Photo from John Collier, Jr.
Last week’s New York Times Magazine had an article about the trend towards segregating boys and girls in America’s public school classrooms.
Segregating by gender used to be the exclusive domain of private and religious schools. But failing public schools are turning to gender segregation with hopes that it can help turn around poor academic performance, especially among boys.
I’m sure many of you remember the “girls crisis” in the 1990’s. Educators and social scientists claimed that the classroom’s competitive atmosphere damaged girls’ self-esteem, discouraging them from excelling in math and science.
Ten years later, girls are excelling and boys are struggling. We solved one problem, but created another. Some educators believe that to solve this quandary, gender segregation is the way to go. But it is far from a settled issue.
Are boys and girls different?
The idea behind gender segregated classrooms is that boys and girls do indeed learn differently. According to proponents of gender segregation, male and female brains are hardwired to develop and learn differently and at different rates. Studies from the National Institute of Mental Health back up these claims. After analyzing cat scans from 829 boys and girls, scientists discovered that total cerebral volume peaks at 10.5 years in girls and 14.5 years for boys. Thus, girls have bigger brains than boys during most of elementary school (this is how they travel to Mars to get more candy bars). The scientists who conducted the study, however, were quick to note that differences in brain size don’t correlate to differences in learning ability.
That hasn’t stopped educators from using studies like this to support the evidence they see firsthand in their classrooms. According to one teacher, when teaching boys:
You need to keep them up and moving. You need to engage boys’ energy.
However, most classrooms in America aren’t designed to keep children moving. You’re told to be quiet, sit “Indian-style” (oh wait, that got squashed by the PC police-it’s now “criss-cross applesauce), and not touch the kid next to you. All children are, as one educator put it, told to behave like girls.
Some educators believe that this demand on boys to behave like “little ladies” has resulted in dismal statistics for boys: boys are nearly twice as likely as girls to be suspended; more likely to drop out of high school; boys makeup 2/3 of special education students; and are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
Several schools that have switched to gender segregation have seen these statistics significantly improve.
The Benefits of Gender Segregated Classes
By segregating genders, educators believe they can better tailor lesson plans for their students need. For boys they can create non-stop lessons that keep the boys’ attention. Being active is an integral part of boy-focused lesson plans.
Another benefit that comes with segregating genders, especially when dealing with adolescents, is the de-sexualization of the classroom. One teacher commented that teaching at an all girls school allows her to be freer when covering lessons that touch on sex. She doesn’t have to “worry about some boy laughing over the thing he did with the girl last weekend and embarrass her.”
A final benefit is that gender segregation gives students a positive sense of themselves. Boys can be loud rambunctious boys without having to worry about being chastised, and girls don’t have to worry about competing for attention with those rowdy boys.
Does it really work?
Whether gender segregation actually helps improve academic performance is yet to be seen. The data so far shows mixed results: gender segregation doesn’t seem to affect the achievement of middle-class, white boys; they do benefit poor and minority children.
What do you think?
What do you all think? Should schools start segregating classrooms based on gender? Take part in the poll and let your voice be heard:
n
Facebook
{ 4 trackbacks }
{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
Dum… how about instead of by gender, by gender identity?
This site is slightly misogynistic. Just sayin’. That Frank Sinatra article almost made me want to not follow this site.
Would gender segregation put boys at a further disadvantage for social development?
Interesting. I think the poll is off in that it poses the broad question of “Should classrooms be segregated by gender?” instead of “Should public school classrooms be segregated by gender?” which would better relate back to the article cited.I do believe that private schools should have the option to segregate if they wish, but public schools should not. Learning how to learn and behave in the presence is as valuable a skill as (if not more valuable than) math, or social studies. Public schools are to a large extent designed to help socialize our youth and part of that socialization comes from interacting with the opposite sex.
@Bob Ragsdale:
Excellent point Bob. In fact the article made that exact point, I just forgot to mention it.
Remind me of the (now old) book “The War Against Boys”. Imagine a whole book on the causes & effects of telling little boys to behave like girls.
Man, I ought to be getting a comission….
@ Bob Ragsdale: I disagree. If our nation requires an educated populace to function correctly, the national schools should do everything it can to produce this result. While I agree every child must learn socialization skills, I believe these should occur in the home or community surrounding the child. I don’t think young people have a problem socializing, I think the bigger problem is teaching critical thought, math and science skills, and historical perspective. If having same gender classrooms has more success at producing these results, I think it’s in our best interests, as a nation, to make the change.
For more reading, I just finished a very interesting (and scary) book by Leonard Sax, MD: Boys Adrift. He talks very cogently about the differences between boys and girls learning needs and how they respond to outside stimuli (i.e., video games). As a father to three young boys and a former director of a girls summer camp, I can attest to the very different childhoods of boys and girls.
And, though I’m interested to find out more about the results from the current experiments, I would not hesitate to place my boys in a single sex classroom if the opportunity presented itself.
Thanks for the conversation – I think its an incredibly important topic to pursue!
What??? Boys and girls are different?? Who said?
Social order existed in schools when girls were required to wear female specific clothing. ie: dresses, skirts. This practice reminded everyone that school is a formal institution. Girl behavior was recognized as critical to the socilization of awkward and boisterious boys.
Proper apparel set the behavior standards, and set the boys and girls apart in realistic examples of the situations they will face in real life.
Since the fem/nazis have debunked this practice what do we have now? Ganster chic, teenie bopper slut costumes, gender identification confusion, and a [maybe?] woman running for president that is never seen in public wearing a dress.
Women lose some of their natural power when they wear pants in formal situations.
I came across your (fabulous, by the way!) blog by way of Brazen Careerist, and I hope you’ll suffer a female voice in the boys club.
My first reaction after reading the NYtimes article the other day was “Great idea!” There’s nothing wrong with admitting that girls and boys both mature and learn differently, and allowing for that reality. I also have to point out that sometimes the realities of puberty get in the way of the necessities of learning, and in an educational environment, the learning should come first. We already have a grossly undereducated public, if there is something we can do to overcome that (within reason), I say bring it on.
Btw: @ “Oracle:” Why must some people insist on equating feminism with Nazis and disparaging brilliant, competent Hillary and her pantsuits every time anyone brings up gender issues? Sheesh! I mean, I’m for Obama, but seriously…
My church recently separated the teen boys and girls into separate Sunday School classes, just to test it out. As one of the boys’ teachers, I have found that it is, if nothing else, quite a bit easier on us teachers to include the whole class into activities. I can have physically demanding games, and the smaller guys don’t begrudge it like the girls did. The atmosphere itself seem to be a bit more comfortable too, and the guys are more willing to open up and join the discussion. I believe the female teachers have been reporting similar results, when they’re not walking between the rooms to tell us to be quieter. = )
@Jennifer Lynn:
We welcome women here to join in the conversation! Thanks for your comment!
@Jack:
We do this as well at my church. I teach the boys as well and I agree separating them from the girls facilitates in the opening up discussion.
@Jennifer Lynn:
You are correct about the nazi comment. Thank you for your careing guidence, critical analysis, and patience.
What I should have said is: Hillary is a brilliant and competent communist in a dumpy pantsuit and dresses like the bride of Mao.
Oracle, if you’re going to come out of your AM radio egg sack to comment, you might try consuming some information from outside of it as well. You’re obviously sucking at the teat of Limbaugh. You’re not all the way there yet, though, because you haven’t figured out a way to blame illegal immigrants as well.
As for your “argument:” You appear to believe that the entire problem rests in the way girls dress. This implies that, like the hydrocephalic ditto-head you are, you beleive we should just all just take a time machine back to the 50s and that women should just act “like women” (IE behave themselves, get married, get pregnant…wear skirts?)
For myself, I think it’s an interesting idea – the school itself doesn’t need to be segregated, so the socialization element doesn’t really apply. Unfortunately, it’s impractical, and probably even illegal, for a public school to segregate anything.
@Justin:
So, sites the celebrate manhood are misogynistic? Seriously? I’m trying to think of a word stronger than “ridiculous”, but am coming up empty. I’ll get back to you on that.
And I’d be interested to hear your ideas for this “gender identity segregation” solution – maybe we could round up all the children and show them pictures of scantily-clad adults and see which sparks more of an interest! That would be a totally healthy way to approach it. Maybe we could issue them all birkenstocks and a misguided sense of entitlement, too!
Your comment is a waste of bandwidth. Just sayin’. Kindly go hate dudes somewhere else, thanks!
Another girl sneaking into the boys’ club.
I think it’s great that there is a site promoting the idea that men can be manly. I especially agree with the notion that men of my generation are having difficulty “growing up”. It’s nice to see that there are men out there encouraging these guys to man up and get moving in life. Fantastic work, I’m sending all the men in my life to this site.
As a wise man once said, “Don’t be a guy; be a man!”
I just have one reservation about the proposition of sex-segregated classrooms. I have to wonder what will become of tomboys and boys with a tendency to effeminate behaviour. Could it hyper-normalize typical behaviour and marginalize different children even further? I know when I was little, I never got along with girls. I only played with boys until I was almost 12 years old. I just hope that where segregation happens, care is taken to include those with an atypical temperament.
Great site, btw.
@Catherine:
Interesting point Catherine. My wife was a tomboy and enjoyed running around with the boys. But she also liked to be around just girls, too.
Also, thanks for the kind words. I’m glad that women enjoy the site and take part in it as well.
@Catherine-
Yeah, Brett is right I was a tomboy and much preferred hanging out with the boys. My big concern with segregated classrooms is how part of the idea is that girls will like talking more about stuff together and boys will like more active and competitive activities. But I loved activity and competition when I was a girl. I know I would have been looking at the boys’ classroom with an envious eye. I think the best idea is to have some of the classes segregated-like math and science-and some of them not. That way you get the best of both worlds.
It seems there are two possible reasons for sex-segregated classrooms. The first could be to account for different learning styles (tactile, vs auditory etc), and the second could be to create safe spaces where boys and girls aren’t distracting each other. I’m all for the idea of safe spaces for boys and girls to learn in, if that is the goal then by all means go for it.
I do take issue with the idea of separating boys and girls to teach them in different styles. Sex is a unreliable indicator of learning styles. Certainly there is a correlation between sex and learning style, but there are significant numbers of boys and girls that defy the stereotype and they need to be accounted for.
I also take issue with the idea that the ’sit still and listen while I lecture you’ style of teaching is new, and was thought up by women to help girls succeed in schools. That was the default style of teaching long before women were ever allowed near a school house. Which is to say it’s not the feminist’s fault that your son’s teacher wants him to sit still and listen while she lectures him- that’s how teaching has been done for millennia.
wow, great comments- good job (almost) everyone! i do shy away from anyone that thinks putting little susie back in a skirt would solve anyone’s problems…just sayin.
what a tricky issue. i can really understand the concern for the kids that don’t fit into the gender normative teaching style, although i, myself would have fared much better if we could have stopped taking breaks every half hour to play dodgeball…even as a nine-year-old i remember thinking “hey, team, this is school. play ball on your own time!”
these kinds of questions overwhelm me and make me want to escape to a commune where i can educate my children in peace, maybe trade kids from time to time with educated and competent friends, at least until the kids are teenagers.
i think the real solution is to put a whole bunch of W’s trillions into the education system and create much smaller classrooms with much better teachers. but that’s dandelion fluff, i know. i just think that the problem is way larger than whether boys and girls are in class together. perhaps if those hyperactive boys didnt have a mountain dew dispensing machine in every hallway and gummy ranchers (exclusively) for lunch they would fare better. perhaps if the girls weren’t reading magazines about which celebrity is most likely to be their death crush, they would feel more comfortable in a more vigorous learning environment. perhaps segregating them kids would help…but perhaps it wouldnt address the real issues.
I went to an all boys high school and dress with a shirt and tie everyday. This wasn’t some ‘back in the good ol 50s’ thing, this was in 1999-2003. When I was going to school at the time, I was bummed there were no girls around for me to take a look at, with my fiercely raging hormones commanding my every move. But as time went on at the school, I felt that overall it was a much better atmosphere for learning. Us teenage boys didn’t have to worry about trying to be “the man” and impressing a bunch of teenage girls (that was done at Friday night football games anyway!). We were able to focus more on our studies, and I’m sure our teachers planned their lessons out to teach boys specifically.
I do think there needs to be SOME interaction between boys and girls….activities planned by the schools that can mix up the genders and have the kids interact. Coed after school clubs? Intramurals? While I believe that a lot of learning atmospheres should kept gender separate, you shouldn’t keep boys and girls from complete interaction.
I was surprised to notice that more people voted yes. I am undecided because we don’t actually know if segregation works and could also create a bigger emphasis on gender differences… that’s how feminism started; we don’t need that again.
If it works, I’ll welcome the idea.
Having been through both all-male and mixed I must say that the former seemed to create a far more tense and unappealing atmosphere. The presence of girls for some reason makes both teachers and students aware that they are human beings.
I would suggest that a great number of the problems comes from disparity of treatment delivered by parents. A study showed, for instance, that children wrapped in blue were more likely to be treated as if they should not be crying by nurses looking after them, while those in pink were treated in a more considerate and soothing fashion. As these differences in treatment pre-date the differences in character I would suggest that the source of the diversity is the care given, rather than the differences instructing the care.
This would only be exacerbated by division down the {misleading an entirely arbitrary} line of what sexual organs the child happens to posses. Indeed I would suggest that the more integration that occurs the better: interaction slays bigotry and I feel that there is an increasing amount of this, since misogyny is weakening but simply being replaced by ascendant misandry.
This is no improvement, to my mind, and we would be fools to provoke more of it.
Should the gay boys be put in the girls’ classes and the lesbians in the boys’ classes to keep the sexual tensions away too? Oh, but then what do we do with the bisexuals? What about transgender, genderqueer, and intersex children?
thePiper is right about “sit down and shut up” being perfectly normal school rules, not “girl stuff.”
Boys are more often diagnosed with ADHD, this is true. It’s also true that they have a higher tendency to be disruptive in displaying their ADHD tendencies, while we are more likely to zone out. I wasn’t diagnosed until college because I was the semi-quiet girl staring out the window, rather than the boy throwing pencils across the room. We are generally ignored by the teachers who don’t connect zoning out, talking out of turn, and forgetting assignments constantly with ADHD because all they know is “bad kids who run around and throw things have ADHD.”
Those high school drop out rates and everything else listed? Guess what? Those could have a lot to do with ADHD. ADHD kids are much more likely to drop out of high school because they don’t know how to direct their ADHD constructively. That’s a matter of treating the ADHD and teaching the kids how to work with their ADHD, not against it. ADHD can be a great blessing if you know how to take advantage of the unique ways it lets you work. Nobody teaches ADHD kids how to work with what they’ve got. Either you learn to see how hyperfocusing can lead to great results and how easily being bored can lead to studying a wide range of topics, or you struggle.
Well I have studied in both segregated and mixed classes. My experiences of the segregated classes were comparatively better than mixed classes not only in terms of good grades but also in understanding the practical realities of life.
Socializing with the opposite sex is mostly learnt in childhood and adolescence through your parents’ interactions with each other rather than through your own personal experiences and this is what is manifested in our behaviors later in life.
Real time experience is not the sole way of learning, the real learning comes when you tend to analyze it rather than to forget it over night.
So I think when it comes to school education then it is better to have separate classes.
Can there be any doubt that American cultural and educational trends have influenced the academic ascent of girls at the expense of boys? I’m most concerned that the last few generations men are failing their boys. The denigrated role of fatherhood, authority and “male” characteristics and competition indicted for leading girls to an “unhealthy self-image.” And still, the question of how 40 years of accommodating the supposed special educational needs of girls in a coed environment is hardly ever asked. This despite hard numbers showing declining trends in male high school graduation rates, college admission applications, and the inverse upward trend of male imprisonment.
Obviously, women are not to blame as they cannot be expected to understand manhood.
No, it’s the generations of fathers who’ve rolled over and let their sons grow up in an educational and social context that increasingly vilifies manhood. Fathers have willingly let women redefine how boys are to be molded and brought into manhood. As the number of male teachers at all levels of public education has declined over the last four decades, too many unformed male egos are captive to an exclusively gynocentric agenda.
More men really need to start giving a damn about their boys. They need to recognize that the best characteristics of manhood have become malnourished in context of a culture with myopic focus on “women’s issues,” wrecking the potential for ever more boys to embrace their birthright manhood.
I cite one of the articles about Franklin’s 13 virtues. Avoid extremes.
I don’t think we should schedule our young one’s primary education based on their posession of a plug or a socket. Though I’ll admit I have observed a correlation. I think we should allow students to gravitate toward where they feel they can succeed.
In some places you’ll find they’ll naturally segregate. In all 8 shop classes I took in high school, there were three girls. Two of them in one, one of them in another. The other 6 classes were total sausage fests.
You honestly wouldn’t find too many males in “Teen Living.” Part of the curriculum involved carrying around those “doesn’t being a parent suck?” baby dolls.
In some places, like history, it wouldn’t really help to segregate the sexes. We all hated history. French class basically couldn’t be taught without both boys and girls there. In my experience band classes must be integrated. Girls tend toward woodwinds and boys tend toward brass and percussion. I remember exceptions who excelled at their atypical choice of horn, though.
And honestly, I think there should be some professional interaction between girls and boys because the workplace is integrated and each needs to know how to work with the other, not just how to play with the other.
I also think we’re looking at the wrong end of the problem. Most of what is taught in high school can be ignored anyway because it doesn’t become useful later on, so the high school diploma is a badge of the ability to sit through 13 years of crap. the 2 year and 4 year college degrees are beginning to be the same. It is more common for Americans–especially women–to have at least a high school diploma, but we’re dumber than ever. I think the curriculum as a whole needs to be mulled over.
I think it’s just the education system in general.
I mean 50 years ago they didn’t have gender segregation. Does that mean 2 generations of society are inferior? No.
I dunno, I’m not a parent, but it seems to me that kids these days have no damn respect for anybody (and im only in my 20’s saying this). I dont just mean teens going through the whole ‘rebellion’ thing, i mean i’ve heard 6 and 7 year olds swearing at everything and everybody.
I think it’s just parents not doing a decent job of parenting (in general it seems).
My parents raised me fairly well I think, they weren’t too harsh or over protective, but i knew the rules and knew there would be consequences if they were broken.
Also I was taught (as a kid) if the teachers talking then I shut up and pay him/her some attention.
Just basic fundementals. Ok i kind of deviated I just think gender segregation is a dumb idea. Why not homeschool everyone? Then the boys wont group together and get ‘uppity’. Sorry, but school is one of the key places a child learns about and deals with social interaction. and Guess what? Dealing with the opposite sex IS part of social interaction (crazy I know!), so I think you’d be limiting kids exposure to what will become a daily part of life for them in the future.
I was a bit of a tomboy as kid, I would have hated to have to sit there with my hands crossed like girl would probably be expected. I think segregation by learning style might work, but on the other hand kids will have to learn to deal with multiple kinds of people. E.g. shy quiet kids desperately need the practice of having to wrestle their opinion through, whether they like it at that stage or not.
My thoughts.
Segregation by gender for some days, coed for some, each in rotation, to address gender -oriented learning issue.
How to incorporate it realistically, without it eating up the time constraints of the process of timely education: hold sessions the way the working world operates: 40-hour weeks, year-round, vacations of two-week intervals, and set these schedules in stone – so that the first quarter of every year is not spent entirely in review of everything the student had already learned the previous year – this would promote actual progress in the schools.
Focus on students’ strengths. Some may be preoriented towards the sciences, but would need help in mathematics. Some may be preoriented towards history and research – but may need help with language skills. Some may be incredibly sports oriented – but may be rudimentary, at best, in scholastic skills.
Game settings would help that latter student. Ritalin would set that latter student back severely.
Music theory, art, sculpture, shop – those instructors could incorporate standard “Readin’, writin’, ‘rithmatic” into their curriculum.
Bigger schools, smaller classrooms, more activity within the student body.
Bring the classrooms back to life. Make the educational atmosphere, much like a career, a secondary lifestyle in which the students and parents can strive towards specific goals, and get rid of the damned FCAT system altogether.
While there, why not get rid of the useless, meaningless awards. Students are pushed to excel only when they are actively in pursuit of a goal.
Put in meaningful awards, which are simultaneously stimulating to the students and yet are attainable through effort.
There are classes which the females would have a natural predisposition to, and there are classes which the males would have a natural predisposition to.
There are also those who have gender identification issues, which would have to be addressed in a non-threatening fashion – if a tomboyish girl or an effeminite boy is in the group, full segregation would do more damage than good.
The thing is, school isn’t just about grades. School is a chance for children to learn to socialize and come into contact, as well work with, a wide variety of people. If you seperate children because of gender, they lose out on valuable lessons in interacting with the opposite sex.
Perhaps it would be better to look at how subjects are taught and more time should be given to individual pupils who are struggling.
I have to ask–what happened to treating people as INDIVIDUALS instead of their ethnicity, gender, etc.?
I was impressed with this site at first–until I delved into the archives. Disappointing.
Separation by “learning style” would likely be best accomplished by separation by gender as that is probably a more reliable indicator of “learning style” than any test likely to be administered, not to imply that “learning style” has anything to do with it.
I remember being a forth grade boy in a class room intended for forth grade girls. The format of the instruction was totally irrelevant because no boy in forth grade should ever be expected to be able to stay awake much less pay attention when made to sit still for hours long stretches, especially not when teacher (and I’ve met the sort of people that become teachers in college – they’re not bright) turns the lights off under the premise that it will cool the room.
Separating class rooms by gender is an excellent idea.
People hung up on treating students individually have obviously given no thought to the practicality of setting policy in a school.
Furthermore, the idea that children who struggle to keep up are the only ones that need additional attention is grossly wrong. Smart kids endure a damaging amount of boredom in school.
Okay, so let’s not stop at segregating by gender. How about by learning styles. All of the female visual/verbal learners here, female tactile/kinesthetic learners here, and so on and so on. Once these children are out of school the work environment will NOT be segregated. Are we really doing anyone a favor? Seems to me that we are going backwards. Really, males of low-income families learn differently than males of high-income families. Most males in low-income families are minorities. Haven’t we already been there?
I see 2 problems with segregating by learning style:
1. People do not fall as cleanly into one learning style category or another as they do gender. I wish to not be put in a learning style box, whereas I am fine with the male box, so long as that box _accurately_ describes strengths, weaknesses, and primary roles of males. I fit well into that box, though I do not fit the _stereotypical_ male box.
2. There are more learning styles than there are genders, depending on how you count them (3 or more, usually?).
Segregating by gender treats individuals as individuals better than no segregation at all because such segregation _does recognize_ the maleness or femaleness of the students, with all they entail–with all they contribute to the individual. Theoretically, segregating by person (i.e. one-student classrooms) would be the ultimate recognition of individuality, but that would cost too much $, eh?
I think a healthy balance of co-ed and segregated is good.
As a teacher, I can tell you boys and girls learn differenlty at different rates. The biological evidence is clear: the male and female brains develop in unique ways–especially in the early years. In addition, the sexes thrive in different social and emotional environments. The main reason we don’t provide single-sex education anymore is money (big shock). It costs a lot more to provide single sex education (busses, schools, programs etc.) than to run massive, overcrowded co-ed schools.
For more infor on why same-sex education is best go to http://www.singlesexschools.org.
segregation is wrong. Guys have no right to push girls around and tell girls that they are better than us. you don’t see the girls going around telling other girls how much guys suck at different things. Sure of course boys are most of the time better at football than girls……. but how many boys are amazing at cheerleading… not as many as girls……. This is personally very dumb, men do not have anymore rights than women. They should just learn to respect women. It is proven that girls are smarter than other males….and also states that women tend to succeed farther in their career……which just proves to show that women have a better chance of succeedingn and deserve a higher level of respect. Many of the teachers are also females which just shows also that men have some of their own problems that they can’t handle… like girls!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok here’s the thing, what the heck guys!!!the people that say girls can’t understand stuff as well and we can’t comprehend stuff, well it’s ridiculous! Girls are competitive too and can kick butt any day! we love to compete!In fact i usually like to compete against all sexes just so i can see how i compare to everyone! and as for academics, one of my great friends is the smartest and leading in every academic competion and have three other girls following her for it. Although the guys are doing well it still proves that we can understand stuff just as well. Also, alot my guy friends come to me for advice on a daily bases because i actually understand their situations more throughly. Again on the competition, alot of the girls are amazing at sports and work just as hard. I do alot guy sports too along with a couple other girls and we play guy teams and still whoop them. All of the guys that treat girls with disrespect…newsflash!you’ll never get a awesome girl with that additude!gosh all we want is to be treated with respect and not be treated like less than some guy. School sex segregation is a joke! if guys can’t consintrate cause they just can’t help staring!it’s happened to everyone!that doens’t mean we should all go homeschooling cause after finding out that a while of same sex class, the guys won’t no what to do without someone to hit on, they’ll start hitting on eachother! and yes i think this is just weird that girls aren’t as cool as guys even crosses peoples mind!the guys need to just realize girls can be just as good, tough, smart, competive, and much else as guys.
This is crap! First off i found this website while researching for a persuasive essay about how segregating by gender is unacceptable and this has agrivated me thoroughly. First off, I compete at everything! i thrive on competition and one of the reasons that i do so well in school is to accell over the guys. Also, most of the girls in my classes groan everytime a teacher says to sit and listen. Men came up with the idea to sit quiet and listen to lectures so don’t say that this style of learning is beneficial to women. Second, the whole distraction thing is the individual’s problem, not everyone elses. (Checking the other sex out in school is half the fun!) You might think that I’m failing classes or struggling because of this, but I am a straight A student, compete in math and knowledge competitions(placing in all of these), and still excel in sports. Thirdly, I like to move around rather than sitting all day in class; it’s not just the guys. I may be more quiet and conceeded, but thats because I respect my elders and understand when the appropriate time is to have fun and be stupid(which is obviously not at school). Finally, if guys think that girls in school are demoting their manhood, then go be manly on your own time. You don’t have to become a girl to listen and respect them and teachers. Guys might think it’s annoying that girls aren’t as competitive or roudy, but I hate it when guys make perverted comments and think it’s funny. If the classes were segregated, I can guarantee that these comments would be stated more often and respect for women would plummet which shouldn’t necessarily take a backseat to education. Seperating genders could even give kids that segregating in general is an okay idea whereas it is completely wrong as we have already established with African Americans in our history. Hopefully, whoever reads this will understand where I am coming from and actually consider what segregation will do.
I used to be a youth minister for a large Catholic parish. We segregated the kids for small groups and as much as poosible on retreats. It was far more effective. We even had men’s and women’s sessions that went more into depth with gender specific issues. It cut way back on the flirting, they paid more attention and they were more open to disscussion. It was not a popular idea and it was new to the parish, but it works. There is no reason to through that many hormones together and hope for the best. Teach the boys to honor the women and the ladies to honor the boys. Let them spend soem time together, but very limited and very supervised. Seems like a no brianer, but maybe the sociologist would preffer we operate with no brains.
I really agree with Justin. It’d be perfect if it wasn’t by sex, but by the student’s gender identity.
I attended an all-girls school from 5-12 grade, and I actually appreciated it. I felt much freer to state my opinion or to say the right answer in class than when I was in a co-ed environment. Of course there were still bullies, people who hogged class-time, jocks, and anti-social people, but without boys there, several other girls and I didn’t care as much what others thought of us. During lunchtime, there was no feeling of “Oh, I shouldn’t be eating this cookie, I’ll get fat”; people just ate what they did, acted how they liked, and no one thought anything of it. While my school definitely could have done a better job with creating opportunities for both sexes to socially interact, I really do believe the single-sex environment I was in allowed me to form a strong sense of self and to realize what’s important in my life before I headed off to a co-ed college and work life.
However, the very fact that I felt freer in a single-sex environment to speak my mind than I did in a co-ed environment really says something about our society. From where did I learn to care what boys think of me (my appearance, actions, personality, etc.)? Why should that matter? Therefore, I think single-sex education is only a band-aid for a gaping wound that schools and our entire society must address. If both sexes are raised to consider the other equal, then I think single-sex education would not be needed.
As a college-age girl, I have to say that the best classes I’ve ever had (high school and college) have been those with roughly similar numbers of girls and boys. The two things these classes shared were a small class size and an excellent teacher, and in the end, I think that matters a lot more than gender segregation. These were all debate-based courses, and I felt that the debate would not have been nearly so interesting had there not been both the male and the female perspective–however, maybe there is something to teaching math and science in segregated classrooms. Ultimately, it seems like a scheduling nightmare to me, whether or not it’s had success in some locations.
One thing to consider is that may this is not a black/white all-or-nothing issue. Gender segregation could be helpful for touchy social issues like sexual or social development, where the presence of the other gender could hinder participation because of fear of humiliation, there are other places where such segregation actually reinforces problems, such as sexism, misogyny, aggression, and negative stereotypes because the two genders are not allowed to socialize with each other, and so 1)the myths that cause the above problems are allowed to propagate and 2) because there is a primary emphasis on segregating by gender, there is no argument being made to see each other as people.