Single gender education, revisited

Hi Osso sorry, I was at work when I posted my earlier response as Luvmy.... I think due to time constraint my post appeared more confusing then it was meant to be. But I feel so strongly about these issues that I would want to clarify. If you could specifically tell me was it my flight of ideas or my opinions that you find confusing?

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I liked fbaezer's post.

luvmykidsandhubby wrote:

I believe that we do need to take a step back. Take care of our homes and kitchens.

I actually agree with this as a concept, it's just that I think it doesn't have to be, nor should it be, WOMEN who are taking care of our homes and kitchens. Men can be cooking and cleaning and preparing healthful meals, too. Shared responsibilities is the thing, not women leaving the workforce and entering the kitchen.

One of the main things that bothers me about any kind of gender-based education is that while boys can TEND to be one way and girls can TEND to be another, there is a lot of overlap. That is, there are "boyish" girls and "girlish" boys. I don't mean, like, girls who like sports or boys who like dolls (though there is that too) -- I mean in the ways they learn.

I'd much prefer to see a flexible, individualized school system that can meet all of those kids' needs than assumptions made about how ALL girls learn and how ALL boys learn.

That's entirely apart from the social aspect, which I think is extremely important. (Boys and girls learning to interact in normal, everyday, non-date situations.)

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Quote:

The world has two genders, and kids should grow in a coed environment, because education is not only about language and math

Lot has changed since we went to school. My son goes to a magnet public montessori, people usually wait couple of years t get in. All the kids do relatively well . We do not have a middle school yet. When I see 5th graders (who are all good kids from good families invested in their education ) and some of them are starting to dress up, you know what I mean I feel that there is a strong chance boys around them are getting distracted already. I agree Sozobe that there should be interaction in a non date like situation but unfortunately media, broken homes and broken family structures are corrupting their minds too early. 7-8 yr old TV programs are geared towards date like interations. I cannot change that. So I will change what is in my hands protect my son until he is at relatively mature stage. That being said I do not know of a allboys school and he is a 3rd grader only at 7.5 yrs of age.

A good reference wi,l by Dr.leonard Sax's book " Why Gender matters" re; differences in how kids learn. Doctors can hardly have political agendas we are not wired that way. Other wise we will not be in medicine. Most of us are knowledge seekers attempting to be helpful.

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I would oppose separating kids on the basis of gender if the goal is to give gender-specific instruction. I'm not quite sold that we are "wired" differently. However, if the goal is to remove distraction for certain populations of kids in need, then I am supportive of that. For instance, there are certain areas of my city where the culture is very misogynistic and I can see how separating the kids by gender around middle school would be beneficial for both the girls and the boys. Especially if it would provide opportunities to present positive gender specific role models for kids who otherwise wouldn't have them.

Ideally, of course, these kinds of measures wouldn't be needed. And indeed, they aren't needed in more privileged school systems. But some of our kids need a little more than others.

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sozobe wrote:

I'd much prefer to see a flexible, individualized school system that can meet all of those kids' needs than assumptions made about how ALL girls learn and how ALL boys learn.

The trouble is that some of the gender inequalities in student achievement arise from group dynamics between the students; by definition, you can't individualize these.

My strong philosophical opposition to gender-segregated schooling was eroded when I studied physics. At the time I was in college, maybe 10 to 20 percent of our student body was female, which was about the German average. More notably, at least half the women who studied with me came from the same school: the only girls-only highschool in Bavaria. The boys, as you would imagine, came from all over the state, and some from out of it.

Apparently, in our co-ed highschools, group dynamics between boys and girls discourage girls from taking an interest in the hard scientists. Teachers try very hard to encourage them. But they don't stand a chance against the meme, enforced by peer pressure, that an interest in math, physics, or chemistry makes you somehow "less of a girl". In this girls-only school, the choices of girls were distributed just like the choices of students in other schools. And the reason seems to be that they don't have this unhelpful boy-girl group dynamics.

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DrMom wrote:

Quote:
The world has two genders, and kids should grow in a coed environment, because education is not only about language and math

Lot has changed since we went to school. My son goes to a magnet public montessori, people usually wait couple of years t get in. All the kids do relatively well . We do not have a middle school yet. When I see 5th graders (who are all good kids from good families invested in their education ) and some of them are starting to dress up, you know what I mean I feel that there is a strong chance boys around them are getting distracted already. I agree Sozobe that there should be interaction in a non date like situation but unfortunately media, broken homes and broken family structures are corrupting their minds too early. 7-8 yr old TV programs are geared towards date like interations. I cannot change that. So I will change what is in my hands protect my son until he is at relatively mature stage. That being said I do not know of a allboys school and he is a 3rd grader only at 7.5 yrs of age.

A good reference wi,l by Dr.leonard Sax's book " Why Gender matters" re; differences in how kids learn. Doctors can hardly have political agendas we are not wired that way. Other wise we will not be in medicine. Most of us are knowledge seekers attempting to be helpful.

How is keeping your son away from girls actually protecting him, though? Protecting him from what, exactly? Will he never see girls, anywhere? Do you actually think that you can have any particular control over what he thinks?

To my mind, having healthy relationships -- just regular friendships, nothing romantic -- with members of the opposite sex is an integral part of growing up and being ready to have more mature relationships.

As in, this sort of "protection" may have deleterious results down the line, in the form of immature/ unrealistic relationships with women.

Meanwhile, I do think there are trends in how boys and girls tend to learn -- but nothing absolute. Some girls love gross-out humor and need to move around a lot; some boys like to sit quietly and work. I'd much prefer that schools operate according to general principles like that (a more hands-on-learning type of place, for example), and then parents could choose a school that fits their child's preferred way of learning, than making it this binary either/or, girl/boy sort of thing.

The other thing that occurred to me when reading Osso's original article is that this whole thing could be rather reinforcing -- especially the account of the separate classrooms in SF, I think it was. I'm usually more for diversity and letting kids figure out what seems to work for them at a given moment than the whole tracking, stultifying, act-like-this-in-kindergarten-and-you-carry-that-label-'til-you-graduate-from-high-school sort of thing.

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Thomas wrote:

My strong philosophical opposition to gender-segregated schooling was eroded when I studied physics. At the time I was in college, maybe 10 to 20 percent of our student body was female, which was about the German average. More notably, at least half the women who studied with me came from the same school: the only girls-only highschool in Bavaria. The boys, as you would imagine, came from all over the state, and some from out of it.

Apparently, in our co-ed highschools, group dynamics between boys and girls discourage girls from taking an interest in the hard scientists. Teachers try very hard to encourage them. But they don't stand a chance against the meme, enforced by peer pressure, that an interest in math, physics, or chemistry makes you somehow "less of a girl". In this girls-only school, the choices of girls were distributed just like the choices of students in other schools. And the reason seems to be that they don't have this unhelpful boy-girl group dynamics.

I suppose that has a lot to do with the subjects pupils focus at grammar school.
A survey by the Bund-Länder-Kommission für Bildungsplanung und Forschungsförderung ( federal-state commission for te planning of higher education and advancement of research) found out that the relation female:male in the specialised course 'physics' at grammar schools is 1:7.

And according to another survey, in 2005 82% of female students choose their subject at univerity because they wanted to deal with persons ...

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I know what you mean, Thomas, and that's one argument I find compelling too. It seems like inroads are being made there, too, though. More and more women are going into the sciences, and they (general "they") are figuring out some aspects of what makes that more likely (in a co-ed environment), such as female mentors.

Ultimately, I'd still prefer that the peer pressure stuff be addressed directly (and, again, I think real progress is being made there) rather than correcting for it by corralling girls.

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We had (and have) a similar discussion here in Germany as well, btw, since the late 80's.
That ended in the idea of a 'reflexible co-education': e.g. between the age of 12 and 16 girls and boys have their own sports classes, with other subjects the same "on demand". [For instance, my female colleague and taught sexual education most of the time seperately.]

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DrMom wrote:

Doctors can hardly have political agendas we are not wired that way.

Oy.

Where do those medical lobby groups come from, in that case?

Doctors, individually as well as in groups, can and do have agendas, political and otherwise.

~~~

And related to the topic at hand, I'm checking in to voice my discomfort with gender segregation at any level of education.

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sozobe wrote:

Ultimately, I'd still prefer that the peer pressure stuff be addressed directly (and, again, I think real progress is being made there) rather than correcting for it by corralling girls.

Does there have to be a one-size-fits-all solution though? Why not have school districts offer both kinds of school and let parents decide which kind of school is best for their children?

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I haven't said that school districts shouldn't offer both kinds of schools. I've argued against specific ideas put forth as reasons single-sex schools are a good idea, such as that it's good to keep boys away from "distracting" girls, and that all boys learn one way and all girls another.

I wouldn't send my daughter to a single-sex school, but my sentiments don't extend to a desire to outlaw them or anything that extreme.

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A topic at the Regensburg Conference of the German Physical Society (DPG)(Regensburg, March 26th to 30th 2007)

Quote:

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Thomas wrote:

Does there have to be a one-size-fits-all solution though? Why not have school districts offer both kinds of school and let parents decide which kind of school is best for their children?

That assumes the parents know best. Given what I've seen in terms of parents' reactions to various types of education that they don't want their children exposed to, I don't believe that's reliably the case.

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There ya go. I was getting at that in mentioning some reasons that I think it's dumb, but what ehBeth says is the main point, and I agree. This is why I'm for sex education in the schools (I don't trust all parents to do a good job of educating their own children on this subject), and public education in general for that matter.

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Sozobe wrote:

I haven't said that school districts shouldn't offer both kinds of schools. I've argued against specific ideas put forth as reasons single-sex schools are a good idea, such as that it's good to keep boys away from "distracting" girls, and that all boys learn one way and all girls another.

Understood. I agree these arguments are stupid.

ehBeth wrote:

That assumes the parents know best.

Know what best? In a system where school boards make schooling decisions, the school board needs to know which kind of school is likely to work best for children in general. But in a system where parents make schooling decision, parents need to know which school is likely to work best for their children. Parents need to know nothing about which school is best for anybody else's children. So even if (if!) school boards have better expertise in general than parents do, parental choice may still work better, because it requires less expertise about teaching in general. It also allows parents to use the expertise they have about their own, individual kids, which is what school boards don't have.

One of my favorite mantras, which I know for a fact Sozobe has never heard of, comes from the movie Men in Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." It is no wonder, therefore, that I want the decision to be made by parents, which are individuals, while Sozobe prefers school boards, an institution elected by the people.

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Yes, that's one of my favorite quotes, and I do think it applies but in the opposite direction. I tend to think the "people" there are more likely to be parents, who have a tendency to get each other hysterical about some issues, ignoring actual evidence. While it may start on the individual level, I think it reaches critical mass when they find enough of each other to do something about it. Sex ed is a good example there too.

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A point of view on this by Tim Harford in Slate - http://www.slate.com/id/2173028/nav/tap3/

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sozobe wrote:

Sex ed is a good example there too.

This is probably true for you. But that's only because you and EG made a determined and successful effort to settle in a high-quality, reasonably liberal school district. But suppose that instead you lived somewhere else -- say, a conservative neighborhood in Columbus, or even more hopelessly, the Bible Belt (millions of Americans just like you live there). In that case, the example would cut exactly the other way. (An example similar to this is our Eva, who lives in socially conservative Tulsa under socially conservative public schooling policies. To give her son a decent education by her standards (and presumably yours), she had to put her son in a liberal private school.)

I don't mean to derail this thread with yet another private-vs-public school digression. But my point is this: When Sozlet will get decent sex education, decent evolution lessons in biology classes, and so forth, she won't have the institution of school boards to thank for it. She will owe it to her parent's choice in picking the right school district for her. I think you and EG did well, so the way you handled it is exactly what I'd like to see on a school-by-school basis, rather than a school-district-by-school-district-basis.

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The "good example" part of sex ed is that I don't trust parents to make that decision, in general. This was in response to the Men in Black quote. If I don't trust a given school board, I will act on that in one way or another. The issue we were discussing, though, is whether parents are particularly trustworthy, and I think the answer is "no."

Meanwhile, yes, I think parents should have the right to move their child to a school that they feel best serves their children. But I also think it is our duty as citizens to do everything we can to strengthen our public school system. I think a strong, quality public school system is the bedrock of what is good about our country.

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Single gender education, revisited

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