Do we have gender discrimination in elementary schools?

5 points by codeguppy 3 years ago | 6 comments

When I found out that there are coding clubs in US public elementary schools that accept only girls, I thought to ask reddit about this. In my opinion children of both genders should be allowed equal access to (coding) education – especially within a publicly funded educational system.

To my surprise I got a lot of comments on my reddit question defending the school position.

What’s your opinion on this?

P.S. Original reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/169tp2b/is_this_gender_discrimination/

Spooky23 3 years ago |

I think single sex education makes a lot of sense - my son goes to an all male school.

That said, I don’t think it’s appropriate for a club to be exclusionary at a public school. I’d raise a stink with the school board. I’d ask how that jives with Title IX.

version_five 3 years ago |

I think gender specific clubs are fine in elementary school and often preferable. The problem is if there isn't a boys club, not the existence of a girls one.

codeguppy 3 years ago | |

Having a separate boys club and a girls club would be an acceptable solution.

shadowbanned-00 3 years ago |

Wait until you come across even more exclusive clubs like "black girls code" which get federal and state money.

mattl 3 years ago |

Historically programming is gender biased against women so anything like this helps with that overall balance.

runjake 3 years ago | |

Historically how? Biased how?

Programming started off as a “woman’s job”[1] and was that way for several decades. There were a good deal of women programmers, from my own recollection up through the mid-1980s and then they dwindled away rather quickly.

My hypothesis about this is that the personal computer revolution happened and boys hung out in their bedrooms gaming and learning to program.

I’m guessing there was some sort of male-leaning bias on which houses bought personal computers first. Video games were definitely the gateway drug.

I am guessing that girls were less likely to hermit themselves away in their bedrooms all day, every day[2]. Gradually these boys became men and either skipped or surfed their way through college into the job market.

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=women+in+programming

2. Of course there were exceptions and I knew more than a few women coders/hackers of substantial ability.