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SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION?
Like Ezra, I recommend yesterday's New York Times magazine piece on the growing trend of public, single-sex education across the country. Sadly, a good chunk of the 50 or so schools nationwide who've adopted the practice are motivated by dogmatic, unproven theories of sex difference as promoted by the psychologist Leonard Sax, who believes boys are action-oriented and aggressive, and girls are communicative and domestic. So in one Alabama elementary school in which single-sex classrooms are the norm, girls sit in circles to share their thoughts on how washing dishes demonstrates the properties of oil, soap, and water, while boys jump up to answer questions in class (instead of raising their hands) and are encouraged to draw pictures of fast cars and planes with metallic crayons.
The stereotyping, heteronomativity, and misogyny of such an education (Girls! Someday you can wash dishes too, just like mom!) would be laughable, if it weren't the backbone of actual lessons being taught to actual American children. But there's also a more positive form of single-sex education, a trend represented by schools like Harlem's Young Women's Leadership School, which is based on building the self-esteem of girls of color in a culture that doesn't present them with very many models for success. Indeed, it would be naive to deny that girls and boys face different kinds of challenges. In our December print issue, I profiled a program in suburban New York that provides after-school sociocultural extras to African American boys, including a high school support group to talk about masculinity issues, including the lack of present fathers. And girls face a whole host of gendered challenges, from pregnancy, to eating disorders, to self-cutting.
Of course, there are ways to combine co-ed schooling with extra counseling that gives kids safe spaces to talk about more gender-specific problems. But any school district that defines children first and foremost in terms of their gender is playing with fire. Let's say it together: Gender is a spectrum. And defining masculinity and femininity rigidly for children risks leaving many of them feeling left out and unsure of themselves -- or even deviant. Remember the 15-year old California boy who was murdered by a classmate this month after he came out of the closet as gay and began to wear make-up and women's shoes?
School should not be about promoting traditional gender identities -- it should be about helping every child learn in the way that suits them best.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (12)
In general, I think individual school districts should feel free to try different ways of teaching children. All districts are different and different students and communities have different needs. The more diversity we have in education styles the more we'll learn about what works and what doesn't. If single gender classrooms are part of the experiment, that's fine with me. As Dana seemed to allude to, it all depends on what's being taught in those class rooms.
Also, Dana wrote: "School should not be about promoting traditional gender identities -- it should be about helping every child learn in the way that suits them best." She acts as if this is a zero sum game. It's one thing to instruct girls that the only thing they should learn how to do is wash dishes and sweep the floor, it's quite another to tell a boy "yes, it's perfectly acceptable for you to wear make-up." Discouraging boys from wearing make-up has nothing to do with "promoting traditional gender idenities".
Posted by: Ross | March 3, 2008 9:31 AM
As the mother of an 11 year old, I'd love it if he could jump out of his seat instead of raising his hand. Of course, I would have liked that as a girl too!
With less and less time for recess and physical education, more movement in any way sounds good to me.
Posted by: geml | March 3, 2008 9:36 AM
"School should not be about promoting traditional gender identities -- it should be about helping every child learn in the way that suits them best."
Of course! And every student should have a magic pony! That solves all their problems!
"Should"? The real question, IMHO, is how do we allocate limited resources for educations (and yes, the resources should be greater).
It might just be that the benefits from separate sex classes outweigh the costs.
At some point, we have to draw distinctions. I mean, generally we educate 8 year olds in different classes from 12 year olds, right? Maybe separate sex classes are a comparable distinction.
Posted by: vorkosigan1 | March 3, 2008 10:24 AM
In my reading of the dishes example, it stated that the girls *supported* their findings in the science experiment with their *experience* doing the dishes at home, not that Sax was saying "all they're good for is doing dishes." In fact, he also said they were good for more than servicing the boys on their knees.
His primary interest seems to be in this idea that genders *learn* differently, not that they should end up in traditional spots. I'm deeply suspicious of alleged cognitive differences, but it's not a real critique if you're misconstruing what he's actually saying into something far more simplistic than it is.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 3, 2008 10:31 AM
I'd like to point out that education about cutting is not something that should be restricted to girls. Boys might get caught at it less, but the gender ratio of cutters isn't nearly as skewed as people think.
Saying education about cutting should be specialized for girls is like saying education about condoms should be specialized for boys. It's wrong-headed and ultimately to the detriment of those we purport to educate.
Posted by: 32_Footsteps | March 3, 2008 10:54 AM
"Let's say it together: Gender is a spectrum."
Yes. While I can see benefits to certain kinds of same sex groupings in schools, there's also a danger of reinforcing the notion that all boys and/or all girls think and act and dress and feel the same as everyone in their gender. It's not political correctness that causes me to be suspicious of generalizations regarding, for example, the differences between male and female brains. It's my innate understanding of the fact that gender is a spectrum. I'm glad you wrote that.
Posted by: winer | March 3, 2008 2:44 PM
I believe the article identified Sax as a "family physician," not as a psychologist. If this is correct, he has very little professional expertise to back up his sweeping claims. I'm a psychologist myself, and I don't know of any respectable research that supports his gender stereotypic educational approaches.
Posted by: beckya57 | March 3, 2008 6:15 PM
As someone who currently attends a single-sex, multi-gender college, I whole-heartedly advocate single-sex education with the understanding that the biology of the body has no bearing whatsoever on the gender of the individual.
With the current crisis in education over the ironically-reversed gender education gap (boys not doing so well anymore), I feel that possibly separating the sexes for education might be beneficial. It helps girls learn to participate fully in classroom discussions where they might have formerly been perceived as blue-stockings. When done properly, single-sex, multi-gender education can be very beneficial to the students.
Posted by: KJ | March 7, 2008 2:42 AM
While I can see benefits to certain kinds of same sex groupings in schools, there's also a danger of reinforcing the notion that all boys and all girls think and act and dress and feel the same as everyone in their gender. It's not political correctness that causes me to be suspicious of generalizations regarding, for example, the differences between male and female brains. It's my innate understanding of the fact that gender is a spectrum.
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Posted by: دردشة مصر | June 13, 2009 12:01 AM
With the current crisis in education over the ironically-reversed gender education gap (boys not doing so well anymore), I feel that possibly separating the sexes for education might be beneficial.
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