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Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher.

>Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python.

Sounds like Dave was in the wrong class and should have been told so.

>I wondered afterwards why this extremely competent woman in her 20s would react this way after clearly mastering the material.

That's a learned technique for getting assistance. It worked on you, didn't it?

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"That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher."

Most of the people who lecture at these events are programmers, not folks who have a masters in teaching along with their state certification.

I think teaching 101 covers widely discredited education theories (stuff like Myress-Briggs, visual auditory and kinesthetic learning styles, and the like) rather than practical teaching tips. There's a practicum to teach them how to teach.

I mean if you actually get a masters in education, it's almost all practical stuff. You need to take entire classes on things like how to write on a chalkboard and how to spot kids who are being abused at home. Educational theory and research is only one or two classes out of the two years. And classroom management is one of the biggest topics, and it's the first thing you get evaluated on when you're doing your student teaching.

Not the masters in education I have. I heard tales from very old timers about having to take "write on the chalkboard" classes, but that was never even brought up for us. Though frankly, that specifically should be. Maybe not a whole course, but a few days of it. There are a lot of ways to get that wrong.

But back to your point. My degree is from a university in Boston and helped me get my teaching license. Almost everything we covered was theoretical and, with a few important exceptions, utterly useless.

Certification and ability are different things. Contrary to popular belief, certification does not magically endow somebody with abilities, it only (slightly) raises the chances that person possesses necessary abilities. However there are a lot of people perfectly capable of teaching without certificates, and, unfortunately, plenty of people with certificates totally incapable of doing so.

Looks like the author of the article was either incapable or unwilling or unprepared to perform one of the basic teaching functions - ensuring that jerks do not disrupt the process for the rest of the group. It may stem from inexperience - well, that's what experience is for. One doesn't need masters or certificates to learn such things though, it's perfectly available to any common person.

"It may stem from inexperience - well, that's what experience is for"

Can't speak for US, but in UK a large part of PGCE courses is devoted to reflecting and acting on experience gained in a supervised teaching placement.

Sometimes you need to dig a bit deeper to process the experience, my favourite out of date theory is Schon's single and double loop learning.

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm

For coders: single loop learning is when you change the way you name variables or re-write your code to make the logic clearer. Double loop learning is the stuff Michael Lopp writes about.

"Most of the people who lecture at these events are programmers, not folks who have a masters in teaching along with their state certification."

And its great that people within the business are prepared to help others out.

Perhaps there is a need for a 'facilitator's FAQ' that could provide quick strategies for situations like this?

Anyone any idea where to host such a publication?

PS: why was 'Dave' allowed to join the workshop half way through?

> That's not a call for single-sex education.

The author was not calling for single-sex education, he was calling for us to find & support ways of giving new people "a more comfortable entrance into our general community".

Similarly, there is nothing to prevent a 'female Dave' from joining the next single-sex educational group.

This is not to imply that there aren't good reasons for women-only education, but this isn't one of them.

What are the good reasons for gender-segregated education? (I hope it's not offtopic since the article itself discusses this)

The claim is that there is a notable difference in group dynamics.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I find it hard to believe that all females(or males) exhibit same behavioral and learning traits. And even if this happens to be true, then why stop at gender-segregation? How about divide on gender, then divide on introvert-extrovert, then divide on active-passive, then divide on "external validation seeker"-"doesn't give a shit about external validation", then divide on "interested in learning"-"interested in getting the fuck out of here"...I am pretty sure you will be left with a class of 1 in the end.

The only division I would be interested in is segregating the fast learners(whatever be the reason - is sharp, already knows stuff, studies outside class) from regular learners, so that fast learners don't get bored or try to derail the class, and slow learners don't feel left out.

PS - I am not implying that you are supporting gender-segregated education. I am making a general point.

I am not implying that you are supporting gender-segregated education. I am making a general point.

I was just trying to describe a point of view, not one I myself hold.

I think that division by sex is often used as a proxy for division based on learning styles. Not fast vs slow per se, but in how people respond to teaching styles and student interaction.

> I think that division by sex is often used as a proxy for division based on learning styles. Not fast vs slow per se, but in how people respond to teaching styles and student interaction.

Which brings me back to my initial point. Is there data that suggests males and females respond significantly differently to teaching styles, and all member of a group(male or female) are consistent?

I find it hard to believe that all females(or males) exhibit same behavioral and learning traits.

I don't see anyone suggesting such a thing, but instead, that the majority of each gender may have certain behavior and learning styles in common.

And even if this happens to be true, then why stop at gender-segregation?

Why go any further? Just because one type of segregation may work, doesn't mean that all types of segregation would work.

> I don't see anyone suggesting such a thing, but instead, that the majority of each gender may have certain behavior and learning styles in common.

Unless you can prove that certain behavior is common among majority of females, and that certain common behavior is more significant than bazillion traits which are not shared, and then that certain behavior is significant to learning, and is more important than traits which aren't shared - the segregation is meaningless.

> Why go any further? Just because one type of segregation may work, doesn't mean that all types of segregation would work.

The chances that a group of students is going to be consistent, coherent, and will respond to the teaching style in the same way is essentially zero(group size > 1). If gender segregation show a noticeable, significant improvement; by all means have it. But don't make claims in advance.

You're demanding hard conclusions where there aren't any. However, they can be said to exhibit a tendency where the chances aren't exactly 100%. It's the difference between correlation and causation, and correlation is not "meaningless."

> You're demanding hard conclusions where there aren't any.

I am demanding hard conclusions, failing which I am demanding you don't make any if you aren't sure(gender difference became apparent to me that day, gender segregation works etc).

> It's the difference between correlation and causation, and correlation is not "meaningless."

I didn't claim correlation is meaningless - I just claimed you are claiming correlation, and for fuck's sake, causation, when there isn't any.

Correlation is when 2 random variables aren't probabilisticaly independent. If you can cite me correlation between gender and behavioral traits when it comes to learning, and that study isn't some crackpot theory based on how I taught a ruby workshop, I am more than willing to be corrected.

If you can cite me correlation between gender and behavioral traits when it comes to learning, and that study isn't some crackpot theory based on how I taught a ruby workshop,

This is where you're dishonest: You say you're looking for hard connections, yet any evidence is subject to a value judgement on your part. Tails I lose.

> This is where you're dishonest: You say you're looking for hard connections, yet any evidence is subject to a value judgement on your part. Tails I lose.

I am looking for correlation, as in the sense correlation is defined, or causation. I don't think correlation or causation is open to value judgement.

I'm referring to your hanging judgement whether or not any supplied information is derived from "some crackpot theory."

  I am pretty sure you will be left with a class of 1 in the end.

You say that like it's a bad thing. In the ideal case, we would have completely personalized education for every student. Most of what prevents it is lack of resources (and then of course you would need teachers smart enough to make it work).

I am not saying like it's a bad thing. I am pointing out a group of students isn't going to be consistent and coherent for a group size > 1. At a broader level, if you are claiming that a group of females is different from a group of males, that is true; but that is meaningless since a group of females is again different from a group of females.

I'm sure there is, but you can segregate the students in many ways to change the dynamics - race, parental income level, personality type, eye color, etc. - but will this change be positive? See e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/education/23single.html?_r...

Women do better in single sex schools (in England); but men do worse.

There's a natural experiment in England where there are quite a lot of single sex schools. There are a bunch of confounding factors that are hard to kludge out - social-economic backgrounds, etc.

Some cultures and religions prefer the sexes to be separated. This may not be a good reason to many people.

I'm curious about "female Dave".

Would a group or women react differently if the conference jerk was female? I'd guess the answer is "No", but then I've never experienced that situation.

I have experienced the male version of this, and unlike the author of the article I never see this kind of show-off behavior as a "call to arms", unless that means fighting the urge to wing something heavy at someone's head.

Perhaps there's a selection bias here, but when I see this happen the people around me tend to concur that "helpful jerk" is being an unhelpful douche.

It seems that when enough guys get together there often ends up being some amount of dick-size measuring; is there something similar when groups of women gather?

> That's a learned technique for getting assistance. It worked on you, didn't it?

I was going to point out the same thing. A women playing dumb to get help from a man, is not uncommon at all.

actually, anygender playing dumb to get help from the teacher/TA seems to be common. especially in a TA/student situation is where I see that a lot.

Yeah! Those sneaky women! All of em will con you and all us men into helping them. Sneaky deceitful women.</sarcasm>

And people wonder why women don't like male dominated tech events

The dynamic is an important consideration, like it or not. Do you think a woman would play dumb, bat her eyelashes and flip her hair (embellishing) while asking for help if her instructor was a woman?

> [...] play dumb, bat her eyelashes and flip her hair [...]

The fact that you frame it in such a stereotypical way speaks volumes about the attitudes at work here.

I am inferring based on past experiences. I don't know for sure what happened, I freely admit that.

I downvoted you because I think that during a discussion about how people (in this case women) learn, figuring out common ways that people (in this case women) seek help is a pretty valid concern.

Maybe men do similar things when they are confused, or maybe not. I don't know enough about education to comment, but attempting to would be off topic anyways.

It is fascinating how rapidly discussion descended from single anecdote into gender-wide generalizations (always negative, of course) and single possible reasons why everything is wrong with the world? Impossibility of maintaining reasonable discussion about this topic without such things invariably appearing almost immediately and descending the whole discussion into a blame-fest is depressing.

It could also just be an expression of generalized anxiety, or a disavowal of expertise to keep one's self from getting cocky. I'm a guy, I often make clear statements of my confusions to keep myself straight on what I do and don't understand.

And she may have felt, accurately, that she didn't understand the material as well as the OP thought. You can produce a lot of code in a tutorial without knowing enough to produce that architecture yourself.

Personally I think the people who have the clearest view of what they don't know are the ones prepared to learn the fastest. There's a huge difference between "programming is hard!" nonsense that stops people from starting in the first place and "I'm not getting this" consolidations that help a _started_ person figure out what they need to learn.

I've heard it said that the smartest people are the ones who don't think they know what they are doing, because then they try to figure it out.

Anecdotally, a lot of PhDs have impostor syndrome.

Not from a teaching standpoint, but from within an IT department as a peer and later a manager I've seen plenty of both men and women 'play dumb' to get help, even to the point of trying to slide by without learning the material themselves and always expecting someone else who knows how it works to be around.

The most extreme examples did not last long. Less extreme cases were treated by starting off any request for help with a review of the process and available resources that led the colleague to ask for help from a co-worker. This was done to develop the ability to perform research and empower them to make decisions on their own as long as they had a good basis for it.

Obviously a short training seminar is different, and the expectation is not for the participant to have found the answer on their own, but I believe a short review of their thought process is in order so the instructor can catch any systemic faults in the student's development. That is, don't just tell them what to type, but figure out if they are missing a core competency and perhaps recommend an independent course of study to supplement the seminar.

I think it goes further than that. I've seen smart women I know do the same thing with me (and I'm female and a coder) -- like suddenly acting as though they're idiots when they've already proved it isn't true. I think it speaks for a gutwrenching lack of confidence, some of these people are OK with learning skills but don't actually believe in their own ability to apply them.

What they need probably is a mix of more attention, a kick up the bum, and being encouraged to go and help other people who are less progressed (because that will actually build their confidence.)

I met my (now) wife at work, the first couple of months I worked there she'd call me at least once a week in the morning complaining that her mouse or keyboard didn't work, and if I'd please come over to have a look. Invariably I'd just crawl under the desk, plug in the mouse/keyboard, and things would work again; she'd go 'oh thanks, must've been the cleaning crew who hit it! I'll try to remember for next time!'. Anyway after a while we started dating and one night after a few beers she confessed that she used to just unplug the mouse or keyboard so that I would have to get on hands and knees to get under the desk, that way she could check out my butt to start her day.

Just thought I'd share my tales of sexual harassment in the workplace, seemed relevant ;)

Great comment. Someone should've told Dave to leave. This is less of a matter of teaching than of administration.

Agreed. All classes are derailed by jerks like this, not just women-only classes. Everyone rolls their eyes and tunes out, not just females.

And a simple "let's save the rest of these questions for after class" to the jerk is often effective.

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