. Others still may have a hybrid; weekly lectures and also weekly small-group studies.

    in high schools though, typically all subject have approximately the same number of students per class, with the exception of some fine-arts programs where a band director may have a hundred students or where an auto shop teacher may have fifteen to twenty simply because of a lack of interest.

    Perhaps it makes sense to start looking how various subjects benefit from smaller class sizes. In particular, subjects where student to student interaction is almost as important as student to teacher interaction probably are not as-helped by smaller class sizes. Social Studies classes where the curriculum calls for students to discuss issues and their relative merits both as contemporary events and as historical ones may not require smaller classes, but mathematics, where students are learning from a combination of the rote facts of the textbook and from the teacher's instruction probably could disproportionately benefit from smaller class sizes, so that when students struggle the teacher has more time per pupil to address those struggles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      There are many variables the researches may not controlled for. Being published in an 'educational psychology' journal I am not confident of the results as many metastudies have shown that educational research more often that not is rigorous. In one metastudy they found that 80% of the articles could not be used due to basic flaws in design or statistics.

      The immediate flaw I though of was controlling for teachers. I have seen math teachers who work with everyone, but there are still too many that only

  • we tried carrot, next up is stick (Score:5, Insightful)

    by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:17PM (#54152961)
    I guess if we can't convince women to go into the roles that some SJW wants we'll just have to force them. For the greater good of course. This is already being brought up as shown here: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.... [dailytelegraph.com.au]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      The planned move from patriarchy to oppressive matriarchy is nearly complete.

      Every right-thinking individual knows than women belong in a cubicle or office, not pregnant, wearing a suit, and making 1%ers money to buy more sandwiches.

      • My favorite part of the intersectional Feminist ideology that's pushing this shit is how they fought tooth and nail to get women into the workforce apparently just so they could further their narrative about capitalistic exploitation.

        "We need more women in the workforce because equality!"
        "We need to stop the evil capitalists from exploiting women!"

        At least we've achieved equality of capitalistic exploitation, because that's important. Go team Socialism! Hurrah!

    • The SJWs aren't pushing this (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @04:41PM (#54154243)
      a bunch of wealthy capitalists tired of paying $100k/yr for a decent programmer are. Pull your head out of your ass. Not everything you don't like is the fault of SJWs. They're a small, vocal minority. Like religious nuts. The difference is the left ignores their nuts when it comes to policy. This is no different. Getting women into tech isn't a left wing policy. It's a right wing one used to depress wages. Hell, Beth Warren wrote a book on it ("The Two Income Trap"). Go read it sometime. It's great.

      • a bunch of wealthy capitalists tired of paying $100k/yr for a decent programmer are. ... Getting women into tech isn't a left wing policy. It's a right wing one used to depress wages

        Why don't you apply a little logic here. Are the Koch brothers and Trump "looking for female programmers"? Or are is it the tech billionaires, who are overwhelmingly progressive and Democrats?

        And it's not just that they want the additional labor supply, they also want to install their own values into kids in public preschools an

        • I don't recall saying "Koch Bros". Motherfning Zuckerberg is _not_ a progressive lefty. Hell, he just found God in advance of running for office. None of those guys are progressives. That's my point. Saying we shouldn't burn homosexuals (or if you're being nice about it "convert" them to hetro) doesn't make you a progressive. There's a whole world of economics and workers rights these guys don't give two shits about. Hell, they don't really care about the LGBTQs, they just don't like bad press

          Yes, right

          • I don't recall saying "Koch Bros".

            No, but I mentioned him to illustrate the absurdity of your point.

            Motherfning Zuckerberg is _not_ a progressive lefty.

            So? Neither is Peter Thiel. But the tech industry is overwhelmingly run by Hillary and Democrats-supporting progressives. And those people are the people who want women to get into tech. What they certainly are not is conservatives.

            Finally, the Dems _aren't_ progressives.

            Oh yes they are. They are nowhere near as racist, corrupt, and evil as their early 20th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Raenex ( 947668 )

        The difference is the left ignores their nuts when it comes to policy.

        Oh, so the left is against affirmative action now? Obama didn't perpetuate the wage-gap myth and blab on about how his daughters needed to get paid the same as men?

        • or our fringes. We own that. It's also not what the right wing press tells you it is. They'll tell you it's giving unqualified black men a job that rightfully belonged to a qualified white guy. They say it with a dog whistle but they still say it.

          All AA really says is that if 10% of the population is black and you don't have 10% blacks you better have a reason for that and it better be documented. For most that just means keeping resume's around. That's it. Book it. Done.

          OTOH, if you're a racist POS

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Raenex ( 947668 )

            All AA really says is that if 10% of the population is black and you don't have 10% blacks you better have a reason for that and it better be documented. For most that just means keeping resume's around. That's it. Book it. Done.

            Having to prove to the government that you aren't racist because you don't meet quotas is an onus in and of itself. It also encourages people to hire to the quotas to avoid scrutiny and punitive damages. In reality, the free market will do a better job than government looking over the shoulders of businesses and questioning who they hired and why.

            And then you say stupid shit like, "Getting women into tech isn't a left wing policy." It absolutely is [archives.gov]. It's also the leftist media that constantly pushes this, a

  • No offense but (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:21PM (#54153003)

    If they broaden that scope a bit, they might note that STEM degrees are in decline overall. ( Unless you're in India )

    Due, in no small part, to the current business practice of bringing in H1-B labor for pennies on the dollar. The reasoning being to cut wage costs for everyone who isn't at the executive pay scale. All the while playing the victim card of " We can't find qualified candidates locally " ( Translates to: We don't want to pay domestic market wages for this position )

    In this work environment, it wouldn't matter if folks were given access to the most amazing math classes the world has to offer. The folks capable of taking those classes are all too aware of what awaits them in that career field, post education. Debt, with little chance of getting a decent paying job if they have to compete with the H1-B folks.

    The smart ones simply choose not to play the game and find another career choice.

    Regardless of gender.

    • they might note that STEM degrees are in decline overall. ( Unless you're in India )

      Even in America, it's Indians that are keeping STEM degrees around at all. I (plain old boring white guy) did a MS in CS at an American university about 10 years ago and in most of my classes, I was the only non-Indian (as in, born in India, here on a student visa) in the class. Once I saw a Chinese guy. And funny enough, the gender ratio was pretty close to 50/50 - I'm almost positive that the people who are wringing their hands about the gender gap in technology are actually excluding Indians from the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        Interesting, I attended Northeastern undergrad from 97-01 and my CS courses were 90% white dudes. Maybe there is a shift at the graduate level or it is highly dependent on the location of the school. It would be interesting if there was such a dramatic shift in demographics in just 5-7 years.

  • Dunning-Kruger effect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:23PM (#54153033)
    I think these girls just moved on on the Dunning-Kruger curve.

    According to Dunning-Kruger, people who are incompetent believe themselves to be highly competent, because they don't realise how stupid they are. As they become more competent, they realise more of what they don't know and feel they are less competent. Once they are competent, they think that they are probably just average. Only people who are highly competent have the same level of confidence as the total incompetents.

    So I think these girls were on the part of the curve where more competence shows you more things you don't know, and makes you feel less competent. It's the move from "how hard can it be" to "this is hard". They need some more lessons to move on to "it's not that hard after all".

  • Compulsory Math Lessons?? Seriously? (Score:3)

    by foxalopex ( 522681 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:46PM (#54153281)

    I honestly think something's wrong with this strategy. Since when is teaching math which is usually a dry / boring subject going to make someone interested in STEM fields? I'm a Computer Science graduate in the field and although math is important, in real life you usually don't need anything past high school in typical daily programming. Do the science first! I remember when I was young, I was attracted to the computer first whether it was programming to make it do things for me or just flat out gaming. It was later that math became interesting because I realized it gave me to tools to do what I wanted to do. If you try to make computers interesting by first burying them in complex and or difficult to understand math, I am almost certain you'll have the opposite effect.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      If you try to make computers interesting by first burying them in complex and or difficult to understand math, I am almost certain you'll have the opposite effect.

      Though very effective for training those that what to be a Navy SEAL... I think most of us started on computers by first banging out code then later learning the knowledge to make the code more effective. All young people want to first jump in on whatever subject of interest where there is action and adventure. It's those boring old guys that insist on planning and studying (and these guys did wild crazy stuff, later learned from their mistakes). I think have children do hands-on science stuff then later sh

    • In other news, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

  • *sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:48PM (#54153295) Homepage Journal

    Can we just accept that different people like different things, and that maybe, just MAYBE, some of these might be related to gender?

    I don't keep up on the news for other industries. Are there big pushes elsewhere to get more men into female-dominated professions?

    • Are there big pushes elsewhere to get more men into female-dominated professions?

      I've never seen those. Also, there are no big pushes to get more women in male-dominated dangerous and/or low wage jobs either.

      • Are there big pushes elsewhere to get more men into female-dominated professions?

        I've never seen those. Also, there are no big pushes to get more women in male-dominated dangerous and/or low wage jobs either.

        I wonder why there isn't a push to get more women into plumbing and electrical? Women make up only 1.5% of those occupations [dol.gov], but those occupations can make really good money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      That's really not very politically correct of you to use actual intelligent argument based on logic, rather than a fact-free emotional outburst.

      As I can find, there's no initiative at all to get more men into nursing (92% inequity), let alone one the size of the massive campaign to get women into STEM (76% inequity).

    • There is and has been a push to try to get more men into teach at the elementary school level, a career field that is heavily dominated by women (~78.5% women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [bls.gov]).

  • In my state (Score:3)

    by kilodelta ( 843627 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @02:48PM (#54153305) Homepage
    They want every kid in school to learn to code. I said good luck with that.

  • So, not enough women are getting into STEM?

    Obvious solution? Make it harder!!

    Jaysus H. Tap-dancing Christ, they'll get all the math they want when they start seriously getting into STEM in university. Trying to weed out people in High School is NOT the solution to the problem.

    If anything, de-emphasizing the math might be a (partial) solution. Amazing how seldom you actually use higher math when coding (mind you, an engineer or scientist had better have more than a nodding familiarity with higher math)

  • Nature vs Nurture (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 )

    So...wait...despite excessive incentivizing, women still don't flood into stem fields?

    That's so weird, because if you listen to some of the loudest voices today, gender is a social construct with no underlying biology, therefore changing social conditions should result in a change of gendered behaviors.

    Are we yet at the point where we can accept there are biological differences between the genders and skin colors which predispose them to certain fields, and thus stop playing the "DIVERSITY" game?

    hahahhahaha

  • ....you would almost think that women are ACTIVELY CHOOSING not to do STEM or something....

  • My kid's going into nursing (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @04:08PM (#54153971)
    because it's still a viable career. I've said this before, I'll say it again: Bring the jobs and us parents will bring the kids. Until they stop outsourcing and pushing for cheap labor imports we're not going to encourage our kids to go into programming unless the kid's such a natural that they rise above that cheap foreign labor.

  • most women just are not interested (Score:5, Interesting)

    by paai ( 162289 ) on Friday March 31, 2017 @04:32PM (#54154171) Homepage

    Here is the thing: I have been teaching CS at a dutch university for thirty years. On our university, CS was obligatory, even for humanities students (which I think is a very good thing). About 80% of our students were women. Some of my best students were women, doing PhD trajects with heavy math, computers and statistics. No gender differences there.

    But... and this is a big but... most of the female students just could not be bothered. They enrolled at the university because they were intelligent but ALSO wanted an occupation indoors without heavy lifting. And they were not above using their attributes to get a pass. It is not because I am male: my female collegues in the STEM department had the same experience (it is the Netherlands I am talking about - grin).

    So all girls out there: stop whining about unequal opportunities. Do your assignments just like the boys. If you don't like maths or CS, just skip it - but don't expect to compete seriously in the world outside, without using your attributes, that is.

    I *like* your attributes and they keep the world turning. But it is not maths.

    Paai

  • Nearly all, if not all great scientists love their subject. Many of those who find maths or science a turn-off do not choose STEM careers. The emotional connection of a student to their discipline must not be neglected: we are humans, not programmable machines. Only if you engender a positive interest and desire in people will they be inspired to take up STEM careers, or indeed have a casual interest, whilst pursuing other careers.

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