Re:An 80s Girl Talks About Computers: A Reminiscence
by ChuckMcM on Thursday August 17, 2017 @02:25PM
(#15039426)
I found this an interesting read. The higher level math teacher in my high school was a woman and she also taught the nascent "computer" class (which was BASIC programming on Teletypes that dialed in at 110 Baud to a mainframe)
I found myself in friendly competition with women in both Algebra II and Calculus. Our high school produced a number of women engineers and computer science majors as well.
Is that correlation ? causation? Or is it just modelling? I don't know. I watched my kids grow up and saw that they took cues about what they were expected to be able to do from the environment around them. I don't think there is much debate that people try to live up to the expectations put on them by people they look up to.
So to the extent that her message is "We should mindfully decide to have expectations that anyone, regardless of gender, can excel in STEM." I really can't see any harm in that.
I found myself in friendly competition with women in both Algebra II and Calculus. Our high school produced a number of women engineers and computer science majors as well.
Is that correlation ? causation? Or is it just modelling? I don't know. I watched my kids grow up and saw that they took cues about what they were expected to be able to do from the environment around them. I don't think there is much debate that people try to live up to the expectations put on them by people they look up to.
So to the extent that her message is "We should mindfully decide to have expectations that anyone, regardless of gender, can excel in STEM." I really can't see any harm in that.