To my daughter's high school programming teacher

Now that the circlejerk is over, I thought I would post a reply that did not pass moderation on by Rikki Endsley on her blog (I posted it after she wrote that she didn't moderate a single comment - I should have known better). Perhaps those who find this story via search will find the comment useful.

---- Here are some facts that the readers might not be aware of while reading your post and taking your obviously subjective point of view for granted.

Your daughter graduated from a mostly white (80%) highschool with low student-to-teacher ratio (14/1, IIRC) and high per-student spending (~$10k per year). This is not a school where kids are bullied. Your daughter apparently liked the highschool.

I took the liberty of contacting the institution's principal and asking him a few questions. You or your daughter never raised any concerns regarding anything listed in your post. Your claims about lack of class promotion are not factually supported, and the school even has an advisory board that provides advice and direction towards appropriate practices and curriculum. This boards includes community members with expertise in relevant fields.

Your daughter's studies were apparently quite important for you. Did you volunteer to be on the advisory board?

So how does it all look? Your daughter had some tensions with other students when you were away. It happens with kids. You did nothing of substance. Perhaps she was not even that interested in programming. Kids who are interested, rarely limit themselves to the curriculum, and their interest rarely sparks at the late age of ~15. Your stories of her doing such and such tasks at an early age are so typical that I will not comment on them. Other parents will understand. Your gripes about Visual Basic are nonsensical, and suggest that you were not that involved in your daughter's studies through highschool, otherwise you would have acquired some perspective.

If your daughter indeed quit programming due to some minor tensions in the class, it is nearly completely your fault, because you apparently taught her to quit. Maybe it is partially her fault. It is certainly not the fault of the environment. The environment gave her everything that is necessary.

You are a typical member of Western privileged class. I won't say, however, that some people have it much worse. This is irrelevant - the issue here is not that as conditions improve, society strives to fulfil needs that are higher on Maslow's hierarchy. Your situation is much simpler: the need for an enemy, someone to accuse of your misfortune.

Nobody is guilty that your child did not grow up with the talents you wanted her to have. But you are guilty of failing to properly take advantage of the environment instead of accusing others around you. ----

Note that in the second update to the blog post, the daughter claims that she did talk to both the teahcer and the principal. Either she or the principal is lying. My guess it's her, since it's quite typical for children with overbearing parents (e.g., "I was really, really embarrassed and fighting back tears").

Note also that on daughter's Facebook post about the story, the mother comments: "Hey, gotta pay the bills somehow". Pick one of two: the mother is a typical journalist attention seeker, or the mother treats her adult daughter as someone who is not to be taken seriously.

A specific event doesn't have to have >50% probability to work as an evocative example. For Christ's sake, you're missing the forest for a quarter square inch of bark on one particular tree.

You're getting bogged down I think. No one is talking about what's "possible." Theories don't become competitive by virtue of being hypothetically capable of being offered— you have to actually advance them and argue them. My supposition about two theories is based on common knowledge rather than some abstract analysis about the nature of possible arguments.

To put it another way, I can see two plausible forces pushing women away from tech jobs: 1) some deficiency on their part, 2) some motive on the part of the system to keep women out.

My argument is that, since many people disagree with 2), many must subconsciously believe 1), which is absurd on its face.

Examples aren't helpful in this case because your theory doesn't answer the question we're asking. Even if it were true that the mechanism keeping women out of tech was the amending of their preferences rather than forcibly excluding them (by refusing to hire them for example), this would still be the result of either something innate about women themselves or something societal imposing these preferences on them.

So, again, we still are faced with the same question. If women "don't want" to be programmers, why would that be? Because something about their female brains is disinterested in computers? Or because they've been socialized to feel as if tech jobs are not for them?