
Girl Scouts to introduce game developer badge - saidajigumi
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/in-move-to-pwn-boys-girl-scouts-to-introduce-game-developer-badge/
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JDGM
I have a friend who is very active in guiding in the UK (a "Brown Owl", I
think?!) and my first instinct upon reading this was to copy the link and
paste it on her Facebook wall with a positive, encouraging comment about how
cool it is.

I got as far as pasting the link and FB detecting what it was before I noticed
the original title: "In move to pwn boys, Girl Scouts to introduce game
developer badge". I didn't even clock that the first time, I just went
straight from the IMO perfect title here "Girl Scouts to introduce game
developer badge" to the body of the article.

I'm now in limbo before posting the link, having replaced the link title with
the one here (I really like how FB lets you do that), and considering my
positive comment a bit more carefully. It's a niggle, and I anticipate
accusations of "reading too much into it", but that title gets under my skin
and I think it's because it's misrepresentative - as though the only reason
for doing this is to keep up with the lads and "show them what for!". Rubs me
right up the wrong way.

[Edit: reading the other comments in here I almost want to delete this because
it's a negative nitpick on the presentation of the article rather than, as
others are doing, a right on "whoop whoop" about this very cool news, but I
had to get it off my chest.]

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onemorepassword
I think you may also want to see this in the context of the US, where the
_Boy_ Scouts are an extremely bigoted organisation.

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rextex
"Extremely bigoted" is a pretty unfair way to paint the Boy Scouts of America.

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brudgers
Agreed, it's just women, gays, and atheists who are discriminated against by
the policies of the Boy Scouts of America.

So "bigoted" is probably more fair.

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JoeAltmaier
I don't know where you are, but my Troop has all of those. The national
organization is pretty heavily Mormon, so that's an obstacle. But our Council
just removed the rule against gay Scout.

And hey, the Girl Scouts are bigoted against boys, right? That's pretty
disingenious; they are purpose-selective in accordance with massive issues
with prepubescent youth. Pretty hard to mentor boys when they're constantly
showing off to girls - try to change that!

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vinkelhake
Seems to work pretty well in countries that don't have different scout
organizations for boys and girls.

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JoeAltmaier
I deny that; it seems implausible. But I have no more information than you.

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vinkelhake
You're right in that you have no more information about it than me. I spent
some 8 years in such an organization so I probably know a lot more about it.
It worked really well. Mixed troops are fairly common in the rest of the
world.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well, we have mixed Troops too, at the age of 14 and above, and its optional.
But below that, a Boys-only club (and Girls-only as well of course) works
pretty good for us.

I'm glad your experience was good. 8 years - so you must be an Eagle Scout? Or
do you do that differently?

~~~
vinkelhake
No, we don't have the concept of Eagle Scouts. We did have merit badges, but
there wasn't much focus on getting them. We did spend a lot of time learning
practical things that would help us on hikes.

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richardjordan
I have a just-turned-nine daughter who came up with an awesome video game idea
a couple of years ago - she is also a Girl Scout. She'll be so excited to hear
she can get a badge for it. Of course now we just have to figure out how to
build the thing! She's learning to code at the moment so anything that gives
her more motivation to head to the Hacker Dojo with Daddy and her Chromebook
and get her geek on is good news in my book.

Edit: from the video it looks like it is a bit restricted, but it's a starting
point. Maybe if she builds one of these simple games and gets her badge it
will encourage her to learn the more in-depth skills needed to really make the
one she wants to create. Still a great idea.

Edit: hmmm trying it now with her and I notice that the first stuff is free
but then you have to pay to get the full product. I hope this isn't another
bloody affiliate revenue thing by the Girl Scouts - these effectively pay-for-
badges annoy me. I already have severe issues with the while Girl Scouts
cookies thing where they get only 15% commissions on a product that is twice
as expensive as equivalent competing product and wouldn't sell at all if it
wasn't for this free labor child workforce and the power of cute combined with
guilt.

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tomjen3
How can you even develop software with a chromebook? I though those were
browsing/google docs only.

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richardjordan
No it's a great tool for learning without going to the fully fledged laptop.
She's able to work through codecademy training courses, tools like ShiftEdit
and Cloud9 IDE are the next step. Tons of tools out there now for using a
chrome book - maybe not for a power developer but for a beginner, particularly
one who I don't want to trust with an expensive MacBook just yet, it's good
enough to begin with.

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gngeal
_"maybe not for a power developer"_

I'd expect an actual "power developer" to be able to cope with any kind of
environment! :-) A proper hacker should be able to make a Chromebook do
virtually anything.

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EricBplusOne
I'm the editor at Ars who approved the headline. I was ok with it because the
Girl Scouts badge actually requires development work, whereas the Boy Scouts
badge was just for game design. So it's not a matter of the girls "keeping up
with the lads," but surpassing them.

Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
The headline "Girl Scouts to introduce game developer badge" is superb on its
own.

No need to bash anyone else, especially when these two organizations are all
about building people up.

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EricBplusOne
Wasn't my intent to bash anyone. I just wanted to avoid a boring, eye-glazing
headline.

~~~
saraid216
> I just wanted to avoid a boring, eye-glazing headline.

The word is "factual".

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saidajigumi
This just looks like a great opportunity for awesome outside-the-classroom
learning experiences and mentorship. I benefited hugely from various
opportunities like this when I was young, but those were all based around
local institutions versus the kind of broad-reaching impact that a Girl Scout
badge can have.

I can easily see some girls looking over the list of badges, seeing this one,
thinking "that's awesome, I want that one" and working to make it happen
themselves. Beautiful.

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jablan
I am coming from another culture, so would some kind soul explain to me how,
in the 21st century, the society tolerates an organization called "Girl
Scouts"? Am I the only one seeing something wrong there, as if there would
exist "White Scouts", for example?

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biot
Does your culture have separate bathrooms for boys and girls?

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jablan
So the reason of having segregated scouts is to protect their privacy?
Wouldn't it be enough just to have one scout organization and separate
bathrooms as well?

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biot
Privacy in bathrooms is accommodated through the use of private stalls. Why
should you have privacy from someone with different body parts but not privacy
from someone with the same body parts? What about transgendered people, or
people born with a mixed gender? We all make the same body noises so if the
privacy is there via private bathroom stalls, why segregate people?

Regardless of that point, the question was why "Girl Scouts" but not "White
Scouts". Modern society frowns upon segregated bathrooms by skin color (look
to the southern US for relatively recent examples of that) but not based upon
sex. So just as there are segregated bathrooms for male vs female, there are
also segregated baseball and volleyball teams, segregated schools, and many
other examples where the division is by sex.

Maybe Scouts is one example where it should get with the times and there isn't
a particularly good reason why it should be divided by sex, as could be argued
for some sports where there are physiological differences justifying the
segregation. However, I don't find it particularly archaic that a private
organization exists which has separate groups for male vs. female. It would be
archaic if only the female group has sewing, or only the male group has
hunting, and if that is the case they should modernize those areas.

But it is a private organization and if people don't like the way the
organization is run they are free to not participate. Anyone can start up
their own private organization which allows members of either sex. Call it the
Adventurers or the Pioneers, and have similar achievement badges. That sounds
like a good idea to me.

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WalterSear
This is how you fix gender issues in the modern tech workforce; not after the
problem has already taken root.

~~~
glhaynes
I'd think the best would be a mix of both.

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1123581321
Sounds good. The Boy Scouts introduced a similar one last month as well.
[http://www.scouting.org/media/pressreleases/2013/2130306.asp...](http://www.scouting.org/media/pressreleases/2013/2130306.aspx)

~~~
justindz
I was at the SXSW gaming expo last month and they had a booth about this merit
badge at the event.

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johnvschmitt
Very welcome. We need to change things, and the sooner in their lives, the
more difference it makes.

Back in the 90's, I was an engineering student at Berkeley. I was bored eating
lunch outside one day by the engr bldgs, & decided to pass the time by
counting the gender of just those folks passing by. It was consistently 25%
female. That includes non-engineers who were going up to the coops.

And, this is Berkeley. Nobody's going to (rightly) accuse them of anything
other than liberal.

When your inputs are 75% male, your outputs are too. You can't put the blame
downstream like that, & can't change it downstream as easily.

It's orders of magnitude easier to change this from childhood, early.

I ended up marrying a fellow engineer from Berkeley, & we are raising both our
son & daughter to be passionate, curious builders & makers & coders. You don't
just use the world, you adjust it & improve it.

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thrush
This is so awesome. It's great to see programming penetrating the main stream
and being recognized as a useful skill on all levels. I hope that we start to
see more of our youth study cs and programming languages at earlier stages of
high school and elementary school.

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rayj
Btw the BSA has had a computers merit badge since 1967.
<http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Computers>

~~~
thebooktocome
Yeah, but it's mostly a joke, like most of the technical merit badges.

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jasallen
Burying the lead. The real interesting story is that previously the only
science related badges were "science of happiness" and "science of style".
Girl scouts: part of the problem.

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tptacek
What you did here was try to find the master list of Girl Scout badges and
grep it for "science", which isn't even close to an accurate depiction of what
the programs are. Incidentally: the implied dismissiveness of style is itself
a gender bias artifact; we wouldn't bat an eye at the science of rockets or
cars. You think there isn't science to dig out of cosmetics?

At any rate, a cursory search will dig up badges for entomology, botany, a
bunch of different computer badges, science in general, human biology,
engineering, and more. There isn't one handy list of all the badges all in one
place that I can find; you have to actually dig into the programs.

(I'm the parent of an 11 year old girl, but she's not a Scout).

~~~
jasallen
What I actually did was read the article linked. If it's inaccurate _shrug_ ,
I don't know, but a googling of "girl scout badge entomology" doesn't show
much. If there are and they're meaningful, super, I'm pleased and 'part of the
problem' is revoked.

As far as "science to dig out of cosmetics", that's rather a non-sense
question. Yes, there is science, good, hard science. It's biology and it's
chemistry, it's not "beauty".

Yeah, I get it, the 'idea' is we connect things they're interested in to
science. Well, IMHO, the problem isn't getting the girls (or boys) who are
into style and make-up to 'dig' science, the problem is encouraging and
networking the girls who _do_ _dig_ science and math. (this is already done
much better for boys, again IMO).

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smooradian
If GS can embrace this then maybe they'll also embrace letting the Brownies
collect payment for cookie sales using credit card readers and other methods
besides cash.

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jacalata
They already have: [http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Tech-tagalongs-
boos...](http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Tech-tagalongs-boost-Scout-
cookie-sales-4359198.php)

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wavesounds
Great to hear! My Boy Scout troops Computer Club was where I wrote my first
computer program (yes it was Hello World :-)).

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ck2
Fantastic but why just games though?

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veritas213
good for them!

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Evbn
Why video games, and not programming in general? Useful work is actively
discouraged? Heck, there are tons of _scouting-relevant_ apps one could make,
around trip planning, navigation, information+-cataloging..

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yoster
I love Girl Scout cookies. Great organization, and this is a great idea!

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Havoc
Smells like a PR stunt to be honest.

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Jtsummers
What's the stunt then?

