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posted by janrinok on Saturday June 07 2014, @05:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the food-for-thought dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Kell on Sunday June 08 2014, @01:57AM

    by Kell (292) on Sunday June 08 2014, @01:57AM (#52823)

    Unfortunately, you are not correct. FMRI, CT and autopsies have all identified distinct (albeit minor) structural differences in the brains of each gender, and bloodtests readily differentiate the hormonal balance in which the neurons are operating. There is strong evidence that brains of different genders (and even orientations) have variability; we have no problem accepting that men are hairier, or stockier than women, so why would we expect their brains to be absolutely identical?

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  • (Score: 2) by skullz on Sunday June 08 2014, @02:23AM

    by skullz (2532) on Sunday June 08 2014, @02:23AM (#52830)

    Absolutely. But I'm talking about big movements like language, coding, or how kids play. While boy and girl brains may have structural or hormonal differences there is no statistical difference in how they function in daily tasks.

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 09 2014, @11:16PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Monday June 09 2014, @11:16PM (#53455) Journal

      Absolutely. But I'm talking about big movements like language, coding, or how kids play. While boy and girl brains may have structural or hormonal differences there is no statistical difference in how they function in daily tasks.

      Actually, there is. [columbiaconsult.com] Granted, most of the actual tests were on babies and infants so they're hardly complex skills to us...but how else are you going to eliminate possible cultural differences?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 08 2014, @05:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 08 2014, @05:41AM (#52876)

    Brains are plastic. All of these analyses are after the fact - after the brain has been subject to the developmental pressures of social stereotyping. When that is accounted for, the differences recede to the trivial. [time.com]