My daughter has told me a few times that she might like to program like me but was worried that it was a "boy thing".
I tell her that the computer can't tell you're a girl.
I tell her that the computer can't tell you're a girl.
Since I've tuned out powerless to stop the bias from getting in, I've started to really think about the best way to help her rise above it.
Someone (in the HN community) should do an in-depth blog post about how pop culture screws up our children's perceptions of what is appropriate and acceptable for them to reach for.
Not watching Disney movies seems like a perfectly reasonable response to the content of Disney movies. There is no shortage of other things to watch.
I'm all for good role models. But bad models are useful to, so the kid knows it's bad behavior, especially when they are likely to run into that culture anyway (as is the case with role models). All the kid will see is that you won't allow them to see what the rest of America has. Any moral message will be secondary. So you might as well ensure that they learn the lessons correctly the first time.
And no, they don't need to see Rambo, but Rambo isn't likely to be relevant to their lives if we're discussing Disney movies. I strongly believe things like Disney are crucial for kids.
-I'm barely recovering from a childhood of only PBS allowed and I feel entirely disconnected from my generation whenever we talk about culture before 2003. All I remember is from watching The News Hour about Bill Clinton having sex and bombing places and reading about nsync on the back of juice boxes. Don't do that, it's not healthy.
So if you want your kid to get something specific out of a Disney movie other than the intended message, it's probably better to ensure they see it with you while you're there to explain it appropriately.
The real problem is that children fear negative reactions from their peers and therefore abstain from many activities that would benefit them. Even boys are discouraged from doing anything remotely 'nerdy.' Most children are too scared to face the ridicule and ostracision that comes with embracing uncool activities. People will talk about you. I think it's particularly bad for girls.
1) Familiar with the image of a "geek" (how could you possibly not be?)
2) Intelligent enough to notice that the image of a geek is always of a male
3) Also intelligent enough to connect the dots between "programming" and "geek" based on what she knows of geeks.
Children are often a lot sharper than we give them credit. It doesn't need to be explicit; they will pick up on subtle things like omissions, and they will connect the dots.
For example, the "hacker" archetype really rooted in people's minds is mostly a product of movies, TV and books. At the same time, those movies, TVs and books draw inspiration from each other, and new ones are made by people influenced by them. Its a mess of feedback loops.
In the same messy feedback-loopy kind of way, they afect how ALL software engineers are represented in media, how other characters react and interact with them, and all the conclusions people might get from them (most classic e.g.: programmer = awkward nerd, so If i'm neither awkward nor a "nerd" then I shouldn't be a programmer)