Letters to the Editor
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@brightstar
if segregation benefits girls, then boys should be forced to go along with it, even if it adversely affects them.
likewise if segregation hurts girls, boys should be forced to go along with it, even if it adversely affects them.
It is all about the girls, even at the expense of the boys.
No one should be forced into single sex education. I don't see anyone here arguing for that.
And you say it's all about the girls, but if you read the NYT article you see that a lot of it is all about the boys.
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Schools are already ridiculously pro-female
Schools are almost completely run by women. The rules are female -- sit down, shut up, conform, be polite, nice, quiet and obedient. This is incredibly hard on little boys, and nobody gives a shit.
When I was in first grade -- FIRST GRADE -- I was literally tied to my chair, with rope, by a female teacher because I could not sit down and shut up. I remember that -- it was almost forty years ago. There are almost no male role models, there is almost no accomodation for the different ways boys and girls interact and learn, and now you whine about how boys dominate the classroom and ruin education for girls. You and Carol Gilligan can go pound sand. What a load of hypocritical crap.
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Doppelganger, they shouldn't have tied you up, but
You were supposed to be in school to learn. Or, at least, I thought you were. Not running around the classroom and disrupting everyone else. I was supposed to be. Both my parents (that includes my very male Father) would have been really pissed off if either my class or my brother's class (he's male too, if you hadn't guessed, so it's not just because I am a female) had been constantly disrupted by a kid or kids, male or female, who couldn't sit down and learn with the rest of the kids and who demanded the teacher's attention when he/she was supposed to be, well, teaching. It's not just because of the girls. Some parents, at least in the school system I went to, actually expect results out of the teachers.
I understand that some boys (and, more recently, some girls) have a harder time sitting still than others. It would be helpful if they were able to go outside at recess, now, and if we still had gym class, however, all that was available 40 years ago. And, btw, boys today can sit still, for hours, transfixed by video games. Some of them just cannot sit still in school. It's a problem and it does need to be addressed, by something other than medication and, in your case, ropes. However, are you saying that they should just let kids run loose in the classroom, the way parents now let them run loose in restaurants and planes? That's the answer? Or, are they there to actually learn?
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Dear Doppelganger:
Those "female" rules were in place in all-male schools for eons, if the recollections of some of my Catholic-boys-school-alumni friends are correct.
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boys OR girls
"This is incredibly hard on little boys, and nobody gives a shit."
Doppleganger, schools don't give a sh*t about *people.*
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@Doppelganger
This point has already been made above but it bears repeating:
The stress on conformity and obedience and sitting still in our schools is not a "pro-female" invention. These have been staples of boys' education for centuries. Try going back in time to an old-time British boarding school for boys and see how far non-conformity and disobedience would have gotten you. (There were far worse punishments than being tied to a chair.)
Roald Dahl's autobiographical book entitled
Boy
about his boarding school experiences will make your hair stand on end. He describes vicious canings meted out by male masters to the boys for such minor infractions as leaving a pair of socks on the floor or burning your toast at teatime. (See Wikipedia entry on the book.) Conformity and authoritarian discipline models requiring absolute obedience have always been part of boys' training in western society from the monastery to the military to the schoolroom. I don't think it's right, but don't blame it on some pro-female agenda.
(Also, the lack of male public school teachers probably has a lot to do with the low pay and low prestige of the job.)
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Overboard
I think rational people can debate the merits of single-sex education and come to some kind of compromise, but Dr. Sax seems to be taking this way farther than the science and research suggest.
Different colored lighting?
Talking "shoulder to shoulder" to boys?
The more we learn, the more it seems that there is a (proven) biological basis for gender differences, but treating boys and girls like two different species doesn't feel like the answer. I wonder what will happen when children who are taught under these specific gender-based conditions are released into the Real World, or into a Co-Ed college environment?
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I would like an answer to this question, though
I agree - the nuns and the boarding schools were enforcing discipline, conformity, sit down, shut up, or else back when single-sex education was much more common than it is today. And if they'd had Ritalin in those days, I'm not sure they would have used it - some of those people enjoyed whipping the kids a bit too much.
However, I do wonder about some other aspects of education today and why they are that way - why are the little darlings not allowed to have recess outside? Why the cut-back in gym (besides lack of $$$ and fear of lawsuits)? Why the removal of almost anything that might make it easier for more active boys to feel comfortable? I'm just asking...I mean, it's like schools are just asking to be slammed for this stuff.
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@SueNJ
I agree that these are all excellent questions. (I hadn't been aware that recess is not held outside in some places.) I also think that these issues may make life difficult for girls as well as boys. (Do people really think that little girls have a completely easy time sitting still for long periods?)
We should absolutely be looking at ways to accommodate the needs of actual flesh-and-blood students -- whether it is greater tolerance of non-conformity, younger people's need to sleep later in the day, more fresh and exercise, different types of pedagogical techniques, etc.
I just don't see why looking at these issues needs to be framed in terms of boys-vs.-girls. It makes me suspicious of whether people promoting these ideas are really concerned about children's learning styles, or rather are playing a game of gotcha with feminists. Somehow when girls catch up in academic performance, it is now framed as girls simply being more "docile" and less imaginative -- that is, success in schoolwork is now framed as something less desirable now that girls are doing it.