261–270 of 596 posts
Passive aggressive preaching. If she REALLY wants to change things, offer to assist the computer department with digging up funding for a C based curriculum. It costs a lot of money for public schools to shift curriculum's.
Besides, the hits taste sooo good.
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I went to an all girls school, and while I'm sure there was bullying, there was definitely no violence or rape.
Bullying is violence, and I wonder how you know there was no rape.
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It is about the student's experience reflected in the eyes of a mother. Parents are not known for their objectivity when it comes to children, but in this case the (rather far fetched) idea that the evil boys and their sandwich jokes made her daughter dislike programming found fertile ground in the whole "designated victim" narrative of women in online environments. There is no violence and rape in this story, there'…
This is a learning moment for you, Mr stefantalpalaru. What you've just said, although I know you meant it sanely and sensibly, has been interpreted as lacking in compassion. This is not your fault; what happened is you have made a comment from a position of unrecognised privilege. For your own good, and the good of any women you may have any kind of relationship with now and into the future, it would be a very good…
This use of "privilege" as a targeted weapon to silence specific demographics has to stop.
Women in the western world have always been among the safest, most privileged people on Earth. This entire thread, in fact, has been a shining example of female privilege.
No one cares that women soundly outnumber men in university admission, and university graduation, and even high school graduation. Heck, no one cares that it is men who overwhelmingly make up the bottom of society.
Instead, we're having a collective anxiety attack because a hyper-privileged white woman is upset that her hyper-privileged white daughter might have had her feelings hurt in high school. This is surreal.
I experienced this kind of bullying not in school, but at work. I used to be very cheerful and helpful until in a particular work situation, I finally realized guys were randomly pinging me or stopping by to disturb me with how to write a quick unix command to do X or how to make some regex, just to see how cute I look when I'm stressed and how fast I can give them an answer. And I'm pretty good, and they joke with e…
I don't really know what the right path is for her, but I hope whichever one she chooses brings her happiness. And I really hope in the not-too-distant future girls won't have to make this trade-off between programming and feeling respected.
I'm feeling sorry for the daughter. The poster is hard to take seriously, one mention of the harassment ("sandwiches"), at least three times he mentions "Visual Basic? Seriously??". He seems more concerned about language wars actually. So many people confusing programming and programming languages - the act and the medium. On top the "(violence and rape references)" that had nothing to do with the incident of the hea…
Near the end of the article, she writes: "I'm a single mother working in tech publishing — believe me, I get it".
My guess is you barely read it.
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Although I'm not really sure why your defense of rape as normal high school experience managed to turn into a subtle accusation that I may have been a bully myself, and I probably should have ignored that.
It wasn't a subtle accusation, because in my experience people who say school violence doesn't happen or they never saw it happen are/were actually bullies themselves. This post just confirmed it with the nice twisting of words, 'defense of rape as normal high school experience', oh really? I was pointing out how much, much worse stuff happens in schools than just being told to 'make a sandwich' and trust me, I would…
To me the thread illustrates that for a community that gives so much lip service to disruption and progress, a lot of people are really unwilling to put up with the idea that high school shouldn't have to be the pit of misery that is apparently common in American public schools. But über is solving real problems!
I feel for the daughter who (like many women before her) had a crappy experience in the male-dominated programming world. I feel for the parent who sees her daughter possibly reject a very fulfilling career path after a bad initial experience, when the future could be so much better. But as a former high school teacher, I also feel for the teacher. Giving them some benefit of the doubt, I just want to point out a cou…
Funny enough, by far the worst class I took was a networking class. I thought I'd be surrounded by smart people. Turns out, I was only surrounded by assholes, with a teacher willing to let anything and everything slide.
The best class? Geometry. The teacher was more than willing to deliver an attitude adjustment when she had to, and she did, without even being mean about it. As a result, it's one of the few places I was ever comfortable interacting with people I didn't really know.
Healthy attitudes can be taught, but people have to be willing to step up and do it. It's not just on teachers—it's something anyone who has the potential to influence others' lives should be working on.
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My Programming I class was taught by a math teacher (who was an excellent algebra instructor). Unfortunately he was only a chapter ahead of the class in computer programming. But that wasn't the worst part. For guidance, he turned to his brother-in-law, who was a manager of developers at Motorola. He stated as much the first day of class, boasting "You're going to have the rare treat of learning how programming is do…
There are two topics here, and the more important one is getting neglected. Almost by definition of being on this website, all of us are well advanced of our pre-college computer science teachers. My first was actually a chemistry teacher. My second was biology. One had me doing tech support in junior high. It wasn't until the AP class that I found one who could teach me. But teachers using outdated technology isn't…
You are being unfair. Children while growing up can be cruel. Bullying and harassment isn't a new phenomenon. May be the teacher could have done more, but "who sets up an environment that tolerates harassment" is a bit far fetched.
It didn't matter that the classes were beginning easy for the sake of revision, the classes were never good enough for her and I had to switch school. Note: not good enough for her, not me. I lost friends and only managed to learn to handle people in my 20's. Her destruction of my childhood ensures that I will never forgive her.
The article does bring up several other things that I dislike: the child being herded into an elite echelon of society by a bossy mother, being surrounded by successful people, the high expectations of the mother upon the young child, the child's [forced] willingness to please the bossy parent, probably also a feeling of helplessness of not being able to say "no, I'm not interested in that extra course".
But wait, there's more...
I see the whole article as a bossy, sexist, entitled mother wanting to raise an entitled child: "my DAUGHTER deserves a better teacher", "my ANGELIC DAUGHTER should not have to face adversity", "my LIGHT OF MY LIFE DAUGHTER is so perfect, just like I want her to be, and is better than the rest of the class combined".
The kid here is innocent. The mother needs to be put in her place. I will try and do so with a bullet list.
* Fuck you and your snobby, antisocial attitude.
* Fuck you and your criticism of teachers. If you think you can do a better job you're welcome to try.
* Fuck you and your feminist entitlement. Your daughter is going to face far, far harder shit in her life than a couple of people making sandwich jokes. In Sweden we call your kind "curling parents". You're fucking up your kid for the sake of your own insecurity.
* Fuck you and your "journalism". I see you ain't much of a programmer yourself, but you'll criticize others? Oh wait, that's what "tech journalism" is: complaining about other people's work and not having a public git repo yourself.
* Fuck you and your egotistical "tech" blog. If you wanted some hits you could have just asked.
You know what happens to people who are good in tech? They get hired because they're good at what they do. You don't have to be a white, american male to show well-written code to people. You know what happens to people who are mediocre in tech but are noisy as fuck because they want to be pampered and be treated all special? They write blog posts and hope thier kids are hired because mom's public shaming of everyone the kid comes into contact with intimidates people into not being able to say "no" when interviewing.
When was the last time you asked your kid if she wanted to just go outside and fucking play with the other kids? Just ride a non-feminist bike with non-feminist neighborhood kids or sit on the non-feminist curb and talk non-feminist shit like normal people? You're too busy signing your kid up for extra-curricular activities and having her influences by successful WOMEN (not people mind you, because people includes men and I suspect that's a gender you're not quite hip with) that you aren't noticing that her childhood is passing by without her having the time to enjoy it.
I feel for the daughter who (like many women before her) had a crappy experience in the male-dominated programming world. I feel for the parent who sees her daughter possibly reject a very fulfilling career path after a bad initial experience, when the future could be so much better. But as a former high school teacher, I also feel for the teacher. Giving them some benefit of the doubt, I just want to point out a cou…
VB is a fine language to get children interested in programming. Personally, I know many people who weren't able to grasp programming via C but were pretty excited about VB's gui designer and easy database connectivity. Most of the introduction to VB didn't teach them much programming, but at least it got them interested.
> High school bullies are typically quite good at restricting their bullying to times when they're unlikely to be spotted by an authority figure.
The author is being unfair when she is holding the teacher solely accountable for bullying.
> It takes a lot of effort to maintain an authentic connection. Parents have trouble connecting authentically with their children--imagine doing it with scores of students per semester. And when it comes to bullying, most teenagers downplay to avoid being though of as a snitch. Some are self-conscious to be bailed out even when they haven't "snitched".
There is also the fact that being teacher's pet generally invites more bullying. If they can't harass you, they will begin isolating you. And of course, the general mentality isn't in favor of snitches even when the snitches are hapless victims. Children don't have a strong sense of right and wrong and peer pressure muddies it more.
> For many of the author's suggestions, the teacher may be doing these things (recruiting, cross-promoting, etc.), to the extent that they have time. But these are outside the job of teaching. These are things the author could be doing at the school too, but presumably she's too busy. I'm sure the teacher can relate.
I haven't taught at professional level, but I do like teaching. And I like to teach people who are interested in learning. If I were a teacher, I won't really do much recruiting and promotion. If the job requires me to do it, I probably won't take it.