9-Year-Old Challenges Boys-Only Robotics Program -- And Wins

[KamaAina]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-year-old-challenges-boys-only-robotics-program_559d50ade4b01c2162a5a9e3

When 9-year-old Cash Cayen was told she couldn’t attend a robotics event because she was a girl, she didn’t shrug it off. She fought against it.

Cash noticed an advertised robotics session at the Timmins Public Library in Ontario, Canada, and wanted to participate, but a staff member explained to her that it was for boys only between the ages of 9 and 12. Cash's mother, Caroline Martel, said the staff member offered to let Cash speak with her boss, Elaine De Bonis. Cash accepted.

"She told us that boys’ academic and literacy skills don't improve over the summer break therefore this program would only be offered to boys," Martel said in an email to The Huffington Post. "Her and Cash had a short conversation and went back and forth with reasons why Cash wanted to join the group, and Elaine continuously refused to allow Cash to join."

Cash, in turn, responded with a Change.org petition. So far, it has received support from more than 34,000 people. According to an update on the page, the 9-year-old also had plans to meet with the town's mayor. Her mother explained that Cash set out to raise awareness about this robotics program to help other girls who were denied entry.

[Scootaloo]

1. So... no girls allowed, because boys get stupid in the summer?

[Nay]

6. Not only does it insinuate that, but it also insinuates that allowing girls into the

competition will somehow 'contaminate' the boys, maybe? Or is it that big bugaboo that no one will talk about -- "if girls do it, it automatically has cooties" (see reading, art, dolls, cooking, the color pink, etc., etc.). IOW, do they think it's necessary for a 'boys only' environment in order to even get the boys interested?

[haikugal]

2. Go girl! Good job Mom and Dad!

Or maybe, good job parents is more inclusive!?

[KamaAina]

3. Maybe she can take on Harper next.

[Angry Dragon]

4. good for her

[KamaAina]

5. Beauty, eh?

[Quantess]

7. Great!

[Humanist_Activist]

8. The restriction makes no sense, and people wonder why girls and women do poorly in STEM academics...

Last edited Tue Jul 14, 2015, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)

reasons like this. Bullshit discrimination for bullshit reasons.

Even if boys do worse than girls over the summer, bothboys and girls would improve with academic activities in that same time period, shouldn't that be the goal?

Think on this, before the last third of the 20th century to today, women who wanted to be in one of the hard sciences ended up mostly getting scut work, which, in layman's terms means they did the math, and many times, did the theorizing and testing as well. I'm not saying all those male Nobel Prizes were stolen, not at all, but quite a few should have had women scientists as co-holders of such prizes and discoveries.

Funny thing is that it used to be women's work to be good at math, and then it reversed, tells you a lot about the influence of culture on ability.

[KamaAina]

9. Rosalind Franklin was a co-discoverer of DNA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King's College, London, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix. Franklin's X-ray diffraction images, which implied a helical structure for DNA and enabled inferences concerning certain key details thereof, were shown to Watson by Wilkins. According to Francis Crick, her data and research were key in determining the structure and formulating Crick and James Watson's 1953 model regarding the structure of DNA. Watson confirmed this opinion in his own statement at the opening of the King's College London Franklin–Wilkins building in 2000.

Her work was published third, in the series of three DNA Nature articles, led by the paper of Watson and Crick. Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins.

After finishing her portion of the work on DNA, with her own research team at Birkbeck College, Franklin led pioneering work on the molecular structures of viruses, including tobacco mosaic virus and the polio virus. Continuing her research, her team member, and later her beneficiary Aaron Klug went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.

[smirkymonkey]

10. +1000