[Edu-sig] Re: [Tutor] Girls, women and Programming (- and Python)

[Rob Brown-Bayliss]

On Wed, 2002-08-07 at 03:39, Kirby Urner wrote:

> A different question:  why is computer programming supposedly
> less like loving babies and designing dresses, and more like
> breaking things?  Based on the above description, I can see why
> it might be a priority to get the boys *out* of programming :-D.

Havent looked here for a while, hence teh late reply....

It has nothing to do with breaking things (unless your are the type to
break things when they don;t go your way) and everything to do with
this:

Boys and Girls/ Women and Men are different.  Celebrate it!

Seriously, why does the world think "sexual equality = same as".  I
dont.  I[*] am all for women having equal rights, equal opportunities,
but dont turn girls in to boys and boys into girls.  celebrate the
differences.  

I read a study about 10-12 years ago, it mentioned simple facts, Women
make better Biologists, men make better physicists.  There were several
other examples.

None of that means a man cant be a world class biologist, or even the
best, and same about women and physics.  Just that in general, taking
1000 men and 1000 women in each filed and comparing skills and knowledge
there are differences.  Why?  Because we are different.  Not greater and
lesser, just different.  Women obviously relate better to biology, the
concepts grab their attention perhaps?  Who knows, but given a choice I
prefer female doctors to male ones any day...  On the other hand, men
relate to physical things better than women, we have a better
understanding of spatial relationships for example.  does not mean a
women cant be the greatest jet pilot in the world.

We could take this concept further, and make it racial.  Look at the
Olympic sprinters, the great ones.  More often than not that are from
African racial stock, as opposed to Europeans. The opposite seems to
hold for swimming.  There are racial differences, does not mean that one
race is better, nicer or mare caring about the environment does it? 
Just that some races run faster in general, one swims faster in
general...  



So back to the girls and programming, yse, there will be girls who like
the idea, and are great at it, but dont go pushing all girl;s into it
just to satisfy your own ideals...  Let them take it or leave it
depending on their own desires.

But, by all means do make them do an intorduction, cant make a choice
with out trying can they?




[*] I am in fact a house dad, I look after the kids while lean earns 
the money.  Simply because we dont believe in placing young kids in
someones care 8-10 hours a day while we both work and Leanne wanted to
make use of her education., 

-- 

*
*  Rob Brown-Bayliss
*