For every valid point this man makes (No, there aren't too many women in IT), he makes two asinine points. Made me mad so I had to share.
Are There Too Many Women in IT?
While it is true that programmers aren't very visible to 11-year-olds, that does not mean we shouldn't make them aware of the field. What makes careers interesting to 11-year-olds is not the same as what makes them interesting to 22-year-olds. It is not true that people who haven't programmed before they are 18 aren't interested. They may not have seen the many applications of programming that make Computer Science interesting. I am one of those people who didn't program until I was a freshman in college.
I'm sure you have more thoughts to share, so I'll end there.
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3 comments:
I guess I kind of agree and disagree with him. I disagree with him (and agree with you) about the role model argument. As someone who's always known what she wanted to do for a career yet didn't know what that thing was called until junior year of college, I think making IT, anthropology, and other fields that you don't learn about in school more visible to kids is a good thing. There are more careers than doctor, lawyer, teacher, and firefighter, and kids should learn this as early as possible. But these role models need to present the job as it is, not glossing over the hard work and determination in the face of often crappy odds that come with a career in academia of any sort.
But I do agree with him that people go into majors and jobs for the wrong reasons. I'm not in IT, so I can't really say, but I would imagine that there are plenty of people - both men and women - who got a degree in IT because of the dot.com hype, because IT was the sure-fire way to make money a few years ago. I'd also expect that we're seeing a downtrend in enrollment as well as people using their IT degrees because of the burst bubble, as people go into other lines of work. Then again, there are tons and tons of classics and anthropology majors who don't go on to do anything even vaguely related for their careers - but since social science and humanities degrees have been laughed at for decades, no one's writing articles about them as they are with IT. Maybe IT is just joining the ranks of generic bachelor's degrees.
So, I'm all for role models and mentors helping kids figure out how to do the things they enjoy as a career. But they also need to offer real advice, present the discipline and job opportunities as they are, talk about why they like their job, and not just be a cheerleader (that's what parents are for).
Incidentally, I've always thought that if someone could market computer programming as learning a new language (in the social sense, like French or Italian), more girls and women would be interested. The female brain seems to be better wired for language acquisition and use, but I do think there is some stigma about playing with computers at home being a very greasy-haired-antisocial-boy thing to do. So get right on this, Sara! ;)
Our career day in eighth grade was so lame. I signed up to see a "computer operator", but he didn't show up and a teacher described the job. Precisely as lame as you would expect. I also signed up to see a psychologist. (About his job, not to see him. That didn't happen till years later.)
I also thought that language translation would seem appealing to women, but in my small set of women computer scientists, many of them aren't very good at foreign languages. That doesn't make sense to me. I always assumed that my abilities in (written) foreign languages translated to ability in programming. Still, I could see that that could attract young women to the Computer Science. The intro course material should then be presented in a similar way. I'll have to think more about what that "similar way" is.
I had talked to someone about figuring out what type of students to target our CS recruitment materials to--to attract able students to take the intro courses. I'm not sure what type of student that is, really: someone who does well in math (the logic part, at least) and has language skills (although programming language is easier/less ambiguous than natural language)... Still more to think about there.
Attatorymnmam
rdog
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