Looking at Education through Father Knows Best-Colored Glasses

Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

September 19, 2007

Fall is in the air here in Washington, D.C., and school is back in session. Across the country, millions of girls and boys left summer break behind, loaded up their backpacks and returned to the classroom. Many of them arrived at schools with crumbling facilities, underpaid teachers and scarce resources. Some families couldn't afford to send their children to school with a nutritious breakfast in their stomachs. And George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" has created a narrow, restrictive definition of success that actually leaves many of our children behind.

Let's face it, our education system desperately needs individuals with creative minds and sincere motivation — innovators who are truly committed to fixing our nation's schools. While we're at it, our schools and the students in them will never live up to their full potential until we address the growing disparity between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in this country.

With all this on our plates, looking at education through Father Knows Best-colored glasses seems downright silly, doesn't it? But, according to proponents of sex-segregated learning, the most pressing problem before us is that girls and boys are in school together — period.

Ask a single-sex education advocate (well, you don't actually have to ask — they'll gladly spin it for you) why separating the boys from the girls is a virtuous and productive idea, and you'll get an earful of past-their-expiration-date stereotypes blended with complementary junk science.

First up: the tried-and-true myth of the naturally unruly male and the inherently timid female, followed by, of course, "different learning styles." These concepts are elastic enough to cover all sorts of angles. Girls can't learn with those rowdy boys in the classroom, so get them out. And older boys are just crazy balls of hormones, who can't focus with the temptation of girls around, so split them up. Plus, boys need a learning environment better suited to their active temperament.

According to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE), boys require direct confrontation, and a loud and moving classroom: "In particular, the teacher should be moving at all times.... The boy should never know where the teacher will be 20 seconds from now. Keep them guessing." I have to stop and ask how this is even possible; but no time to dally, just move!

NASSPE goes on to say: "Boys like to read descriptions of real events — battles or adventures — or illustrated accounts of the way things work, like spaceships, bombs, or volcanoes. 'Gross,' slimy, dangerous or poisonous things are also a hit with most boys, especially younger boys."

Now that we've established that boys are all rough and tumble-y, what about the girls?

"Role-playing exercises work well for girls. Consider having the girls create little [emphasis mine] skits, in which girls act out scenes from the book."

And: "'Story problems' are a good way to teach algebra to girls. Putting the question in story format makes it easier for girls to understand, and more interesting as well." Hmmmm ... when I was in school we called them "word problems" and they were universally hated by girls and boys alike.

Just in case it might seem like the folks at NASSPE are only trying to be helpful, and don't have feminist-bashing on their minds at all, check this out: "'Story problems' became popular in the 1960's and 1970's, at a time when educational research was being transformed from a male-dominated field to a female-dominated field."

In fact, the havoc that feminism has wrought is a running theme through the literature and commentary on the so-called "boy crisis" and the call for sex-segregation. Feminists, and the larger liberal movement, you see, have created a sissified learning environment where boys simply can't function. Additionally, we women's libbers have created an education system that overcompensates in favor of girls in an attempt to correct historic inequities.

Those who seek to legitimize discrimination have always tried to convince us just how different the sexes are, and that it's not socialization—these differences are innate, they insist. But if you're going to argue that sex differences are nature, not nurture, you'd better have something to back that up.

Single-sex ed supporters rely on some questionable science to back up their stale views of the sexes. In addition to claiming that boys and girls hear differently, single-sex ed-ers suggest that the sexes display structural, functional and developmental differences in their brains. Could there be a flaw in their logic?

According to a 2006 report "The Evidence Suggests Otherwise: The Truth About Boys and Girls" from Education Sector, a non-partisan education policy institution, many recommendations for sex-segregated learning "are based on an inappropriate application of brain research on sex differences. Many of these authors draw causal connections between brain research findings and stereotypical male or female personality traits without any evidence that causality exists ... These analyses also tend to ignore the wide variation among individuals of the same sex."

That's right — most research shows that cognitive differences within each gender far outweigh differences between girls and boys.

But enough science. Let's talk fairness, and even justice, because that's what this is really all about. When we separate the sexes, we perpetuate the concept that men and women can't get along, and that male harassment of women is best handled by building a wall, not by changing the behavior and its motivation. This is the coward's way of dealing with the problem, and it serves to drive the sexes further apart, socializing our kids to perpetuate these divisions throughout their lives.

Single-sex ed-ers will counter with success stories from segregated classrooms and schools. Some of these anecdotes sound inspiring, I'll give you that. And some of them are downright scary (like the little girl who was pleased that her new school has "Princess of the Week" instead of "Ambassador of the Week"). But beyond the fact that they are simply anecdotes, and have not been backed up by credible studies, I have two additional problems with them:

First of all, much like the hotly-debate school voucher issue, if sex-separated schools are really so great, what about the kids who can't make it into these great classes. After all, there simply can't be enough single-sex magnet schools to go around, because of the increased cost of providing all of the special resources that go into them. Who gets in and who doesn't? And what happens to those left behind?

And second, speaking of special resources, even when there are reports of positive results, why are the results attributed to sex-separation, and not to the smaller classes and greater funding poured into the new schools — and the fact that everyone involved, from administrators and teachers to students and parents, are highly motivated to see them succeed?

Maybe, just maybe, a new and creative approach, backed up by funding and institutional support, would work in our co-ed classrooms. What if all of our classes were smaller and had highly motivated teachers. What if we told our daughters and our sons that we value them equally, and we believe they can learn and work and play together? What if we demonstrated to them that discrimination and stereotypes are relics of the past, obsolete in a modern society? What if, indeed.

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