Letters to the Editor
-
I've said this before and I'll say it again
Separate != Equal
Segregating boys and girls based on shaky scientific studies that point to insignificant average differences in their aptitudes is ridiculous. And yes, segregation is the right term to use here. Parents would be up in arms if a school district proposed to segregate all of its Asian, Latino, African-American and Caucasian students into separate schools based on the kind of tenuous evidence that's cited as rock solid justification for segregating boys and girls, and rightfully so.
I'm all for changing teaching methods to accomodate different learning styles. I'm all for programs to help struggling kids. But I don't think gender apartheid is the way to go about doing it.
-
I know this is a hobby for some of you
Has anybody looked into whether this problem, of coed education supposedly shortchanging boys, exists elsewhere in the world? In Germany, say, or Israel, or Japan? Are English boys hampered by the expectation that they sit still and listen to the teacher? I don't know the answers myself, but if this problem only exists in America, it's probably not a pink vs. blue issue.
-
Luxury
What we want to be as tolerant diversity-embracing Americans is a goal that is easiser to adopt when life's more basic and fundamental needs have already been met.
For any given upper-middle class types it is easier to accept slighlty worse learning performance when the difference is between Harvard and Haverford or between Ohio University and The Ohio State University for their kids.
For people who are watching generation after generation of a whole community's kids being relegated to the economic and social margins, increasing academic performance and future employability is not something to be sneered at. It is essential to any program to improve people's lives.
I don't know that gender segregation is likely to improve the situation in underperforming schools very much. I do know that it is important for obscenely successful and weathy people (yes, the average middleclass American) to realize that not everyone can afford what we routinely afford ourselves. If it can be shown that gender segregation is likely to cause real improvement in dropout rates and literacy rates and college attendence, then it is quite possible that such impovement would trump our more recently adopted ideals.
-
What is lost?
Nothing is lost except yet another opportunity to excuse mediocrity.
I would bet the house that the most virulent proponents of asserting that education is secretly pro-boy are the same folks who earnestly believe that school uniforms are an evil oppression too and that to be truly educated one must let the little snowflakes do whatever pops into their wondrous heads. Why have grades, why have standards, why demand performance at all? It's all some kind of mean old white guys evil repression, isn't it?
-
When boys and girls are drugged at the same rate
then I will say the schools are equally fair to boys and girls.
Frankly, drugs should never even enter the picture, they are merely a profit center for big pharma, which could care less if this nation is turned into a nation of zombie killers.
My comments stand, the schools are geared towards girls and girl-like behavior. All the teachers are female, fifty years of academia attempting to prove that men are congenitally inferior to women and all the CIA funded anti-male (pro feminist) efforts have made their mark. The nation is divided and falling. While both parents slave just to support the household, the kids are zombified, fed chemical crap, plugged into vid machines, and made to believe they are worthless.
Do feminists think this ia healthy society? Just asking, because this questioning does not even occur, even though all evidence is in favor of feminists controlling the social agenda these days.
-
It all comes down to the 'rents
I'm speaking strictly from personal experience so if there is evidence to the contrary I'm willing to listen.
I went to co-ed public schools all my life. The teachers and PARENTS expected academic progress from BOTH sexes throughout all those years. The notion that, as a girl, my learning process would be hampered by the presence of boys was a non-starter. The advice that mothers supposedly used to give their daughters - "Don't act smarter than the boys because then they won't like you!" - never came up during our family conversations.
My brother, sister and I were expected to do our best at all times. Sometimes we'd come up short, as all kids do, but the reasons for our lack of progress would be a matter of something other than co-education. Never in all my pre-adult years did they say "Well, I guess we'll have to transfer you to the (single-sex) Catholic school because obviously the (co-ed) public school isn't working for you."
If the PARENTS (especially the mothers) of today's students would take a gender-neutral attitude of EXPECTING GOOD GRADES and doing whatever they can to ENCOURAGE this, we perhaps wouldn't be having this discussion today.
-
On women's colleges / schools discriminating against boys
On Women's Colleges: The women's colleges mostly date from an era when women were barred from men's colleges. Women's colleges were founded on the notion that women should be taught with the same curriculum as men in just as rigorous a manner. In contrast, Dr. Sax wants to coddle both sexes, albeit in different ways (i.e. by not expecting girls to engage in competition, and by not expecting boys to sit still and concentrate as much).
I trust the historic women's colleges not to give women short shrift. I do not trust co-educational institutions to provide separate but equal educational experiences for both sexes.
On Schools Discriminating against Boys: Do you think that boys were not expected to sit still, concentrate for long periods, engage in rote learning and produce excellent penmanship in 19th century grammar and secondary schools? The main differences are that (a) schools are less strict on those issues; and (b)unruly boys were whipped in those days instead of being placed on ritalin.
I am not defending the old pedagogical techniques, but don't try to cast them as some kind of feminist invention. By all means, introduce longer recess periods, and more competitive drilling in class. I think both sexes would benefit.
-
it's what's being taught
or not, as the case may be, that's the biggest problem in schools. Not that boys and girls are in the same classroom.
National standardized testing, without national standardized funding is a big problem.
Expecting teachers to be guidance counselors, super-nannies, surrogate parents, and morality police all rolled into one (and then complaining when one's own precious angel is reprimanded) is a big problem.
Children whose home life is so chaotic and unsafe that school is their only place of refuge is a big problem.
Forcing kids to learn more and more at younger and younger ages, before their brains are really ready for it is a big problem.
Teaching religious faith as science and science as semi-plausible theory is a big problem.
A society that disrespects teachers, yet insists that these teachers (instead of parents) handle any and all challenges children pose, is a big problem.
Violence and drug trade in and near schools is a big problem.
Girls and boys trying to learn together? Soooooo not a big problem.