On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Nicole Zimmerman wrote:
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/04/11/girls.computer/index.html
>
> Apparently an AAUW (American Association of University Women) report
> indicates that the way programming/computer-oriented courses are taught
> is creating a major roadblock for women interested in computing to
> actually go through the coursework. They also believe that violent video
> games and programming classes that "focus too narrowly on hardware and
> mechanics of information technology" are big bummers and push women
> away.
My experience with this... I started in the University of Illinois
at Champaign-Urbana (UIUC), in Computer Engineering, switching to Computer
Science; then transferred to Bradley University for a semester, before
dropping out of college. I've programmed since I was 4 years old
and always considered it my career, but discovered the the universities
weren't meeting my needs.
At UIUC, engineering courses were mathematically set up to fail over
half of the class. (Flat C class average, always curved; and you had
to have a B or B+ GPA to register for classes required for graduation.)
No matter how well you did, you could still fail if others in the class
did equally well. When I confronted the advisors and teachers about
it, I got the stated response, "Yes we know we're failing 80% of
the students. We do it on purpose to control how many we graduate, so
pay rates for engineering fields stay high." (Not kidding.)
On top of that, all the programming tasks were -boring-. Cars and
traffic models, sports, meaningless data. No graphics. No gender-neutral
assignments, really.
There was a distinct lack of encouragement to do well. In fact, most
teachers had the attitude of, "Well, if you're not good enough to do
it by yourself, we're not going to bother to teach you, so you may as
well drop out now instead of later." This really just floored me.
The guys, for the most part, ignored the emotional atmosphere of the
classroom. It didn't matter to them what the teacher -felt-; only the
flat grade and assignments. The women got a self-esteem hit upon learning
how the teachers felt, and had a tendency to believe the teachers ("I
must not be any good, I'll quit now") and give up without working through
the tough parts. Most of my engineering classes started the semester with
300-350 guys, 5-8 girls. They ended the semester with 2 girls (in the
cases I remember, it was me, and one from Russia). We both had the
attitude, "I can do it myself, I trust myself, I know I'm good enough
to figure it out." Now, there may have been more women enrolled, who
simply never attended lecture, and had other discussion sections. This
was all I saw though.
On top of all that... there was a nearly fanatical focus on algorithm
development and backend systems, completely excluding project management,
web programming, user interfaces, graphics, database front-ends... The
actual practical stuff. Instead, they taught OS and compiler design...
how to write a database... Essentially, how to rewrite all the commercial
tools that are already out there for use... but not how to use them to
do anything useful.
So, after serious struggle, and realizing that the school wasn't educating
me for the career I intended, I transferred. (Heck, I was paying them
to fail me regardless of doing well... seems like a horrible money waste.)
Bradley was better- they actually reviewed material. And taught. And
supported their students. And it showed. The programming classes there
were closer to 30-40% women, as opposed to the 1-5% I saw at UIUC.
Bradley is much, much smaller, and has a relatively small engineering
department. They are, however, quite out of date with regards to
technology. They're teaching cobol, fortran... ancient database and
filesystem stuff... Again, no perl, no java, no web programming, no
cgi's, nothing modern and directly useful. No serious project
management or anything. So, while their approach was much better, they
still needed to get with the times.
I eventually quit there when I learned that I could get trained on the job,
and be paid to do it; and make a lot of money. And not dump money into
a school that gave me a piece of paper that meant nothing to me. Now,
granted, I had significant professional programming experience by that
point, with part-time jobs; and a robust background (mostly self-taught)
in computer science areas.
Now I write online auction software that will get used internationally.
It's a far cry from the "model this sports game" programming problems
I was forced into in class. This stuff is actually interesting.
> Personally, give me quake3 anyday over an RPG... and why shouldn't
> programming courses focus on mecahnics of information technology? *how*
> information moves and how to make it move is what computer science is,
> is it not? Programming is just the eloquent moving of information from
> one form to another... from something semi-useful to something useful.
I think the issue for a lot of women isn't the mechanics of it... it's
the encouragement to learn the details and really understand them...
the atmosphere around them... The difference between, "Oh, those are
just boy toys, ignore that fancy shmancy messy machine stuff" and
"Look how fascinating this is, let's take it apart and look at how it
works, and then figure out ways to make it do stuff we want." It's
the difference between "This isn't impossible, and it's really neat
to learn" vs "Oh, you're not that good, don't get proud, don't get
a big head."
I'm not sure if it's what the article meant, but... I hated the focus on
backend systems and reinventing the wheel (and the database. and sorting
methods. and operating systems. and compilers.)... I wanted to just
take the tools available and -do- something with them. Not keep
recreating them. I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something,
making something new, doing something special. Not just doing a shabby
job of copying someone else's work.
> information... if you didn't know about the hardware of your machine, I
> doubt you could complete a CS degree.
Yeah, well, UIUC was graduating CS seniors who couldn't send an attachment
to their email, let alone explain to someone how a microprocessor works
or how memory or a hard drive stores data. The hardware stuff was in
computer engineering which meant "how to develop and build motherboards,
slot cards, and chips." I crossed into both and learned more that way.
Jenny
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Skywind - Jenny Brown - http://www.imsa.edu/~jgable/
Friendly spiritual psychic bisexual polyamorous wiccan
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