[Edu-sig] re: Why Women Avoid Computer Science

[Arthur_Siegel@rsmi.com]

This actually rings much truer to me than an earlier thread on
this subject.

There the  argument seemed to be being made (my us guys 
mostly) that women are more comfortable in the verbal world, 
so that a programming curricula that emphasized math was
somehow exclusionary.

Clearly I have the tinkerers, trial and error approach to learning.
My refusal to learn to use a debugger is probably the programming
equivalent to refusing to ask for directions when lost.

On the other hand I have always needed to play off against something 
hard and concrete - math.  I at least need a clear indication when it is I'm
lost. Implementing mathematical concepts  at least gives me  that.
Adding a visual element , in 3d - but 3d math, not picture book stuff - 
has brought another degree of concreteness to the feedback cycle.

Apparently there is some empirical evidence out there that the approach I
came to, stumbled upon, has some measurable merit.

ART  


>There's an interesting opinion piece in this month's Communications of
>the ACM by Paul De Palma, a professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane,
>WA.  His theory is that young men are attracted to the tinkering,
>hobbyist aspects of programming and that these same aspects and the
>ill-defined nature of computing drive young women away.  Paul points out
>in contrast that women have always received a significant percentage of
>undergraduate math degrees and suggests that if programming were taught
>in the same manner as mathematics, more women would be attracted to it.

>Paul recommends keeping things simple and as close to pure logic as
>possible and keeping programs short and focused on determinate problems
>similar to math exercises.  He also suggests that choice of programming
>language is insignificant and that it should only be treated as a
>notational system.  (On this last point, I expect a lot of you would
>disagree).

 Brent Burley