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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

#411
"Deal with it," is about the worst advice I've ever heard.

I've never had to deal with sexism. When I was bullied in high school my car was vandalized, I had to take time off from exams because my face was a wreck and I was being monitored for brain injuries. I skipped class because I didn't want to hear, "fag," for the thousandth time. I didn't want to deal with the food being thrown at me in the cafeteria or the snickers as a I walked past the gossiping kids in class. I've never had to deal with being discriminated against because of my gender but I cannot imagine that it hurts any less.

I was lucky. A friend of mine was beaten into a coma. The bullies showed up to his benefit concert to throw pennies and harass the attendees. He has been living the rest of his life with the effects of severe neurological trauma. Yeah, kids are mean.

It has been more than a decade since I escaped that hell-hole. I've since read articles about other unlucky kids who've died being stabbed to death by a mob. I've read about girls who have committed suicide because they couldn't deal with the slut shaming. Sure these cases are beyond the norm but I wonder if they are not indicators that things are just getting worse for kids these days.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can single people out who make sexist jokes and correct them, loudly and publicly, and try to help them understand that they're not funny, clever, or cool. I agree with the author that teachers can be a part of the solution. But I don't think that is the final word (and it never is when trying to change prevailing attitudes and norms): parents need to tell their kids to stick up for people who are being bullied, that it's not funny, and that it's dangerous to not say anything when they hear someone spout off something hateful.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#412

Background: Currently teaching Intro to Programming using VB (not even 2012... cause our lead instructor's textbook is for 2010). I created a stir when I suggested we move to C, which we are next semester. Many of people have already commented on this, but from my understanding, this parent did NOTHING and it going a passive-aggressive route to complain. Going into the article, I was excited to read it initially beca…

"Too-friendly" creepiness is one thing. It's hard to blame awkward lonely guys for being awkward lonely guys.

Outright misogyny is a whole other kettle of fish.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

To the first, IF as you say it's 2/3 women, and IF as one short Google search suggested to me it has around 13M viewers, and IF we agree that those are all in the US and the US has around, what, 100M adult women?... then that's 8% of those adult women watching it. If those 13M include people outside the US, then it's lower than 8%. Apparently 92% of women do not watch DWTS. In response to the second, I don't understa…

Likewise, you can probably construct a more sophisticated argument than calling people "reactionary dullards", but you curiously choose not to. Somehow that isn't a lowbrow dismissal.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#414
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if I were going to teach programming to high school kids I'd show them the console in Chrome / Safari, because it's something they all have easy access to (I assume we're talking about a first world country, right). VB seems to me to be a poor choice because it doesn't intersect with the kids' lives. They likely won't go home and build VB apps (on their Macs...) The console is like lifting the curtain an…

To each his own. I find web development(dynamic or just html/css) doesn't have the instant gratification something like VB has(it doesn't have to be VB). The main purpose of teaching programming to high-schoolers is to con them into learning it themselves. VB, despite its warts, was one of the most popular programming languages of its time. Excel and VB owe its popularity to the simple fact that they aren't hostile(o…

I agree that VB's build-run-debug cycle is highly gratifying, but so is JavaScript's if properly taught, and it has the advantage of -- as I said -- being the underpinning of something they actually use.

If you want to show the joy of a VB-like build-run-debug cycle, use Unity and C# (or Unityscript) and it's (a) free, (b) runs on Macs, and (again) (c) builds stuff they might actually care about.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#415
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a high school class, not the tech industry. You can't blame the tech industry when a bunch of highschoolers act like idiots just because the class they did it in happened to be a programming class. If they had done the same thing in a Algebra class would you be writing a rant about how we need to fix the rampant misogyny in math?

If it happened frequently enough, sure. I went to a high school where the two calculus teachers were both female. I also went to a math PhD program where a professor -- specifically George Mackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackey -- wondered openly as to whether women could do top-level mathematics. In fairness to him, the women in that era were still few and below average, and one even had the temerity to w…

But that's the thing, every time someone does something misogynistic that's even remotely connected to tech in any way we get a storm of "stop the rampant misogyny in tech" rants and comments, never a "stop the rampant misogyny in the USA/UK/Western World/Whatever". I don't see this as a tech problem, and blaming the tech sector for it is a cop-out. If there genuinely is a larger problem with society as a whole, that's where it needs to be addressed, picking on one subset of the larger group because you can't constructively offer any suggestions for how to fix the larger problem isn't useful.

At the end of the day, this was a highschool class with comments being made by highschool kids. The one comment specifically detailed in the article is an old internet meme that was largely popular in gaming circles. The teacher, the only one in this entire story that might have some small connection with the tech industry, never made any inappropriate comments or behaved in any way misogynistic at least so far as the details in the article. To call this story an example of misogyny in the tech industry is pure BS, it had absolutely nothing to do with the tech industry in any way.

Edit: More context on the comment the article mentioned: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-back-to-the-kitchen

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#416

The entitled and largely unconscious male privilege in most of these HN comments is pretty hard to stomach against the large and steadily-accumulating picture of just how very different this industry presents itself to men and to women. Just because you don't directly experience or see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman doesn't mean women don't experi…

We must protect the fairer sex at all costs. 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…

"silence specific demographics"

Haha, good lord. You're making fun of "hyperprivileged" white women while complaining that the white neckbeard bloc is being unjustly silenced? That must be really terrible for you, the jorts ceiling is truly an institution that must be smashed.

Also where'd you get that quote from?

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the US, where Java is required for the Advanced Placement exam in computer science.

Are you serious? You want a HS teacher to teach Java?

Java's no more complicated than VB.Net, imho the only barrier for new users is its use of C-style Boolean operators instead of using words. Oh, and the danged checked exceptions.

The problem with Java is mostly its enterprise-y frameworks. If you have a nice user-friendly GUI library that measures up to Windows.Forms for ease-of-use? Java's fine.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#418

I spent a year as a high school computer science teacher back when the AP exam was in C++ and I had one young woman in my classroom. The OP's comments are reasonable as a parent, but like many she doesn't properly comprehend the difficulties encountered by a modern day teacher. When I was teaching class, I had to contend with numerous learning obstacles and then had to leave after class for my other full-time program…

The one salient point of the piece was the fact the teacher did not respond properly after the harassment occurred. We can all agree on that.

This is the key. People don't expect teachers to control what comes out of the mouths of their students. They can't stop the initial bullying from happening. What teachers can do is react once it happens.

Edited to remove: "It sounds like the OP went out of her way to help the teacher turn this into a "teaching moment". The teacher refused to go along." as this was based on my misreading the OP's "I consulted with friends — female developers — and talked to my daughter about how to handle the situation in class. I suggested that she talk to you. I offered to talk to you. I offered to come talk to the class. I offered to send one of my male friends, perhaps a well-known local programmer, to go talk to the class."

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#419
It's fantastic that this article has stayed on the front page so long. Regardless of your thoughts on the author's claims, I don't think anyone can deny that this was a thoughtful, reasoned take on sexism in tech. We need more of these if anyone wants to take the discussion back from the Gawker's/Valleywag's of the world. There is an intelligent discussion to be had here. Personally, I lean towards advising women to take the Booker T. Washington approach of focusing on becoming as competent as you possibly can, but also working to change the culture as much as possible. I know it sounds like a contradiction, but I just think that teaching girls and women to learn to love programming over encouraging them to fight a culture war will bring more women into tech than the opposite, which will bring more into activism (not a bad thing, but I am approaching this with a goal bringing women into tech). I found this author's approach to be one of the best attempts at what I described I've ever seen.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#420

The entitled and largely unconscious male privilege in most of these HN comments is pretty hard to stomach against the large and steadily-accumulating picture of just how very different this industry presents itself to men and to women. Just because you don't directly experience or see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman doesn't mean women don't experi…

We must protect the fairer sex at all costs. 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…

I find it thoroughly depressing that your comment is currently fourth from the top. I can only hope it's been dragged along based on its parent's votes.
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