'No Boys Allowed' day teaches girls about science, math

Submitted by Mastodon on Sun, 2015-03-15 07:42

Story here. Excerpt:

'Classrooms at Seattle University had a new rule on Saturday: No Boys Allowed.

That's because it's the annual Expanding Your Horizons program, bringing together 500 middle school girls from Washington State to learn about science, math and engineering.

The girls rotated through workshops focusing on veterinary medicine, infectious diseases and robotics, to name a few.

"We're not trying to exclude boys," said Jen Sorensen, the program's organizer and chemistry professor at Seattle University. "We're trying to provide an opportunity for girls who might not even realize these career opportunities are available to them."'

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... there's a "No Girls Allowed" day every Sat. They're not trying to exclude girls. They just want to show boys that they, too, can get into arts and crafts.

But if girls are or feel excluded, well, they can be assured no one is *trying* to do so. Despite the title of the event. Honest.

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2015-03-15 22:41

I am sort of on the fence about these girls day things.

Have you noticed, from the article, that this has been going on for 15 years? And we STILL have a so-called "shortage" of female engineers in industry.

Why is this?

I believe that all existing programs to recruit girls to engineering will fail despite how much money is being thrown. Such programs all suffer the same handicap. There are two divergent tracks in engineering: analysis and design. Design is focused on collaboration, teamwork, brainstorming, customer needs and presentations: designers build things. And girls do exceptionally well here.

However, there is another aspect to engineering: analysis. And this aspect is heavily infused with the mathematics needed to investigate behavior. Girls are capable of doing well here. However, “Girl Day” programs rarely prepare girls for the heavy infusion of mathematics in engineering. As a result, some girls embark on engineering careers when they should not. Other girls are bored by it when, if the focus on analytical math-laden engineering was made more manifest, they might be more inclined to embrace the discipline. In short, “Girl Days” while definitely increasing the immediate numbers of girls STUDYING engineering, ultimately leads to the low rate of women REMAINING as engineers. They encourage the wrong girls and discourage the right ones.

Better to be left alone and stumble onto engineering due to natural inquiry.

In fact, I think it is the fault of feminism that is driving an intervention that not only does not work, it does the opposite.

But I suppose the feminists will then find some other way to blame men, rather than just let things be.

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Submitted by ThomasI on Mon, 2015-03-16 10:35

"We're not trying to exclude boys,"

no... you are not TRYING to exclude boys, ...you are succeeding in excluding boys.

if you're "not trying to exclude boys" then why do you exclude boys...?
duh...!!

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Submitted by ErikaLancastor on Wed, 2015-03-18 18:39