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To my daughter's high school programming teacher

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Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#221

Post by philwelch »

jholman wrote: post #214
philwelch wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it would be politically incorrect to point out the actual ratings demographics of DWTS are about 2/3 women?

So much wrong with this comment. First of all, you need to go do some remedial math. The percentage of DWTS watchers who are women is no predictor of what women do. This fallacy is called confusion of the inverse , and it's a probabilistic variant of the better-known converse error . Second, even if 99% of women were to be DWTS fans, it has no bearing on anigbrowl's comment. The reason that "while your wife watches D…

First, Dancing with the Stars is one of the highest rated shows on TV; the fact that it has a 2/3 women audience indicates that very many women will make the time to watch it.

Second, setting aside households with two TV's, only one spouse can enjoy passive entertainment at a time. Presumably while we watch football, women can do something fascinating and productive.

Third, political correctness is a phenomenon of white liberal prigs who go out of their way to take offense because they have nothing useful or productive to contribute to the public discourse. Of course they would react unkindly to being called out on it but I would advise you not to take their defensive lashing out at face value.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#223

Post by Dylan16807 »

kaitai wrote: post #135
cookiecaper wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which real world are you advocating this high school programming class introduce to a 16-year-old girl? The real world where HR thought police aren't sitting in every room of every company. The real world where even HR people try to "make jokes" and be funny. The real world where HR people generally judge the severity of a harassment complaint by favoritism, which reality a blunt HR person (not employed at my curren…

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why 16-year-old girls leave programming. Remember, guys ganging up on you and telling them to make them a sandwich is just funny! You're so thin-skinned, ladies! thought police! http://hoydenabouttown.com/20110218.9512/sexist-joke-bingo/ ...almost got bingo... good work, cookiecaper.

>is just funny

Why is it that people misreading comments to call them out almost always come off as bigger asses than the people they're replying to?

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#224

Post by x0054 »

joseph_cooney wrote: post #173
x0054 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of relationship do you have with your kid that she has to tell you important information like this via email? Does she have a dad? I am guessing NO? Honestly, just the fact that the OP is writing the letter after the class is over, rather then confronting the teacher during the class does not sound right to me at all.

How is the presence of a father relevant? The mother was away at a conference, possibly in a different time-zone or otherwise not contactable. Email seems perfectly reasonable to me.

The girl does a lot to please her mother and chooses to communicate about important subjects over email.

Let's put it this way, I am not Dad yet, but when I am, my daughter or son will not be bullied in school because:

1. They would know how to deal with bullies. 2. And if they ever have problems dealing with it on their own, I am going to help them by doing something more then writing a letter on a tech blog.

And no matter what time of day or night it is, I would make sure that my children know they can CALL me any time they need to.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#225

Post by scotty79 »

You can't be different than other kids and visibly better than them without becoming a target of harassment. I've been better than other kids in anything computer, math, physics or chemistry related and I remember I had to tread very carefully even while I was helping them. Same way as when you give a good ideas to your boss, your concern should be not only about him accepting your idea but also about him not hating you for it afterwards.

And I don't even have any discerning features that could be used as a trigger. Being only fat, short, tall, ginger, 4-eyed, girl can get you seriously in trouble if you don't pay attention to social dynamics.

The thing is such targeting should be noticed and properly countered by the teacher and almost no teacher knows how to do that. I have no idea what's the proper response to usual lord of the flies school environment.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#226

Post by sologoub »

twelvechairs wrote: post #191
sologoub wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really sad comment. Teaching may not pay well, but the tenured teacher has significantly higher job security and potential for other incomes. Yes, it's not a typical programmer pay, but if you are taking it upon yourself to teach children, you take on far more responsibility than any pay can justify and you should act like it.

That's easy to say but the world isn't so easy. being a teacher is hard and not paying well means you don't always attract the best people to do it. programmers also have job security of knowing they are basically always employable right now unless completely hopeless. and programmers have ethical responsibilities which are frequently ignored too.

That's the path to mediocrity and failure...

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#227

Post by joyeuse6701 »

The setting is irrelevant to the situation IMO. It could have been any environment that was heavily teen male with a teen female outclassing them, the animosity is sexist in nature. The tragedy is someone that had a passion seemingly lost it because of bullying. As a society what we can and should do is teach that this behavior is wrong and harmful. This has a lot less to do with the tech industry and a lot more to do with high school and lack of maturity.

From an individualist perspective we can only encourage her not to give up on her interests because of the cruelty of others, and that she may receive this treatment often because she is above average. This is an unfortunately common scenario anywhere for anyone.

If this was a white girl in a black history class or a guy in a women's studies class the tone to this thread may be a little more compassionate I would imagine. It just so happens that the anecdote of female encountering sexism in tech is so often repeated and posted here, it's made a number of us callous to it.

As for the author: If she has a problem with 'get back in the kitchen' I suppose I can legitimately raise a concern with her characterization of all the boys in that class as brogrammers... which is just as sexist. Takes one to know one I suppose.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#228

Post by Dylan16807 »

GhotiFish wrote: post #51

I would of posted this in her comment section, but the requirements for signing up are beyond the pale of acceptable. "Thanks to my career, my daughter's Facebook friends list includes Linux conference organizers, an ARM developer and Linux kernel contributor, open source advocates, and other tech journalists." I, am so jealous right now. "but I was unprepared for the harassment to start in high school, in her progra…

>I was furious when I was confronted for the reason.

Can you reword this sentence? I can't figure out what you mean.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#229

Post by Dylan16807 »

jessedhillon wrote: post #124
jpatokal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? You should be thanking the large, smart man for teaching you the correctness of a wise set of rules designed to maximize the number of people who can use the limited number of seats in a popular fast food joint. Unless you called ahead and made a booking, you had no right to reserve those seats and inconvenience all the other people (including said gentleman and his family) looking for a seat.

A) I was in college then. I'm inclined to agree with the reasoning you gave here now. B) But, the reason he gave was that it was against "the rules" -- that's the point: no, it's not. It's rude and inconvenient, maybe. It's not an abrogation of a code that everyone knows. It's an unwritten agreement, at best.

> the reason he gave was that it was against "the rules"

That's not how I see it at all. He informed you that there was not a jacket rule. He did not in fact make up any rules or tell you anything about said rules or in fact acknowledge that there are table-reserving rules. I don't understand where you're coming from.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#230

Post by Dylan16807 »

tptacek wrote: post #123
waveman2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I am saying that trivia is trivia. What happened is at worst micro-bullying. Actually I suspect the daughter did not want to do the course, was pressured into it by her mother and pickup on on this minor incident as an excuse to stop the course.

Notice how nobody is questioning your experience of bullying, but you're casually questioning someone else's? Like I said: perverse.

It's not 'perverse' to have different standards on what qualifies as punishable bullying. You're using some kind of false equivalence here. Yes, both an insult and a beating qualify as 'bullying', but that does not mean we should categorize them similarly.
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