this statement perfectly illustrates the feminist principle that "males and females are the same except for all the ways that females are superior". If you are tailoring teaching methods to girls you are acknowledging that the differences are more than gender stereotypes, otherwise the only "tailoring" that would be needed would be the elimination of those "stereotypes". So which is it? Of course if you are "tailoring" a teaching method to girls specifically you are also not tailoring it specifically to boys which illustrates another core principle that anything which is not optimized for the benefit of women without regard to the effects of this on men constitutes discrimination and persecution of women.

@ddworkin

There can be genuine differences that require different teaching techniques AND other damaging stereotypes at the same time. For example, suppose girls really do learn better through collaboration. Adding collaborative learning opportunities, while at the same time combating the 'girls can't do math' stereotype are not inconsistent goals. Providing equal teaching quality to each gender is also a reasonable goal that is not unfair to boys, and if the status quo is as claimed (girls are not receiving equal educational catering), and the claims about different learning methods are true (two very big ifs), then it is absolutely fair to change teaching methods to incorporate approaches that work better for girls.

In response to the article in general, I think education could stand to benefit from a lot of research about how people learn, particularly that they all (boys and girls) learn in different ways (not all girls are collaborative learners, and many boys are). Over-generalizations about how the genders learn are no more helpful than over-generalizations about their respective skill sets.

So how about we try to design curricula that target many different kinds of learning? Collaboration and independent work, observing examples and doing examples, auditory and visual learning, etc.

Or we could focus resources towards addressing the far more pressing and influential issues surrounding education (too few adequate supplies, facilities, and teachers, schools that resemble prisons more than places of learning, etc.)

...my siblings, cousins and I attended co-ed schools (mostly public) because that's all that the city offered and all our parents could "afford" anyway. We all, boys and girls alike, were expected to do our best, listen to the teacher, do our homework, etc., because after all our daddies (mommies weren't in the workplace back then) paid taxes from their paltry salaries so that we could have the abundant benefits of free education in the great U.S. of A.

The idea that we couldn't learn math or science "because we were girls" (or English lit "because we were boys") and the classes (aside from maybe home ec) weren't "tailored towards our way of learning" never entered anyone's mind. School was school, learning was learning, and whether you were a boy or a girl, learning was your JOB. And if you didn't do your JOB, there'd be trouble!

So what if you were a girl and came off as smarter than the boys? Any boy who didn't like you because you were a "brain" wasn't worthy of your friendship anyway. "Dumbing yourself down" in order to get a date was a total non-starter.

(And somehow my math- and science-whiz girl cousins did manage to get married!)

Social success? Let's see...in my high school there were both male and female class presidents and student council members, and most of the girls in those elective bodies were "brains" who were able to get both boys and girls to vote for them.

What this all boils down to, I believe, is that PARENTS have to impress on both their sons and daughters that school is important, that it's their JOB to learn, that there'll be plenty of time to "impress" the other gender outside the classroom, that doing-your-best is EXPECTED here and now, and that cheating yourself out of academic achievement out of a misguided sense of "what boys like" is UNACCEPTABLE in the twenty-first century.

Yes, maybe it's the parents who really need the "educating."

First, what is the point of this online gender only school? I understand the idea behind same sex real schools but on the internet it makes no sense.

Second, Hess is full of fail. There is gender inequality in school but its not girls being disadvantage but boys more specifically almost all minority and poor white boys. If there is any stereotyping against females its females doing the stereotyping as male teachers have all been pushed out in the elementary level and only slightly more in the high school level.

Third, none of these arguments actually address wither same sex schools actually produce better results and if they do why they produce better results. A couple of reasons they might produce better results, if they do, is one less distractions and two learning styles. I can see why boys/girls would learn more being separated as you are eliminated a huge portion of the social aspect of school and more time can be spent on the educational aspect. Segregation could also group students with similar learning styles if they are (generically speaking) correlated to gender. (I use correlated because it does not matter why a gender has these styles it just matters that the kids learn). Not saying that either of these are true but they very well could be and are not addressed.

Forth, Judith Kleinfeld is dishonest at best. As I already mentioned boys are in crisis well outside of upper middle class white and asian males. She fails to mention that while they test slightly higher in math and science about 1 to 2 percent, they score much lower in every other subject than female counterparts 10 to 15 percent lower. They are dropping out in much higher numbers, going to college less, finishing college less and have lower GPA for the same or higher test scores (this actually accounts for all males). I think the best idea to improve these stats is to encourage more males into teaching as this might be the only place many of these kids have a positive male role model. And no pay increases alone will do nothing to encourage male teachers, there has been a 20 to 30 year war on male teachers that make men scared to death of false accusations and it will take another 1 or 2 generations if we start now to change this.