A huge nationwide push is underway, funded by the nonprofit Code.org's corporate and billionaire donors, from Amazon and Google to Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, to introduce American schoolchildren to coding and to redefine it as a basic skill to be learned alongside the three R's.
Code.org's curriculum has been adopted by 20,000 teachers from kindergarten to 12th grade. But if coding is the new lingua franca, literacy rates for girls are dropping: Last year, girls made up 18.5 percent of A.P. computer science test-takers nationwide, a slight decrease from the year before. In three states, no girls took the test at all. An abysmal 0.4 percent of girls entering college intend to major in computer science [PDF]. And in 2013, women made up 14 percent of all computer science graduates down from 36 percent in 1984. The imbalance persists in the tech industry. Just this week, Google released data showing that women account for just 17 percent of its tech employees.
The problem is not only getting girls to computer class, but keeping them there.
See also girlswhocode.com.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 07 2014, @07:26PM
If you are worried about a national intelligence agency (CIA, FSB, mossad), then maybe you should question your actions to warrant their attention (I am helping send aid to the People's Republic of Dontesk, I have a Persian friend whom is interested in old American rocket engines and I help him search in New Mexico, I spend several months exercising in Afghanistan).
As for the Police, most policemen are quite stupid when it comes to technology. And if they weren't, they probably won't bring out the big guns, unless there is a murder/attempted murder investigation.