GNOME Foundation Issues 2018 Annual Report - Massive Increase In Funding

[wizard69]

I have to agree with some of this but the idea of free education last high school just rubs me the wrong way. I see politics has been thrown at the student loan problem with politicians maneuvering to gain favor with the lazy. Here is the thing, I literally had zero dollars for college but did have the drive to find a job. I spent years working my way through college and came out of it loan free. Frankly making college free would just increase the population of shiftless people.

Beyond all of that the stupidity of Outreachy is that it targets the wrong sorts of people. The woman programmers I know of (mind you I’m old and so are those woman) had the INTEREST and DRIVE to get into the field and succeed. They didn’t need a special program to help them decide to pursue this sort of career.

Which brings up the real problem here, you need to develop interest in kids well before they enter high school. Outreachy is literally focused on people way to late in the educational cycle. So yes education is important here. The problem we currently have though is an attack on education because white guys where doing well within the system. This has resulted in throwing away standards of excellence in favor of the inclusion of low performers. This is absolute lunacy. The right approach is to demand more not less from education.

I think Outreachy spots a problem and I can't fault them for wanting to help, but imho it's going the wrong way about it.

The reason why white men dominate STEM area isn't because white men are somehow discriminating against everyone else and thus you need to discriminate against them to fix it, it's because of stupid society stigmas and education. If you want to fix it, go into schools, get rid of gender-specific toys, campaign for free education for all and help on fixing society.

[leipero]

wizard69
Your premise about 'free education' is completely wrong. The idea of free education is not to 'give garanteed eqal result', but 'equal opertunity', and it means just that, nothing more really. You yourself probably had 'free education' in public school (being elemntary or high school), so in a very direct way you did benefit from it. But, to cover some basic misconceptions:
Do you really believe that 'interest and drive' are independent things devoted from any 'external' thing? This is rethorical question ofc. to avoid need to respond back, but, if you believe so, just think about it for a minute and you will realize quickly how wrong you are.
There is no doubt that there are people who, like those people you named, did not need any 'push/special program', but that is the point here, and that is the problem, because if you only meet people who do not need that 'push', you will keep seeing same thing as you do now (male dominated feilds in many spheres). There is a good saying that is often mistaken for definition about stupidity/insanity, and it goes 'Doing same thing, expecting different result', and the only thing you need to realize is that you are suggesting exactly that (you did not offer the solution, I am not going to pretend I have one = I do not).

The reality of the matter is that you are right about one thing for sure, and that is that wothewer your potential choice would be, is mostly defined at younger age, and I can testify that from personal example.

To sum things up, no, having 'free (higher) education' would not increase the population of 'shiftless' people, besides, lazyness is one part of persons character/quality, and it is important one. At the end, if the purpose of 'progress' is to overwork yourself and work harder and more compared to the past times, sign me off of that 'progress', because in my view, the purpose of 'progress' is benefit towards as much individuals as possible and therefore benefit of society. But we can clearly see contratry to that, and tehre goes motivation you have spoke about.

[Buntolo]

I have to agree with some of this but the idea of free education last high school just rubs me the wrong way. I see politics has been thrown at the student loan problem with politicians maneuvering to gain favor with the lazy. Here is the thing, I literally had zero dollars for college but did have the drive to find a job. I spent years working my way through college and came out of it loan free. Frankly making college free would just increase the population of shiftless people.

Beyond all of that the stupidity of Outreachy is that it targets the wrong sorts of people. The woman programmers I know of (mind you I’m old and so are those woman) had the INTEREST and DRIVE to get into the field and succeed. They didn’t need a special program to help them decide to pursue this sort of career.

Which brings up the real problem here, you need to develop interest in kids well before they enter high school. Outreachy is literally focused on people way to late in the educational cycle. So yes education is important here. The problem we currently have though is an attack on education because white guys where doing well within the system. This has resulted in throwing away standards of excellence in favor of the inclusion of low performers. This is absolute lunacy. The right approach is to demand more not less from education.

Do you realise that education is mostly free or cheap (less than 3k$/year for university) in Europe? It's not like they are all lazy, uneducated (from a school-perspective) or shiftless. On the contrary: in Europe the shiftless people are usually those who attend private schools, as they basically pay to grade. This doesn't mean that private institutions in Europe suck, there are high-level private schools, but a huge chunk are just places for failed/rejected students.