Quote:
Originally Posted by erobo2520
The mission of FIRST is so inspire in students a desire to pursue science and technology. Are girls on co-ed teams inspired? yes, if they can stick around. It is really hard to get both the mentors and the other students to over look the steriotypes our society instills in people. For some reason people are hardwired to protect girls and women, and handing one a jig saw does not come naturally to male mentors especially if they have daughters. So do all girl teams inspire female students better? Probably, but it also does not prepare them for the starck reality that is sexism in science and technology. All girl teams are not counterproductive to the mission of FIRST but it does not allow girls to develop the thicker skin they will need if they want to pursue a career in science and technology.
|
I think the portion I bolded here says more than anything else.
FIRST isn't about preparing students for the "real world" (even though much of what we do does have direct parallels in the "real world") - Even school isn't about preparing students for the "real world". 99.9% of FIRST graduates aren't going to end up with jobs where they have only 6 weeks to develop a solution to a new problem. Heck, most of them won't even end up with jobs where they get large, unique problems even once a year. For the most part, they'll be taking work that's already been done and expand on it, fix the bugs, and push it to market.
FIRST is about inspiring. If coed teams have trouble inspiring girls, to the point where you feel its necessary to include an "if they can stick around" qualifier to your answer above, then it's not the best medium for inspiring girls in STEM fields. I've seen first hand with the Robettes - girls leave inspired and energized, and that carries them into engineering majors in college. Sure, they meet some of that sexism from their classmates in college, but their experiences on an all girls team provides them with confidence and determination, and they can build that thick skin if they really need to... or they can work to change the culture at their schools and work places by refusing to accept the "norm". Being the best at what you do will overcome sexism faster than anything else.
Finally, if you think all girls teams don't deal with sexism, you clearly haven't interacted with one before. My team's gone out there and proven themselves again and again at competitions, but still they have to deal with poor attitudes from other teams just because they're girls. Not all other teams, true, but enough that girls comment on it. When we talk about possible alliance members at competition, invariably the drive team tells us about teams that treated them badly, who they don't want to work with in the eliminations.