Comment by juliendorra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by juliendorra | Hacker News Reader

There is more to it than this idealistic view:

42 is very excluding for women, succeeding in bringing in les than 7% women. Less than a classic computer engineering school in France apparently. So much for inclusiveness. (They managed that by only showing bearded old men on their website, bringing a frat-house culture from their experience in older schools, with "fun" bonding games like taping a student to the trees, and all in all not thinking twice about it)

Also, there is no entrepreneurial skills in the program (it's supposedly optional in year 3), no vision of a developer as part of a community (nothing in the program about going to external events, like FOSDEM for example).

Every student student is supposed to work on the same exact problem (exercise really) than the others, as far as I can tell in the same order.

All in all, the discourse on creativity and inclusiveness is really not in sync with how the school is designed.

No teachers doesn't equate peer to peer learning, nor a path to being a great, creative coder anchored in her/his community.

> They managed that by only showing bearded old men on their website

No. I will just say no on the implied statement that schools and companies must drag any women, black, Asian, Hispanic and Latino person they got to create political correct photos for their websites. No.

I approve when school/companies/conferences do sincere outreach because they want to engage a wider audience. That does not mean that they must do so, or for ever be branded as "excluding".

> with "fun" bonding games like taping a student to the trees.

The bonding games is serious, but a) sources? b) frat-house culture is a US concept, while first week hazing rituals in university has nothing to do with "houses" c) almost every university school in EU used to do it, and has resulted in it being commonly outlawed in recent 10 years. Not sure what French law says on the matter.

>42 is very excluding for women, succeeding in bringing in les than 7% women.

Having a small percentage of women doesn't indicate that they're excluding women.

Not necessarily, but they do have less women than the average French school, and the OP gave a bunch of serious reasons why this might be the case. They could try to eliminate those policies, and see if it increases female enrollment.

What serious reasons? Some pictures with beards? You're kidding. From the article and the kind of philosophy behind, it seems clear to me that they just do not distinguish people race, background, gender even. When putting pics on the site they don't think "oh let's get some women and some black people for the balance" because they forbid themselves to think in these terms. That's the founding of French laicity and equality and public education. I think it's still the right way to do it. That's why all the IT is sexist meme is so flawed.

You have to count how many women applied and how many were rejected. A fair policy is to have a balance percentage. For this number of male applicants, there must be this number of woman accepted.

No, the fair policy is to just not count the gender is the ranking.

Are you saying we don't care how many male/female applicants and just accept the one we think fit the school?

Yes, as long as "fit in the school" do not include any race or gender requirements.

That's one understanding of equality. Another includes positive action, etc, but one may argue that by giving more chance to women, black people, etc, at one step in their lives, is not helping them in fact, because this "positive action" makes them weaker for the next steps, which will be harder.

I think I remember a book or a movie, where a very good village teacher was helping farmer kids climb the ladder He did so partly awakening their minds to the things of culture, but also most importantly being doubly harsh on them. That's because he knew he was in the best position to teach them to live under harsh conditions, to defend themselves, to overcome difficulties, etc. This guy was really giving farmer kids a fair chance to climb the ladder, and the way is not to just let them in and be kind with them.

I think someone would want to help female student in IT should do the same, teach them to overcome half-sexist jokes, to live in a male-oriented environment without losing their feminity, and to be geeker than geeks.

The fair policy is to take the most competent candidates, regardless of gender.

That is one type of policy. But if all female applicants are not "fit" for the school, you get all male and zero female.

So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.

Let me tell you how that turns out ... first hand (from a real experience).

An entity in Australia called DSTO started thrusting women into management positions back in the early 90s - so they could say they had 50% (or as close to 50%) of women in management roles. I had the misfortune of working with a few of the bad ones.

The ones that were capable (ie. competent) were great to work with, but there were some that were REALLY, REALLY bad. People laughed (or cringed) when the bad ones did their job - and it was obvious they were inept. It was so bad that I would consider these few women to be the worst I have -ever- seen (in 20+ years of a working career).

After a period of time, these women cracked and left because they could not cope with the situation. If anything, I blame the management for putting the wrong people in these roles and emphasising their inability. If anything, it may have backfired and created a perception that women just can't do the job (which is far from the truth). I remember them being away frequently on training, so there was no apparent lack of support that I could see.

Unfortunately, that's what you get when you play numbers games. You should NEVER, EVER promote anyone because of their race, religion, colour or gender... Nor should you discriminate against someone for those reasons.

That's what you get when you play numbers games poorly.

A better way to do it is to maintain the same admission standards for everybody, but actively seek out more applications from women. It'll indirectly raise the number of women who get admitted, without distorting things in the way that you describe.

>A better way to do it is to maintain the same admission standards for everybody, but actively seek out more applications from women. It'll indirectly raise the number of women who get admitted, without distorting things in the way that you describe.

Not necessarily and it could certainly lead to distortion due to simple error in evaluation.

If you encourage applicants from an underserved pool, do you believe the average quality of these new applicants from the pool will be equivalent to the average quality prior to the new programs?

It is hard to believe that the incompetent women managers were the only one left on the market - maybe they just did not try hard enough to find the good managers?

I think that's a very narrow view, and it leads to a situation where female applicants might use the school as a 'safety' - it isn't desirable, but it will definitely accept you to boost numbers and look "equal". A better approach, which I think the OP promotes, is to look at why you don't have as many female applicants as other schools. If your messaging is turning off the good female candidates, who know they can get into the school they want, then consequently you will either accept less-good female candidates (under a quota system), or have a significant imbalance.

Why so unfairly critical? The founder has been successful in breaking monopolies and empowering p people.

Requiring the same exercise order is the proper way to compare students.

Entrepreneurial skills is an option in real developers life, as it is in this school, and rightly so.

Diversity isn't a magic pill that automatically improves everything. Students should be selected based on their merits. If this results in non-diverse samples, then so be it.

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