I could just imagine the boys in my high school, if there hadn’t been females around. They would have been the wife beaters and sexual harrasers of our future. shudders
And I also agree that schooling is about socialization. It is about learning to relate with other people as well as learning about math, reading, writing, etc. Therefore it only makes sense to have co-ed classes where both genders would have to deal with the other.
No, no one should be forced to send their child to a co-ed school… but that is what private schools are for. I don’t think public schools should have to pay for single-sex classrooms or schools.
And based on acecdotal evidence (hey, I had to ;)), girls are treated much more nicely by teachers than boys are. It was nice, as a boy to see my teachers were actually people instead of monsters ;). Seriously though, the differing attitudes towards men and women by teachers up until high school are mitigated if both sexes are in the room. Yes, I kinda liked it when my teachers were nicer to me ;).
Went to an all-male school.
Never had any problems with it.
One thing: Without the constant presence of women(well, girls) in class, there was a bit more tendency to focus on school. One kid left his sophomore year- he was a model student, straight A’s.
He went to the local public school, and was perhaps almost a year ahead of everyone else educationally. Within the year, though, his work slipped and he fell behind, and never did actually graduate. I don’t imagine this would happen to everyone but in his case it was clearly an issue of being bombarded by the new and constant presence of females.
Separating male/female (assuming separate but equivalent, I won’t kid myself into believing equal is possible or practical) at the time in their lives when the hormonal activities of both are in full swing might not be a bad thing, assuming there is still socialization on some other level, where it is more appropriate. The obvious problem is, where will the extra teachers come from? Keeping it in private schools is probably the best answer.
But then that’s me. I may be totally screwed up, because I went to an all-male school.
You cannot be serious.
Single-sex education does NOT create wife beaters and sexual harrassers. Please, if you have access to studies that prove me wrong, I would be delighted to read them and withdraw my comment. But until then, please refrain from making such outlandish and (as of right now) unfounded claims.
WRT to single sex education, I think it could be a viable solution. Right now, boys are behind in english and reading, while girls are underperforming in math and science. I don’t think it is a horrible affront to equality to teach these subjects in single-sex classrooms. It would solve the problem of having to fund separate schools, and would probably resolve any Title IX troubles.
These students would still eat lunch and attend elective classes together. It is important for kids to learn to socialize with members of the opposite sex. But it is also important for kids to be educated to the best of their potential.
If single-sex classrooms or schools did come to pass, I seriously doubt they would be of such disparate quality that they would earn Plessy’s label of “separate but equal.”
However, there is the scary, but real possiblity that since “boys don’t do well in English” or “Girls don’t do well in math” the girls math courses and the boys English would be “dumbed down” to compensate.
Leaving boys like my husband - who is a verbal genius - with a English course for people better suited to be engineers. And my co-worker Diane (a very competent engineer) with math courses for people who perfer reading Jane Austen.
I’d far rather see public schools spend more time teaching to ability rather than gender. And I’d like the federal government to meet their promise of helping fund special education before they throw money at this significantly lesser issue.
I am serious… even with co-ed schools, we had males that were scary. Without knowledge of how women really are, I bet they’d be MUCH worse. Hell, some of them probably will end up being wife beaters and sexual harrasers; I’m just saying without females around that number would have been much higher.
Good call… there is that potential for stereotyping what a gender is good or bad at and thus dumbing down, or smartening up, certain classes that that gender is supposed to be good or bad at. Hell, I was decent at math, but I was pretty good in English too :D. I’m glad I was in a co-ed school, I want the same oppertunity as every one else gets.
William Raspberry had a column about this, this morning. And he brings up a side of the issue that’s been overlooked here: boys in inner-city schools. Fifteen years ago, he wrote about an idea of Spencer Holland’s:
One principal liked the idea, and here’s what happened:
Our society is failing inner-city boys in a big way. This seems like one thing we can try that might help address that.
If the system adopted is single-sex classrooms – same faculty, same materials, same syllabus/passing requirements (e.g. no “Math for Boys” and “Math for Girls” courses, but just Math, with the same examinations and passing-score requirements for both the B and G sections, just more personalized attention in the G section), only difference the presence of the opposite sex in the same room at a particular time period, and the focus on the deficiencies and needs of each student – I could see it working for some cases in which you may want to be free from the influence of gender dynamics.
IF there were the resources at hand to provide it without detriment to the regular schools , I would see no fundamental wrong in having it as a choice in the public system. Heck, you need not have the entire K-12 system on single-sex-classroom tracks, you could split it according to whatever the studies and experience showed works better. And the school need not abandon the socialization aspect – as Sapphire Bullet said, you would still have them share the library, the lunch room, elective/AP classes, and most extracurriculars.
However, single-sex whole schools? Much, much harder to achieve equivalence, given finite (and not infinitely divisible) resources. That also means even the single-sex-classroom experiment would only be practical in a school district that had a lot of money; in most it would be limited to one or two “showpiece” schools that could even siphon resources away from the “ordinary” schools where most students would be stuck. And this last element worries me a lot.
OTOH, as for the idea that boys-only schooling should be avoided because it produces more wife-beaters and sexual harassers… “I think the bad guys I met at my school would probably be worse if they did not meet more girls” is anecdote and subjective perception, not data. If someone said “girls-only schooling produces cold-hearted man-haters, I know because some high-achieving girls in our class were real b****es as it was”, they’d be rightfully ripped apart.
Nice idea…where are all those male teachers going to come from? And what happened to the girls? The article states the challenge came because people were concerned the girls were being denied the chance to benefit from a male role model.
If you did single-sex education in co-ed schools, would you provide separate college prep, advanced, regular, and remedial English classes for boys and girls? Many public schools are already understaffed, and now you have eight classes to teach instead of four. And how would you explain the rationale to students? I would have been thoroughly disgusted had someone suggested to me in high school that I couldn’t compete with boys or that I would be too distracted by their presence to learn.
I do think we should encourage more men to become elementary school teachers. It would provide both boys and girls with positive male role models and would let them know that teaching is not just a woman’s job. However, it seems that we still have to overcome the horribly insulting belief that any man who likes children and wants to spend time with them must be a creepy perv.
I heard a story on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered about single sex classrooms. The link I’ve provided only provides a brief one paragraph summary, but the statistics on the improvment for all subjects for both the boys are girls were phenomenal.
Perhaps with this scant information, someone else could do a little more research. Perhaps someone who lives in the Seattle area?
what i want to know is how many of you really were forced to rely on school as the only means of socialization with members of the opposite sex.
these boys who are going to grow up to be wife-beaters and sexual harrassers, do they not have mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers? do they not see women at work, church, summer camp, the YMCA, the park, around the neighborhood? if not, perhaps their fathers can set them up on playdates.
and what about not socializing with girls makes a man grow up to be violent? what makes you assume that all stereotypes about women are negative or portray us as objects?
Simple… listen to a bunch of school age guys talk to each other (without any women around). Hell, I’ve heard more jokes about raping women than I’ve ever wanted to.
That was pretty much the only socialization with women of my age that I had. Without school, I’d really have missed out. And if I listened to my friends about what women were, I wouldn’t be nearly as nice to them.
ah, so it can’t be any female, it has to be females your own age? your mother must have fit all of the stereotypes your friends spouted off, yes?
and while the stereotypes your friends had were negative, the question was what makes you assume that they all are? what about stereotypes that girls act like ladies, that we are more genteel, sweeter, more moral, and better mannered? while they may not be true, i can’t see that sort of stereotype causing men to treat women badly.
anyway, besides the fact that your “evidence” is 100% anecdotal, look at what you are saying. your friends, despite being exposed to girls at school, held onto their unfortunate preconceived notions. you, however, with minimal contact with girls, saw past this. you really have no idea what if any effect an all-boys school would have had on those guys. for all you know, it was negative experiences with actual girls that caused those ideas in the first place.
:rolleyes: If you know guys at all, you know they hardly even consider their mother as ‘girls’.
Girls acting like ladies? I’ve never heard any stereotyping to that effect. The stereotype has never been mentioned.
Of course it is anectotal… half of the posts on this board are basically some form of anectdotal or based from anecdotes. The problem is that when guys are seperated from girls, from what I’ve seen, they tend to be pricks. Without girls around, the worst things are said about them. Jokes like “What do 5000 battered women have in common? They didn’t know when to shut up” are par for the course. Guys when together without any women around are juvenile and destructive. I’ve witnessed it, and I believe if they had their own school, it would have been worse. I think an all-boys school would have been a disaster for them.
Yes, that may be anecdotal, but that is why I have no support for single sex schools. Those guys that aren’t mysogenist in all male settings are few and far between from what I have witnessed. It would be a mistake in my eyes to allow guys their own school where they would not have the contact with women that they need.
Having gone to a single-sex high school, as my brothers did, and knowing literally hundreds of others, male and female, who went to single-sex schools, I can tell you – very empirically – that this is not true.
In fact, if anything they have more stable marriages than the general population, with much lower divorce rates.
The longer i work with teens, the more i believe that they have the intelligence of an adult, and the maturity of a child.
they should be kept safe until they’re really equipped to deal with each other
maybe they should all wear those big inflatable
plastic sumo suits
I think the new brain research suggests that there comes an age right around 18 wherein an adolescent is finally able to read the emotions of another, before that they’re just getting on each other’s nerves and competing for the females like cavemen
don’t worry people, keeping them apart won’t destroy their ability to relate to one another, people learn very quickly that which they need to as soon as they are able.
math, reading, social skills, all of it
I know from a male perspective that men will do just about anything if the potential for sex exists.
even country western line dancing,
Yes it should be an option, I’m almost ready to say it should be compulsory, research (sorry cant quote) supports that it’s better for everyone involved
I posit that if guys are in a single-sex enviornment, they will act like guys. I also posit that if guys are in a co-ed enviornment, they will act like guys, unless there are girls around who just might possibly be persuaded into sleeping with them, at which point they become Men!
Look, we’re disagreeing on anecdotal evidence here. Can we just wait for the statistics?