Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Single-sex classrooms are on the rise. As a parent of three elementary school kids, I think this is a great idea. Besides, at this age, they naturally segregate themselves out anyway, and for good reason: boys are icky and girls have cooties. Everyone 10 and under knows that. It doesn’t seem like a great leap in logic to think educating them separately might be of some benefit.
Proponents argue that, “...separation allows for a tailored instruction and cuts down on gender-driven distractions,” while critics like the American Psychological Association (APA), “...decry the movement as promoting harmful gender stereotypes and depriving kids of equal educational opportunities.”
But Dr. Leonard Sax, of the Pennsylvania-based National Association for Single Sex Public Education, contends this kind of education actually serves to break down stereotypes.
"We want more girls engaged in robotics and computer programming and physics and engineering... We want more boys engaged in poetry and creative writing and Spanish language."
Not to be outdone -- and never missing an opportunity to turn a perfectly sensible decision into something completely absurd -- “The ACLU launched a national campaign, Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes, in May and sent cease-and-desist letters to school districts in Maine, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia.”
I see this as a parental choice issue. As a parent and consumer of the public school system, one of the things with which I am charged is determining how my child learns best. Keep in mind that the single-sex classrooms are not mandatory and the curricula are exactly the same. This is not by any reasonable stretch forced gender segregation or, even more ridiculous, as harmful as racial segregation, though some professionals have suggested as much.
The question then becomes, do the benefits of single-sex education outweigh the negative effects of gender stereotyping? I can’t type “yes” fast enough. Frankly, the idea that we need to be indoctrinating kids to think gender differences don’t exist is at best offensive and at worst harmful. Boys and girls are different, and that’s ok. I think for my children this would be of great benefit. They would learn around their peers who are just like them. If, in the future, that doesn't appear to be the case, I can make an alternate decision. I'm not suggesting gender-separate classrooms are for everyone. I am suggesting we should have the option.
What do you think about educating the genders separately?
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Oct '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
This is something we can measure—easily.
Why shouldn't we, and then act upon the results?
Nov '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
I agree it's a parent-choice issue. I think the option should be available and the control-freak ideologues should mind their own bl<cocviolation>dy business. Sadly, this applies also to the ACLU, who should know better.
Mar '11
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
I was educated in an all-male environment - I wouldn't recommend it - I've been spending the rest of my life trying to recover ;-)
May '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Public education is irremediably flawed. Any attempt at reform is nothing more than rewriting the syllabus for educating the crew of the Titanic.
Public funding of education should be delinked from public provision of education. Parents should receive vouchers that they can use to send their children to the schools of their choice.
APA/ACLU acolytes can send their children to whatever progressive Valhalla fits their idea of a fit environment. Everyone else can send their children someplace they'll actually get an education.
May '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Ask them the simple question: "If diversity is strength then why should education be monolithic?"
Dec '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
I send my kids to charter schools. I'm all for school choice of every kind. What better way to serve the public good than to allow parents to serve their kids' best interests through school choice?
However. My primary concern with education is content. I think there's been waaaay too much emphasis on how we're teaching kids and not nearly enough on what we're teaching them. It's why kids don't know history and haven't developed a secure American identity.
Edited on July 20, 2012 at 1:53amMar '12
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Yes. Girls mature more quickly than boys, and have a lower need for exercise. Girls are also overshadowed by boys in classrooms, and are generally less prone to speak up even when the answer is obvious to them.
Separate them and permit them to learn at their own speeds.
If girls/young women want to learn math and science, no problem. Just allow them to compete with their own gender and grow in their own skills before putting them in competition with boys/young men.
It will also take away the preening by both sexes as they attempt to appeal to the other sex. So you might add school uniforms to single sex segregated education.
May '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
My children attend a charter school that has single gender classrooms. It works. Well.
Apr '12
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Choice is good as some like co-ed but others do not. I went to all girls' school and thrived. If I had been with boys, I know from the times I did co-ed that it affected my work. One school model might be to have coed school but separate classes.
Apr '12
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
EJHill, super comment.
Aug '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
I mentioned hereabout recently that when setting up a new email account a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to tick a box for male, female or "other"! So how might that work out in gender-segregated education?
Feb '12
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
The only option's liberals want in regards to children is whether to kill them before they are born. Once they escape that fate, you pretty much have to let the liberals do whatever they want or you are a hater. Or something.
Jul '12
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
When I was going to school, and for the preceding few thousand years, everyone thought that girls and boys were different. We thought that, in the aggregate, boys were naturally better at math and science and girls at everything having to do with beauty and grace.
What fools we all were.
Edited on July 20, 2012 at 3:51amMar '11
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Boys learn better, on the whole, when girls are there. It only takes one girl to civilize a whole mess of boys. Lord of the Flies was believable because there were no women on that island.
Girls learn better when boys are NOT there.
The answer, clearly, is one-way glass.
Edited on July 20, 2012 at 3:52amNov '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
iWc: Boys learn better, on the whole, when girls are there. It only takes one girl to civilize a whole mess of boys.Lord of the Flies was believable because there were no women on that island.
Girls learn better when boys are NOT there.
The answer, clearly, is one-way glass. · 1 hour ago
Despite the joke at the end, iWc makes a serious point. Coeducation is good for boys, and bad for girls. I'm not sure why we'd want to drift away from it, in a society in which boys are already struggling academically more than girls.
On the other hand, if parents want single-sex education, I don't see why they should be compelled to forgo it just because of the ACLU--which seems as usual utterly indifferent to liberty, despite its name.
Jul '10
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Donald Todd: Yes. Girls mature more quickly than boys, and have a lower need for exercise. Girls are also overshadowed by boys in classrooms, and are generally less prone to speak up even when the answer is obvious to them.
That girls mature faster than boys is an argument if favor of separate classrooms. And the fact that girls often get better grades in the early years is in part due to the fact they are more prone to memorizing, thus able to do well on tests. Boys tend to want to reason things out, so it isn't until the later school years that they catch up - and in some cases pass - the girls grade-wise, especially in math and the sciences.
I do hope, though, you didn't mean to imply that girls are more reticent to answer in class because teachers tend to call on boys more often. In other words, girls are shortchanged in the classroom. That is a myth that was completely destroyed by Christina Hoff Sommers in her book, Who Stole Feminism?
Feb '12
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
barbara lydick
I do hope, though, you didn't mean to imply that girls are more reticent to answer in class because teachers tend to call on boys more often. In other words, girls are shortchanged in the classroom. That is a myth that was completely destroyed by Christina Hoff Sommers in her book, Who Stole Feminism? · 5 minutes ago
I think it's more a case of girls are like crabs in a crab bucket and have a first instinct to pull an achiever back down to the rest whenever one tries to show up other girls in front of men.
There's a reason women are more attracted to socialism than men ...
Feb '11
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
A.D.P. Efferson, Guest Contributor: Single-sex classrooms are on the rise.
What do you think about educating the genders separately? · · 7 hours ago
Your title and closing like speak of "educating" children but everything in between is about classroom teaching. Does everyone here accept the assumption here that these two notions are one?
Feb '11
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
Our oldest was in a school that age-segregated for 7th/8th grade, but specials were still co-ed. I taught there for a semester, and now teach Jr. High at a different school. I liked the separation. I could tailor my approaches and in some ways my methods for the sex of the class. My 9th grade classes were part of the high school and were back to co-ed. They were more or less out of the Jr. High strange stage, and they interacted very well. I would like to teach in a school with that type of age segregation again.
Edited on July 20, 2012 at 1:24pmFeb '11
Re: Should Girls and Boys Be Educated Separately?
The above post was Carolyn, not Alan Martinson.