Suzie Boss' article Got Game: How to Keep Girls Interested in Computer Science published on the Edutopia website on December 9, 2010 was quite interesting. The article discusses how a high school out in Maryland has created an after school program for girls to attend and learn more about computer programming and gaming. This school had been seeing a declining trend in the number of girls that were enrolled in the first computer programming course versus the second course. The teacher started to talk to the girls to see why and he found out that they were not interested in being in a class with "geeky boys". The teacher then tried creating an after school program for girls only to see if this would help and it did. They have since noticed an increase in enrollment for both the first and second level courses offered within their school.
Some of the comments to this article bothered me. I do not see how people can say that this is a "sexist" approach. Whenever there are discrepencies or declines in any type of program or environment, we are generally curious as to why. I think this school did a great thing in investigating the root cause behind the decreasing enrollment and trying to fix the issue. As a female with a mechanical engineering degree and someone that has worked in industry, I can see why some girls may be intimidated by "geeky boys" or not want to take a lot of classes with these kids.
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/computer-science-education-girls-increase-interest-suzie-boss
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