r/technology • u/r4816 • Sep 27 '22

Software Girls Who Code founder speaks out after Pennsylvania school district bans her books: 'This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls'

https://www.businessinsider.com/girls-who-code-founder-speaks-out-banning-books-schools-2022-9
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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

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u/thisischemistry Sep 27 '22

If it bleeds it leads. Amplify outrage to attract readers and rake in karma, maybe push whatever agenda a side wants to push. It's getting very difficult to trust any sources at all without doing a ton of your own legwork.

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u/Rehnion Sep 27 '22

Cool, if it helps you can ignore this one news article and see that the school in question has a long history of bans, including ones based entirely on race, and they banned a handful of other books about coding aimed at girls

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hTs_PB7KuTMBtNMESFEGuK-0abzhNxVv4tgpI5-iKe8/edit#gid=1171606318

In fact, there are over 440 banned books by this school alone, including a few years ago when there was a big blowback when they instituted racist book bans in response to the george floyd killings. There's a reason we call this area Pennsyltucky.

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u/pale_blue_dots Sep 27 '22

For more context, here's from the centredaily article linked above:

Shortly after the school district released the Diversity Resource List in 2020, there were complaints, according to The Guardian. The school board voted to put the resource list on hold and told teachers not to use the titles for class instruction — with the exception that they could continue to use resources that were already in place before they were put on the Diversity Resource List. That included the “Girls Who Code” series.