Girls Who Code book ban resurfaces

I spotted this in Politico this week.

The Central York School District of York City, Pa., banned a young adult fiction series that empowers girls of color to take up tech careers.   The series is “Girls Who Code,” whose protagonists are Black, Latina, Asian and Muslim.   This is a year-old ban, but it resurfaced when

CISA Director Jen Easterly mentioned it.  She has made it a priority to increase the number of women in the cyber workforce. “This effort to ban their book is dangerous to the security of our nation on so many levels,” said Easterly.

Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani spoke with Insider and said:  “This is about controlling women, and it starts with controlling our girls and what info they have access to.” 

“We use these stories to teach kids to code,” Saujani said. “It felt very much like a direct attack on the movement we’ve been building to get girls coding. Especially in districts that don’t have the technology or have disparate Wi-Fi, books are a great way to learn to code and a way to equalize access to coding.” 

Saujani added that removing the books hinders visibility for women in technology fields and diversity in the industry, as many of the protagonists in the series are young girls of color. 

“You cannot be what you cannot see,” she said. “They don’t want girls to learn how to code because that’s a way to be economically secure.” 

In a market landscape where there aren’t enough tech workers, removing tools to assist educators in teaching new entrants from diverse backgrounds is unwise.  Foolish.  And self-defeating.

And I think we as an industry should care a lot.