&gt; Over and over, Dr. Cheryan and her colleagues have found that female students are more interested in enrolling in a computer class if they are shown a classroom (whether virtual or real) decorated not with “Star Wars” posters, science-fiction books, computer parts and tech magazines, but with a more neutral décor — art and nature posters, coffee makers, plants and general-interest magazines.<p>That last part sounds so banally corporate. And later in the article the author suggests we redecorate many&#x2F;most programming spaces, academic and professional, into banal corporate farms like every other soul-crushing workplace.<p>The best high school teachers I remember were the ones to fill their classrooms with zany stuff related to their subject&#x2F;field. Creatures from Disney&#x27;s Hercules in a Latin classroom. Ancient Roman coins, sorted on a timeline by metallurgic debasement and inflation, in an economics classroom. A wall of student painted musical posters in a theater&#x2F;dance classroom.<p>Is telling those teachers, &quot;no, you can&#x27;t decorate your classroom the way you want; it must look like the front office of ACME business park tenant,&quot; really the answer?<p>Or is it reforming our education system, especially high school, into an institution that discourages conformity? Or at least doesn&#x27;t punish nonconformity?