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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

#471

Post by ArtDev »

jsmeaton wrote: post #187
h4pless wrote: post #55

I am sorry to say that I assumed the author was her father for most of the letter. Her arguments made much more sense to me after rereading it with that information, but I guess it's a statement in itself that with the discussion of her technical background and her strong assertive tone, I assumed her a man. Reality: checked.

I'm in the same boat, but I don't think there's anything wrong with me (or you) for making that assumption. It's a male dominated industry, and it makes sense to make that assumption without extra information, especially when the authors gender isn't really relevant to the story.

I assumed it was written by a man at first as well. Would you take the accusations of sexism stronger if it was coming from a dad? I would.. and there is something wrong with that.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#472

Post by peterevans »

doctorwho wrote: post #439
peterevans wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. Come, now. Yours is not a reasonable conclusion to make from the blog post. It should be obvious to the reader that the bullies in question are responsible. The author's point was…

The teacher has a responsibility to provide a safe environment THAT ENDS AT THE DOOR TO THEIR CLASS. If the harassment happened out of view, is the teacher still responsible? Are you responsible for harassment that takes place at your workplace outside your cubicle? Students have remedies, they all know what they are. I knew. If the child spoke up to a teacher, principal, janitor, or anyone and the school did nothing…

> The teacher has a responsibility to provide a safe environment THAT ENDS AT THE DOOR TO THEIR CLASS. If the harassment happened out of view, is the teacher still responsible? Are you responsible for harassment that takes place at your workplace outside your cubicle?

The teacher may be responsible, sure. The harassment happened; knowing that, it is an absolutely fair question to wonder if more could have been done by the teacher.

> Students have remedies, they all know what they are. I knew. If the child spoke up to a teacher, principal, janitor, or anyone and the school did nothing then I'd side with the OP in a heartbeat.

I feel it must be pointed out, and repeated if necessary, that someone does not need to report a wrong action for that action to be wrong. I know that's not exactly what you said. The author's daughter was harassed, and that is wrong. Full stop.

> Absent any real facts about what happened I'd have to guess (and it's only a guess) that the teacher wasn't the problem here.

If you are absent any real facts, why hazard a guess at all?

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#473

Post by madaxe »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #423
madaxe wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you have serious reading comprehension issues, or you make a habit of deliberately misconstruing others statements - or you're a troll, and I'm stupidly feeding you. I am saying that it IS an issue, but that the issue is not one of gender discrimination, just one of kids, and humans, being dicks - and you can't combat it purely on gender lines as all you're doing is treating a symptom rather than the disease.

>I am saying that it IS an issue, but that the issue is not one of gender discrimination, just one of kids, and humans, being dicks Wrong. You're assuming that all forms of bullying are equally bad. This is patently false. Bullying based on traits that already set you apart can reenforce imposter syndrome. Specifically in the case of programming, a woman in a male-only class will already feel isolated and like she do…

All bullying is based on traits that set you apart. People don't bully "one of the crowd". They bully the outliers, the different ones, the ones who are female, or fat, or thin, or clever, or stupid, or black, or white, or old, or young, or even the kid that wears last season's "cool clothes".

It's not about gender. It's about ostracism. You don't have to be female to be ostracised. You just have to have something, anything, that sets you apart from the crowd.

This is the societal control mechanism we have culturally evolved to ensure conformity and "strength" in groups. It is really, really, really fucking dangerous, and leads to fun shit like Nazism. It's also really powerful, and is the basis of nation states.

Ergo, the problem needs treating at its cause, which is a cultural illness, and is far from simple to treat. You cannot simply resolve one emergent aspect of it and then expect to treat each aspect the same way. You do not cut down a tree by plucking at its leaves.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#474

Post by cschneid »

briandear wrote: post #287
sliverstorm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's that, or nothing? It's not like high schools are rolling in money. Even if they could afford to hire an extra teacher just to teach programming, what programmer would want to teach for $20k when he can make (at least according to HN) $120k in the industry?

$20k? There is no full-time public school teacher making that. In Jersey City, teachers averaged in 2012 $67,412 with a contractually-limited 183 work days per year, that includes inservice/training days and excludes up to 8 personal days and additional sick days; with each day lasting a maximum of about 7 hours, including about a 40 minute lunch period. If a programmer gets 3 paid weeks of vacation per year, they wo…

> with each day lasting a maximum of about 7 hours, including about a 40 minute lunch period.

HAHAHA

My girlfriend is a second year high school teacher. You are technically right that she is required to be on campus for the required 7 or 8 hours. But, there is nowhere near enough time to grade, plan, prepare, work individually with kids (makeup work mostly), etc, in that time. She puts in 12+ hour days. Everyday. Including weekends.

And over the summer, you are right that it is mostly free, except for several weeks you give up to do professional development, AP course training, and any schoolwork to move up the salary schedule a bit.

Her salary schedules are here [1]. With a masters degree, she would top out at $58k/year after 20 years on the job (assuming the masters track). Starting salaries are in the $35k range.

Meanwhile, I am a computer programmer, working a legit 8 hour a day job, making much more than she is now.

What annoys me more than just teacher pay though is the other spending in the school. She was pulled in to teach english this year. When the english department met to work out the plan, they had to blow their whole budget for the year on a single class-set of a paperback. (30ish copies). That's it. No more books, no miscellaneous DVDs / Documentaries purchased. That's it. Well, except for when she just goes and pays for it. Which she did last year to the tune of $350ish.

[1] http://thompsonschools.org/cms/lib07/CO01900772/Centricity/D...

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#475

Post by tsumnia »

Pxtl wrote: post #412
tsumnia wrote: post #118

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.

Actually, it is easy to blame them. If a bar had the reputation of crawling with sexist assholes and awkward lonely guys, how would the organization fair? The owner can't say 'Oh well, that's how our customers are' if they want to expand into different demographics. Bouncers and staff are put into place to quell that type of behavior.

In IT, can teachers help quell the behavior? Yes, but we can't be the sole guardians when the rest of the internet is still behaving that way.

How do you change that? I don't know, I just do the best I can.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#476

Post by GhotiFish »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #426
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 wasn't spared, why should yours be? I stopped reading here. This mentality is pathetic. We can and should expect better than we ourselves had it.

I can appreciate that, but I really don't see a way to change human nature, particularly the nature of children. A percentage of people are going to be picked on and singled out.

How do you propose we fix it? Do you think this article was even partially close to a solution?

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#477

Post by hackinthebochs »

madaxe wrote: post #473
hackinthebochs wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am saying that it IS an issue, but that the issue is not one of gender discrimination, just one of kids, and humans, being dicks Wrong. You're assuming that all forms of bullying are equally bad. This is patently false. Bullying based on traits that already set you apart can reenforce imposter syndrome. Specifically in the case of programming, a woman in a male-only class will already feel isolated and like she do…

All bullying is based on traits that set you apart. People don't bully "one of the crowd". They bully the outliers, the different ones, the ones who are female, or fat, or thin, or clever, or stupid, or black, or white, or old, or young, or even the kid that wears last season's "cool clothes". It's not about gender. It's about ostracism. You don't have to be female to be ostracised. You just have to have something, a…

>All bullying is based on traits that set you apart.

This is certainly true. What I meant to convey was that in the context of a programming class, being bullied for a trait that is itself already suspect within oneself reenforces it and thus is more damaging. If that girl had been bullied in the programming class because she was fat, it may not have had as much of an impact on her decision to pursue the career. Being bullied because she's a girl on the other hand, had the secondary effect of reenforcing the idea that she doesn't belong in tech.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#478

Post by sthommes »

Shame is really hard to assign and even more difficult to self apply. So while society (let alone our small, sometimes dark programming/tech back lot) is a long way from where we should be, each of us does have a responsibility to more than our own self-entertainment. Trolls are not unique to HN and blogs, they exist in real life too - they're called bullies. And with regards to this story, there's not really a 'both sides' here. There are females and males. And of the males, there are men and boys. Deep down and up close in your own personal mirror, you know which one you are. Instead, why not be awesome and redirect negative, petty energy and do something productive. Change the World, it's clearly needed

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#479

Post by wpietri »

orclev wrote: post #415
CurtMonash wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The reason we people in tech are trying to stop discrimination in tech is that -- surprise -- we work in tech. Just because people around the world litter is no reason not for me to pick up trash on my street.

Also, I believe it is specifically a tech problem. Medicine and law are approaching gender balanced. Tech, though, has been getting worse over the decades.

Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher

#480

Post by unlogic »

brokenparser wrote: post #315
Dylan16807 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was furious when I was confronted for the reason. Can you reword this sentence? I can't figure out what you mean.

He's upset that men are naturally stronger than women and female orderlies would delegate the heavy lifting to male co-workers as their preferred tool. At least that's what I gathered.

My parser treated it like this: "There is an objective need for more male orderlies (because they can lift heavy patients), but I was furious that [someone] confronted me on this obvious fact".
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