In my Intro to ITI course, I have one class session during which I ask students to draw pictures of IT people. The students represent potential majors in ITI, Communication, and Journalism and Media Studies. Every year that I have done this, regardless of the course or audience, I have seen the same thing--a lot of white men with glasses, pocket protectors, messy hair, scraggly beards, and some kind of technology in their hands; 1 or 2 white women who wear glasses, have no figures, and are not really attractive; and 1 brown person.
After we review the drawings, we talk about the impact of stereotypes on people considering IT careers, people seeking help with IT issues, hiring, and a bunch of similar topics. This year, I also showed the students a few YouTube videos and websites that illustrate ageism, racism, and sexism.
When I conducted this activity last year, I almost had a riot in the classroom. One white guy in the class said that he didn't think that it was important to look at these types of issues since most women and black people didn't want to go into IT anyway. The class went crazy--shouting, fist shaking, and tremendous emotion around his comment.
This year, I got no reaction at all to the class material. In fact, the students thought that I was making too big of a deal about bias and stereotyping. After seeing the pictures, websites, and YouTube videos, and interviewing family members during Thanksgiving break to get their input into this topic, the students seemed apathetic.
So here's why I'm posting this--I want to know if I AM putting too much emphasis on this topic or whether other people think that ageist, racist, and sexist views of IT people ARE damaging in some way.
Please let me know what you think.
