I have three kids. The oldest two thrived in a co-ed parochial high school, but the youngest did not. We put her in a private girls high school and she blossomed. So I guess it just depends on the kid.

SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION....So: is single-sex education a good thing or a bad thing? Over at Unfogged, Becks says she likes it:

Catholic clergy is certainly in favor of it! (Rim shot, cymbal crash.)

"Bring out your trolls. Bring out your trolls."

Once again, what facet of the issue of "education" are we talking about? If the issue having an educated population, both socially and intelectually, how does separating out the sexes help?

If the issue is getting a particular girl into a top flight college, perhaps she would focus more at an all-female school.

Why the hell not? Lets try a bunch of stuff and see what works with what population. America used to be the land of inovation. Let's get back to taking risks.

After 25 years as a public school teacher, nothing scares me more than the three word phrase:

PhD in Education

My wife went to a single sex college, Wellesley. My wife and her friends have told me that women got better educations in science and math because in co-ed schools, the boys are more aggressive.

The success of Hillary and many other Wellesley alumnae testifies to the effectiveness of single sex education.

my wife absolutely raves about the opportunities that she had b/c of single-sex education. I think she feels that it particularly fosters leadership as well as engagement in the class.

I taught a creative writing class with 12 fifth grade girls. They were all talkative, eager to read what they'd written, eager to outdo each other.

The next year I taught a group of mixed boys and girls. The boys competed to see who could write the most violent story, were always talking, sharing with the class. The girls never, ever volunteered to read anything.

I'm not saying that example points to a solution, but getting grade school girls away from the boys for class or two isn't a bad idea.

This is Louisiana. Maybe they don't have any real educational aggenda but they just want to keep the black boys away from the white girls.

Republicans. Going backwards. One step at a time.

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The concerns that either one or the other sex will be short changed because of sexual prejudice are valid.

On the other hand, the disruption of students by other students is a valid concern, too.

I have substitute taught and it is the disruptive students who make learning and teaching difficult. Perhaps the middle schoolers should be segregated by sex. When I was in eighth grade a small bully boy tried to rape a girl. When I was substitute teaching at a middle school, there was a very similar incident when a boy sexually attacked a girl. As a sub, I noticed that many of the pre-teen students were preoccupied with girl/boy-friend relationships.

I heard on NPR that a large city, I cannot remember which, has a HS graduation rate of 52%, which is about the same as the city I live in. That statistic cannot be tolerated. We need well educated children. As a sub, I found many young students had completely given up on education by the time they reached 7th grade. I chose to teach in lower income districts and even the children in fourth grade had lost interest in learning. I have to blame the schools for allowing that to happen. I think the cause had to do with warehousing these students from the very beginning of their educational experience and not providing them with enough individual attention. Lower income children do not receive enough attention at home and not enough at school, and by the time they reach ten years old, their outlook has already become jaded. This leads to more socializing instead of deeper learning by the time they reach prepubescence.

My Catholic high school had both boys and girls, but classrooms were separated by gender. Girls were in one wing, boys in the other, with all other areas and activities shared in common - assemblies, lunchroom, offices, and extra-curricular activies. Of course, back then, we also wore uniforms, so that shows you how backward it all was, but the school had the highest rate of entry into some form of higher education of any school in the state at the time. IIRC, 68% for my class, with little difference between the genders.

Probably too retro for today, though.

What in the world is strong about the "experimentation argument"? Most of the world, for most of recorded history, has separated boys and girls in different schools. Much of the world is still doing this. Why would you experiment when you can just look at a culture where they're still doing it and ask if you like the results?

And the fact is, we already know the answer. Separate is inherently unequal.

Are timid students not encouraged in class? Make the classes smaller.

All of this B-S that comes down around education always boils down to the same point- how can we get better scores for less money. Because, you see, we already spent $600 billion this year on armaments, so actually spending money on schools is out of the question.

"Liberals" who buy into this deserve to lose elections- or not to have it matter if they win.

gregor wrote: Republicans. Going backwards. One step at a time.

A wonderful post. gregor needed only eight words to show what's wrong with today's liberalism.

1. gregor picks his position or belief based upon theory. In this case, his unstated argument is: racial segregation is bad, so gender segregation is bad. Never mind that gender is different from race. Never mind, that some all-black schools have had outstanding results. gregor doesn't need actual facts and results to prove his belief.

2. When someone disputes gregor's belief, he responds with an ad hominem attack.

Girls "encouraged to take their shoes off?" What was that old phrase? Barefoot and what?

Cheez. . . .

One thing is for damned sure - what is passing for education in this country today...ain't.

If we need to try new things, try them. The kids aren't being served now, and that means we aren't either.

The students at the community college where I teach routinely have to take remedial reading and math courses before they can even hope to pull a C in history.

Of course, this CC is in KC and the school system is so effed up that the feds controlled it for two decades and now it is unaccredited by the state.

The concerns that either one or the other sex will be short changed because of sexual prejudice are valid.

This is my concern too. If there some way to assure that separate classes were truly equal in providing a quality education, I might be Ok with it. As it is, there's no guarantees that one gender won't be shortchanged to benefit the other gender, and therefore I am not in favor of it.

Ex-liberal. Killing strawmen. One strawman at time.

Wonderful.

[Somehow this also ends up with just eight words.]

I don't know about single-sex schools, but I remember most of my class time from grade four to eight was spent waiting for the teachers to discipline the boys and get back to teaching. Hardly any teaching went on at all (this was a small, very bad parochial school). From reading Matt Groenig's School Is Hell, I get the impression my experience was far from unusual.

I don't think segration is a good idea, except for those students who are clearly happier in such an environment. I think the problem with many mixed-gender classrooms is that in the larger classes the boys and girls tend to segregate themselves--by gender, but also by race, social status, etc.--and then treat each other like hostile tribes. The ideal solution, based on my own teaching experiences, would be smaller classrooms with more emphasis on cooperative learning and student participation. This encourages students to get to know one another as individuals and helps them adapt to the vast range of cultural differences that make up this country. A wider variety of schools catering to different student needs would also be a great improvement. Of course that costs more money, which might demand a cut in corporate welfare, and we can't have that. I think most teachers know plenty of tried'n'true ways to improve education, but most of these involve smaller classrooms and more individual attention, and as a nation we are just not willing to invest in it. A classic case of penny-wise and pound-foolish.

All I know is, the happiest four years of my life were spent in an all-girls high school....

First: "Separate but equal" is NEVER equal.

Also: whatever the supposed merits of single-sex ed, what we know for sure is that the more you segregate by anything (race, sex, etc.), the more you build up that thing (race, sex) as an enormous, all-determining line across which there need not be much communication or understanding.

My brief experience at an all-boys school bears this out: the boys were horrifically unable to see women in anything but the most objectifying terms, and definitely could not see people as people -- sex was always the very first thing they saw in a person. I was so relieved to get back to a co-ed school where people actually have friends of both sexes and the dividing lines are not nearly so rigid.

I went to a single-sex high school. It is not the reason I am clueless.

Does that mean we just give up on the whole idea of figuring out how to make co-ed education work? I can't be the only one who thinks that would be a bad idea, can I?

No. It doesn't mean that, at all, Kevin Drum. It means we let funds follow the students to the schools they and their families choose. We let them vote with their feet, in another words, subject to sensible regulation. My own guess is most families would opt for coed classes, but if, for some families, single sex is an improvement, so be it. It worked for Hillary Clinton.

There's no doubt that separating the sexes removes an obstacle to learning in school. One big problem though is that segregation is not real life. Those segregated do not develop a good healthy ability to co-exist comprehensibly with those they are being segregated from. Boys, instead of seeing girls as equals sees girls as "them" and visa versa. Works that way with race too. Makes for lots of problems later on in life.

Much of the world is still doing this. Why would you experiment when you can just look at a culture where they're still doing it and ask if you like the results?

What are you fucking talking about, Serial? Lots of advanced western countries make wide use of single sex education. It's quite common in Europe, Japan and Australia. It's even pretty common in the USA.

The model Trashhauler put forth sounds reasonable.

++ The next year I taught a group of mixed boys and girls. The boys competed to see who could write the most violent story, were always talking, sharing with the class. The girls never, ever volunteered to read anything. ++

Not Really

All of this B-S that comes down around education always boils down to the same point- how can we get better scores for less money. Because, you see, we already spent $600 billion this year on armaments, so actually spending money on schools is out of the question.

Um, Serial, the US spends significantly more on education than on defense. The latter has been falling as a percentage of GDP for half a century. This shouldn't be surprising. There are far more sharp elbowed suburban homeowners with kids who vote than there are defense workers or executives.

Indeed, according to this

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2006/section4/indicator43.asp

the US spends a higher percentage of its GDP on education than any OECD member reporting statistics.There are problems in American education, but lack of money isn't one of them.

Becks' comment:

I went to a single-sex high school and believe I got far more out of it than I would have in a coeducational setting....I'd always been outspoken in class but it wasn't until I was at an all-girls school that I felt my comments were heard and challenged.

...seems to me to reveal that single-sex education is a way of denying an opportunity for discrimination (often subtle in manifestation but palpable in effect) by sex among students from being practiced in the classroom. Of course, on the "separate is inherently unequal" side of the coin, it enables discrimination by sex through quality of facilities, selection of staff, and even location, for the separate facilities.

There's another two-sided issue here, too; there may be some approaches that work best, in general, in educating one sex or the other, providing an aggregate benefit for sex segregation on the classroom level, which may make sex-segregated education an easier alternative to improve results, on average compared to approaches that are more sensitive to individual particular needs in a mixed-sex environment.

In either case, it seems to me there are certainly some ways that, in the present scenario, simple sex segregation might have short-term benefits, but they seem largely, one first impression, to be merely half-measures that avoid dealing well with the fundamental problems, where if the fundamental problems were addressed directly (which may, though, be harder or more expensive) far better results could be reached without sex segregation, at least for most students.

I attended a Catholic all-boys' high school for little over a year, and academically it was probably the best environment for me. But of course, this issue is viewed only in female terms, particularly elite (Wellesley-like) female terms. Alas.

develop a good healthy ability to co-exist

The idea that putting children together automatically creates an ability to co-exist is a commonly held idea without any merit. If co-education were to specifically teach healthy co-existence skills I would agree, but I am not familiar with any curriculum that does that. We throw children together and hope they get along, but it leads to bullying and clique ostracizing.

I seem to recall that studies done back in the '50s, '60s, and '70s found that girls did better in single-sex schools but boys did better in co-ed schools. But maybe that was then, and this is now.

I'm not sure it makes much difference. Girls have always done better in school, and it hasn't meant they get the plum jobs, has it?

The problem that the first commenter believes was solved by single-sex classrooms (ie. teacher paid attention to her) would actually be better solved with more competent teachers who don't play favorites. Oh well. Split em up then.

Actually, OBF, she had the exact same teachers at the co-ed school her older siblings had. For whatever reason, she did better in a different environment - like your sdn thrives in school and your daughter is better off being home-schooled.

There is no one-size fits all. We need to toss that notion and do what is best for our individual children. Emphasis on individual.

If co-education were to specifically teach healthy co-existence skills I would agree, but I am not familiar with any curriculum that does that. We throw children together and hope they get along, but it leads to bullying and clique ostracizing.
Posted by: Hostile on October 27, 2006 at 7:55 PM | PERMALINK

At my son's school, they actually go a long way with programs to teach mutual respect, stop bullying, etc. At my grade school, there was no thought to this kind of thing at all. I guess Columbine changed something. In any case, I like it - and if my son had a chance to go to a public all-boys school, I'd pass.

best thing ive heard since "bush is an idiot".

Of course, if the given assumption wasn't that education should be a state-controlled, one-size-fits-all monolith, people could just make their own choices on whether or not they wanted their kids taught in single-sex schools or not.

Global - I was talking about the woman quoted in Kevin's original post.

Yes - I'll admit different kids do better in different environments. My son, as a kindergardener was overwhelmed by the other boys, who were too pushy, and he didn't get enough of the teacher's attention (to the point where, one day, he peed in his pants because he couldn't get the teacher's permission to go to the bathroom!). I don't see this as his fault - I see this as the teacher's fault. If this is such a common issue - and the popular literature certainly shows it is, then a professional teacher ought to know their craft.

Also, he was at montissori schools from age 3, and he never had any problems like that in a montissori setting.

Holding him back was part of the solution. By the time he was 5 and a half, he was learning to be more assertive.
He is still fairly mild-mannered by nature (even at 13), but it's no longer a problem for him. Do 5 year olds need to learn to be more assertive? Do teenage girls need to learn to be more assertive? Probably. But the teachers have to teach to a class full of kids of various levels of assertiveness, and help these kids develop these skills.

Cool. I didn't think you were taking me to task.:)

If co-education were to specifically teach healthy co-existence skills I would agree, but I am not familiar with any curriculum that does that. We throw children together and hope they get along, but it leads to bullying and clique ostracizing.

Sure, lots of environment with school-age children have bullying and cliques and ostracization, etc., but is there really any evidence that this is less common in single-sex environments?

Much of that behavior I've seen, whether the environment was single-sex or co-educational, has been in same-sex groups, and doesn't seem to be a feature of mixing sexes.

I went to a single sex school back in the late 60's. Frankly, I don't see what the purpose for that would be now. It was only done because of not enough space for all students in one building.

Kevin says we should try it. Why? It's nothing new. Sounds like a step backwards to me.

It may be more productive to separate students on criteria other than gender. A better one might be "learner type". There is not a single system of categorizing learner types, but some major parameters are in little dispute (visual vs. auditory, deductive vs. inductive, etc.).

Different people absorb information in different ways, and anyone who has taught a large number of students will tell you that gender is not a good predictor of learner type.

I'm in favor of single-sex ed by marooning children on desert islands and allowing them to form their own civilization.

So what happens to the boys who aren't macho enough? Or girls who want to play football and take electronics electives?

"Give it a try and see how it works."
"my real fear is just the opposite: what if we try it and Becks turns out to be right? What if it works?"

Kevin, these are new lows(highs?) for capturing stupid by you.

'Give it a try'. surely you jest. You don't think there are many, many single sex schools in the country today? what country are you from?

'Your fear is that it might work?' Ah, I think you better define what your criteria for success is before you get too frightened. If you don't think socialization is a huge part of education - like making your way in a co-ed world, a co-ed work force, being able to learn and adapt in a co-ed environment, things that can't be realized in a single sex environment, then you are a fool.

Furthermore, if you think there is a single-size, magic bullet that works for everyone, then, well...I'm at a loss for condescension phraseology for you.

It may be more productive to separate students on criteria other than gender. A better one might be "learner type".

Well, yeah, but identifying learner type takes work. Identifying gender is easy. Therefore, its more attractive as a basis for distinction.

identifying learner type takes work. Identifying gender is easy. Therefore, its more attractive as a basis for distinction.

OK then, let's consider some more easy identifiers: fat vs. thin, tall vs. short, black vs. white...

there are all kinds of learner type separation as it is, e.g., gifted and talented (sickening title), honors classes or track, college prep, non-college prep, special ed, etc.

Kids vary. Some boys and some girls will do better in single-sex classes and some will do better in integrated classes. Offer both and let the parents decide.

anandine your are so right, lets see what happens. I trust the kids and the parents to in most cases make good decisions about what works for them.

If it turns out to be less effective, we will soon know.

Are you saying that after 100,000 years on planet earth, humans still have no idea how to educate their young?

I know humans are disadvantaged about how the human brain learns...but sheesh, after 100,000 years one would think they'd have figured something that works well.

Oh well. I figure if they can't do it by now, they will never do it.

Anyone wanna play Tag?

As a New Orleanian, I can say that there is nothing sexist about encouraging girls to take their shoes off in class, as this is quite common in Louisiana math courses that require students to count higher than ten in order to conform with our new, tough educational standards. Our "new math" appendage-counting technique, unfortunately, perpetuates inequality in math, as boys are able to count to 21, while girls continue to top out at 20.

...as boys are able to count to 21, while girls continue to top out at 20.
Posted by: Kiril on October 27, 2006 at 9:56 PM | PERMALINK

Given that women are endowed with multi-orgasmic capability, I think the problem here is they're being taught wrong. A typical woman should be able to count to 23 or more.

Those thinking about single sex education really need to consider the history of home-ec. Home economics programs came out of a movement to create 'scientific' homemakers who would use their knowledge to put the family on a solid moral foundation. It's proponents felt that it would be the equivalent of chemistry in acadamia.
Didn't really work out like that in the end, did it?

I went to an all boys school for junior high and a public high school. The public high school had tracking. Most of the courses I took in high school were honors or AP. The women in the honor and AP classes were hardly timorous creatures, and the teachers made a point of calling on everyone (some used random number generators to pick students to answer questions).

My only point is that the selection effects at work here are extreme. Whether the upside of single sex education is actualy due to the classroom environment or due to committed parents who care more about education, wealth effects, class sizes, etc is unknown. However the potential downsides of mainstreaming single sex education is known -- it's even happened before.
Plus, women do better than men at almost every level of education in almost every field. Even if boys are yelling and screaming 24-7 what evidence do you have that that actually has a meaningful impact on women's ability to learn? Isn't possible that the only people the disobedient boys are hurting are themselves? After all, the women ARE doing better in the final measure. Are you suggesting that with universal single sex education women would make up 75% of the undergraduate enrollment, rather then 55%?

Public education as we know it, was invented about 100 years ago. It was only in the 20th Century that the British Army became literate. The model on which public schooling was designed was a manufacturing model, with the children being the product, and the single young women teachers the factory workers.

The question before us both whether we can do better and whether we can do it more cheaply as well. It is labor intensive, and every time things get cheaper, it means labor gets more expensive.

Highschool boys would riot.

And rightly so.

"boys were able to count to 21"

I believe that was when the lady dietician introduced saltpeter into the gumbo.

As a pretty straight-laced and very non-confrontational boy, I found school, especially as personalities developed in later elementary school and junior high, tedious due to the continual disruptions and jackass behavior buy a substantial number of the boys (and a few girls) in the school, and a bit intimidating as well.

My best experiences were in my "gifted and talented" program in elementary school, and the accelerated courses later on. Of course, I was still in a number of classes with obnoxious asses, and the rest of the day (breaks, class transfers, phys ed classes) a kid like me was continually uncomfortable. This is in spite of the fact that I was never really unpopular or bullied - just one of the "quiet" kids with a few close friends who went pretty much unnoticed.

Let's be honest (and even a bit elitist as well), the real issue here is that the structure of public education in the U.S. is a round hole in which the square box of the "universal student populace" is crammed. A significant number of kids really have no place in an academic setting - and this number grows as adolescence begins. As Richard Hofstadter made clear in his great "Anti-intellectualism in American life", the public schools in the U.S. have been under continual pressure to lower standards and deemphasize rigorous, thought-provoking education because there is an inherent disdain for "the egghead" amongst most Americans. The combination of an emphasis on "practical", "career-based" and "popular" topics (why in hell is marketing, or home economics, or, for that matter, the enormous emphasis on sports present in our public schools?) and the pitiful lowering of standards in order to "include" all kids and make their bitchy, anti-intellectual parents happy, has turned our schools into large, expensive, age-extended day cares where the kids (from whatever economic class, gender, or ethnicity) who actual care about learning are tragically let down.

If single-sex education is the solution, then I think someone made an error in defining the problem.

I don't know what the "data" shows, but it should not just be a matter of grades. Co-ed is a richer experience, imo.

Ohoh, when I was in high school, I would have been happy at an all-girls school. Maybe that's just the kind of guy I was.

I've just started teaching all-boys this fall, and discussed this topic yesterday with another teacher at my school. He saw no value in segregation, but I'm more in favor of experimentation. I'm new at teaching (in the classroom anyway), and the lack of gender distraction seems to me a blessing for maintaining class discipline and attention.

My intuition is that splitting genders onto different campuses risks segregation downsides, but splitting them into different classrooms, at least for more serious topics, might well afford some real benefits. That is, I'd be in favor of trials of a mixed solution, with some on-campus segregation for core topics like math, but with enough gender interaction in the school experience to prevent "stilting" the kids for later in life.

jTh.

In the general population, boys still hold advantage. Single-sex education is really intended to benefit the girls.

Our daughter started this year at a private girls' school in LA. There is extensive literature showing that girls in particular thrive in a single-sex school and do better later in life. It's also true, although anecdotally, that these same girls are less comfortable dealing with men in social situations, even after they've been out of school for a while.

I went to an all-boys' school for a while and it was definitely a bastion of sneering sexism and homophobia. I will never send my son to an all-male school.

I attended both single sex and coed. As people have already suggested it depends on the kid. It didn't make a difference for me. Beyond that, this is all on the parents. If all that schools had to do was teach, they would do a great job. Instead, they have to play social worker,disciplinarian,nuritionist etc. etc. You have the kids, you take the responsibility of bringing you kids up.

"As with so many issues in education, my first reaction is that experimentation is a good thing. Give it a try and see how it works. If it turns out as badly as Brad suggests, we can always kill it later."

Doesn't help the kids that get fucked over by some misguided experimental curriculum

It is a legitimate exercise of government authority to segregate by gender. We all agree Whites Only restrooms are immoral, but most people I agree (I hope) that dividing restrooms Men and Women is OK.

While it would be unusual for a black student in a segregated school to have a white parent (Strom Thurmond's daughter excepted), in my experience, most kids have both a male and female parent. So the risk of "separate but unequal" is mitigated by every father who wants the best education for his daughter and every mother who wants the best for her son.

The schools should let the parents choose whether they want their kids in a single-sex or a coed classroom. If you don't think parents are capable of making that decision, fine but be honest with yourself, you're a snob.

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The schools should let the parents choose whether they want their kids in a single-sex or a coed classroom. If you don't think parents are capable of making that decision, fine but be honest with yourself, you're a snob.

If there are advantages to same-sex education, they would probably mostly be wiped out by having same-sex classrooms, rather than same-sex schools. All the anti-intellectual role playing, sexually driven competitiveness, and self-esteem issues would still be in play if the boys were in the next classroom, waiting for the cliques to form at lunch break. The point has to be about same-sex schools, not same-sex classrooms.

This is why Kevin Drum is a bad person. In order for Kevin Drum to pretend that theres something magical wrong with public schools, he suggests that we set back several grades worth of female students by several years worth of education.

A better person would have thought to himself wether he's right to risk other peoples futures for his own ideology. Everyone knows what's wrong with schools, some schools have more money than others. Nationalize Education and allocate fund purely by the number of students in that school district. Then ban outside donars from giving directly to a specific school, and you'll have a uniform and well working school system.

Give one schools 100 million dollars for 200 students, and another school 10 millions for 1000 students and watch as some students conclude (rightly) that nobody gives a fuck about them and that they have no future and theres no bother trying, because even if they did try they'd never suceed because they are in competition with people who had every educational experiece.

You see, Kevin Drum is a bad person because he knows this, and he doesn't want to get rid of the advantage his class has, so he pretends there are other bizzarre and insane ideas that will work far better.

I like the idea,for middle and high school, for much the same reason I like school uniforms... Kids today are crying for a sense of structure that's not provided by the culture, and this kind of environment would be beneficial because it would emphasize to the kids they are going through a very special period in their lives, and that the adults want them to realize it.
I also think it would make the opposite sex more mysterious and thinking about them a lot more electric. It might bring back courting rather than the bland kind of hooking up kids pursue today.

Several commentators propose that segregating girls is bad because they will be disadvantaged once they get out into the real (co-ed) world. But it’s pretty common to adjust how children are treated during their critical developmental years and it makes it easier for them to handle life on their own as an adult. You would hardly propose that we coddle babies when we treat them differently and most children in this country live in an environment that’s different from the one of their adult life.

I went to an all-boys prep school for three years and co-ed public high school for one. There were such differences in the level of education that I’m not sure I could articulate the effect of just the gender differences. At any rate, if segregated environments provide a better learning environment for any race or gender, tell me again why we shouldn’t consider it? All I’m hearing is that segregation is automatically bad or because we ought to address root causes instead.

What program that conservatives have proposed, pushed or implemented has been beneficial to America as a whole?

I would think that gender-segregated classes within a school might be a better idea than completely segregated schools. But I don't trust school boards to assure equal education for either gender in either case. And if a Republican is president or governor, I expect that there will be a push toward "traditional female" education for the girls.

There's no doubt that separating the sexes removes an obstacle to learning in school. One big problem though is that segregation is not real life.

True, but this isn't a good argument against single-sex education. During childhood and adolescence "experiencing real life" should probably be considered a lower priority than academics. There are plenty of opportunities outside of class to "experience real life." There are not so many opportunities to discipline yourself to master literature, mathematics, history, and science.

It seems to me there are types of discrimination. In terms of club membership, there is an "us only" and a "not them."

Us only would include a Polish-American club admitting only Americans of Polish descent and the Knights of Columbus admitting only Catholics.

A not them would be a country club saying no Jews or no blacks.

One relevant difference is that there is a reason in the nature of the club to limit ethnic-american or religious clubs to people of that ethnos or religion, whereas a golf and party (ie, country) club has no similar reason. A men-only country club would be okay if it were not the case that women play golf or like to go to parties or network with other rich people.

With regard to schools, I think it should be okay to offer same-sex classes (if you offer boys only and girls only and mixed). I think it's the attitude with which they are offered. It's not that boys or girls are bad but that some will do better educationally without the distraction that they other provides.

VMI seems mroe like Calvin's no-girls-allowed club. Mills College does, too. They seem more anti-men than pro-women.

Given all that, I'm still not sure I trust Louisiana's school boards to administer their schools well. Why should they change now?

NOT TO WORRY...it will never matter what programs or "experiments" are tried in public education because whatever is tried seldom gets the time required to accurately asses how effective it is. We retired with over 60 years of classroom experience completely disillusioned about the POLITICS and IGNORANCE that continued to be prevalent in our district. This in a large suburb of NYS. I continue to hear and read crap about WHOLE LANGUAGE of the 90's - a "PHILOSOPHY" that made so much sense and had the potential of encouraging children to WANT to read, not just learn the basics (it didn't survive an entire educational cycle)...course we don't want those little kiddies getting too smart...then they might grow up to actually decide to USE the brains "GOD" gave them to THINK!!!

First, jettison No Child Left Behind, and acknowledge that the more students who fail the better the job the school is doing. Nowadays, we're passing everybody, even kids who don't come to school.

Do this for a generation, then see if same sex education is still needed.

Come on, we live in a world with males and females.

Education's purpose is to prepare our children to live in our world as responsible adults.

In order to "educate", we must expose our children to the world we live in.

One-sex education bastardizes the world-view such that any "education" done within that view is skewed away from reality.

In our present political climate, reality has been skewed enough.

Schooling is more than just classroom education. There are aspects of social integration involved.

The dynamics in a classroom are as much a part of education as the subject matter itself.

As a male, I definitely benefited from having females sitting next to me and arguing with me, probably more than from arguing with strictly other males.

I suppose that there might be instances when "separate but equal" classes divided by sex might be useful, but overall, I don't think it's that good of an idea (or experiment).

Some of my best "life lessons" that I learned in school involved the realization that not only were there others in the classroom that were perhaps smarter than I, but that some of those individuals were girls/women.

But then, I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and attended some excellent public schools. Mostly because I had some great teachers, who understood classroom dynamics.

Those were times when teachers would allow a student to pursue his or her interests in the context of curriculum. Not like now, where each and every student is expected to learn exactly the same things in order to pass a test or two.

Most of what an individual learns in school is only preparation. When a person gets out in the real world, it's not about what facts he or she learned in school, but how to think and solve problems, usually as a part of a team. Teams tend to be diverse.

Plus, it's sexually healthy to hang around members of the opposite sex at an early age. For me, it helped me to develop respect.

That's just my interpretation.

Later,

Ranger Jay

And furthermore- who exactly has the right to "experiment" with a child's education?

The offhand way in which KD suggests that, because he has no firm opinion, children's education should be sacrificed to his desire to experiment, is appalling.

Naturally, almost everyone assumes this "experiment" will proceed with none of the actual ingredients of research, such as, a literature search to see what has happened in the past, the formulation of a hypothesis that can be tested, or the inclusion of a control group and appropriate double-blind structure.

In fact, the so-called experiment would most likely boil down to billions in public money for mostly Catholic schools that have already failed twice in my lifetime, not to mention the considerable sexual abuse their students suffered.

Nobody thought the uniformed Catholic students in my neighborhood were getting a better education, and there was a reason for that- they weren't.

Oddly, my reaction has more to do with the bit about "The Louisiana plan would put boys in "competitive, high-energy teams"

Fuck, that just sounds miserable.

Why yes, that's precisely hat my Junior High experience needed, thanks, more opportunity for hierarchy!

Now, as for 'Jasper', who says we're spending more on education than we do on war, OF COURSE WE ARE.

Y'see, Jasper, we spend money educating 300 million Americans, while the money we spend on war gets spent on (roughly) less than two million soldiers and sailors.

What we spend to create an infantryman would put the average student through a land-grant college. What we spend to create a pilot would put ten above-average students through Harvard.

Wake up and smell the coffee! We spend as much on war as the rest of the world combined. This year you'd have to throw in a few extra worlds to balance our spending.

When you cut through the B-S, the American public school system is the greatest the world has ever seen. No other nation provides so many students with so much education of such a high quality while preserving so much local control. That's just the simple fact of the matter, and people ought to think twice before deciding to "experiment" with it.

I know people are generally well meaning and I certainly do not have the background to make an authoritative statement on whether this type of education is a good option. I do, sometimes, though, get the feeling that some people are looking to change the structures simply out of frustration. I see this all the time in my own business, which deals somewhat with the federal budget process. People in Congress are always trying to change the fedeal budget PROCESS because they do not like the result of the decisions made about the federal budget. But really, there is nothing wqring with the PROCESS. What's wrong is the decisions being made. I wonder if it really is the structures that are the problem with education, as opposed to a the fact that when you try to teach everyone, some will do well, and some, due to a range of factors, some controllible and some less so, will not do well. I'm not saying you give up and write kids off, I'm just asking whether going to new structures is really the solution.

Kevin: "As with so many issues in education, my first reaction is that experimentation is a good thing."

Why not apply that same sentiment to school vouchers? Then, parents would be free to experiment with single-sex schools, basing decisions on the needs of their children?

While it would be unusual for a black student in a segregated school to have a white parent (Strom Thurmond's daughter excepted), in my experience, most kids have both a male and female parent.

Let us not forget Heather and her two mommies!

Business begins to jump from sinking ship--

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress.
The shift in political giving, for the first 18 days of October, has not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades.

If we've learned anything from this adminstration, it's that an idea is one thing, a plan to get it done is another. What's the plan? Louisiana's plan sounds lousy.

I see why Kevin returns to this subject frequently, not only is it an obvious example of public policy, but the commnets seem to stay more on track.

Does anyone know of what seems to me to be an obvious "experiment" to try, with no downside? That would be using annual grades and evaluations to adjust class size.

Let's say one year the maximum class size is 25 kids in elementary school in a particular district. For underperforming schools in the district hire enough teachers to get the class size down to 18. For really underperforming schools get the class size down to 12.

This could not possibly harm the children in any way. Of course, if the results would be what any person with any common sense might expect (i.e., for a group of underperforming kids thier only real chance to make up their defecit is more attention), I could imagine some politicians who would rather simply continue to wring their hands.

Has this ever been tried? I've seen a study on simply spending more money per student, but anecdotal experience shows that that money is usually spent on physical facilities, not necessarily class size.

There's no easy answer to this one. Academic studies have shown that during adolescence girls do mature faster than boys, so during the middle school years having girls and boys in the same classrooms may not make too much academic sense, since the girls are likely to be ahead of boys cognitively.

I would suggest that it would probably make sense to have co-ed classrooms K-5, single-sex classrooms from 6-10, and then co-ed classrooms again in 11th and 12th grades. As several other posters have already suggested, schools should remain co-ed, but it should be individual classrooms within the co-ed schools that become same-sex.

This article, and the comments, bring up a lot of questions and memories. I went to all co-ed schools. And I can distinctly, to this day, remember a type of sexism exercised by certain *grade-school* teachers who thought that a *girl* who had the answers and was obviously outspoken and smart, needed to be "tamed". I remember being told I would be ignored for doing
something --- I don't remember what, now --- that the teacher didn't approve of, yet she pretty much always let the boys "speak out of turn".

But do I favor single sex segregated education? My feelings here are definitely mixed. True, I wouldn't have had that kind of problem(which I never told my mother about, since she just would have gone along with the teacher on the "rules", had I gone to a single sex school. And, briefly, I had what seemed a possible opportunity, but my father "nixed" it.

But --- and here's the big "but" --- I later came to know women(at the college level) who had gone to parochial schools that were sex-segregated, and didn't much like the result. After all, once they got to college and out in the world, they were mixing, at least to some extent with *men*! Another problem, which no one here discussing this issue seems to have considered, is that this kind of sex segregation was going on at a time when men were expected to "go out in the world" and be the single breadwinner. Women, OTOH, were expected to be educated well enough to have children, run a household, deal with the day-to-day finances, groceries, decorating, etc., but never, never, *never* think of having a *career*, unless, of course, they lost their "breadwinner" through death, divorce, desertion, etc., and had to feed their children. Then, and only then, was being a working woman acceptable. And even then, they were "supposed" to find a man to support them as quickly as possible. Single sex education was intended to prepare both men and women for the roles they were supposed to assume as adults.

But since that time, the world has drastically changed, at least in the West. Both men and women work. This is often by necessity, as it's frequently next to impossible to live on one income(I am acquainted with exceptions, but that's what they are --- exceptions). Increasingly, men play a greater role in raising their children, and rightly so. Some men even become "househusbands", at least for a while. Marriages don't necessarily last "forever" any more(if they ever did). Heck, there are even an increasing number of states and communities that allow same sex partners to marry and even have children. How would single sex educations prepare children for realities like these, let alone educate children of both sexes equally? I don't have any answer for this, but I wonder. I think any switch to such a system would require a great deal of thoughtful preparation in order to be successful.

Lest you think I'm totally in favor of one kind of education or the other, let me say this: I currently live in a household where there is a high-school girl who goes to a single-sex high school. She does quite well academically and is a member of her school's sports team(she plays constantly, as well as doing her work; she does this in the hopes of getting a college scholarship somewhere). This works for her, I suppose, but her mother has "sold" herself, for apparently "feminist" reasons, on the idea that single sex education is "best" for "most" girls. I have the feeling she really hasn't given her daughter much choice in the matter. It's all a projection of her own ideas. And that bothers me, though I too am a feminist at least in the sense that I believe that men and women both have of should have equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities.

So I don't really have any answers here, just a lot of questions. And for now, I really don't think sex segregating children would be any better than continuing them coed, while at the same time, hopefully, making teachers more aware of their "sexist" biases while at the same time also being aware of the somewhat different ways girls and boys *in general* approach learning, and using these approaches to get the best out of their students.
Anne G

I was a smark, geeky girl all the way through co-educational public high school, then I went to an all-girls college within a larger co-educational university.

What a difference. The social stigma I experienced as a "smart girl" was gone. I was among other smart girls who were encouraged to think and participate, not scorned for academic success. Not one single girl in college "dumbed-down" and hit their academic skills under a barrell like so many "popular" girls did in high school.

Sign me up FOR unisex classes, although because my college was part of a larger university, I like the idea the model Trashhauler went to, where single sex classes are integrated into a larger mixed-sex institution.

Still, I must say that Chuck Darwin's comment hit home with me. Perhaps what I experienced was due to moving from a pathetic public school to a good liberal arts college, and I would have found the same at a co-ed college. Or even if we had had AP classes at MY high school (never even heard of the concept then ... that's how old I am, I guess.)

Finally, I'm not so sure the "real world" is all that co-ed anyway. Sure we have to work together, but when we "play," how many of us really play with the other gender? Women and men do have different interests and different ways of relaxing. As a woman who actually likes to do more "boy" kind of stuff, let me tell you, it's really, really hard to break into the play world of men. They really don't want to watch football with women. They really don't want to play golf with women. They really don't want to play poker with women.

The "real world" is much more segregated by sex than you think it is.

Perhaps with same sex classes the rule, there could be some co-ed classes in higher grades, particulary AP classes.

Dancer said: NOT TO WORRY...it will never matter what programs or "experiments" are tried in public education because whatever is tried seldom gets the time required to accurately asses how effective it is.

That's exactly right. And in private education too. There are "experiments" going on all the time -- in many private schools, every teacher is trying to develop his/her holy grail of teaching. And as many have remarked above, god knows we have lots of co-ed and single-sex schools right now. Where are the serious evluations of the results? Who is looking?

Also: Given that so much economic activity is shifting to India and China, or is increasingly performed in the US by Chinese and Indian immigrants, perhaps we should just copy their education systems. There is anexperiment for you whose results are easy to assess.

it always seems intuitively counter-productive to try to solve a problem by segregating and classifying people. For one thing, its contrary to nature, which is constructed such that survival is dependent on "making it" in a non-segregated world.

But what is indisputably a huge mistake, and one that is THE outstanding characteristic of this post is to create a solution for a problem that has not be defined.

Because the post doesn't define what problem single-sex education is tryong to solve, there is no intelligent answer; just the endless rambling, life experiences, and anecdotes that may be interesting of themselves, but are meaningless in terms of contributing to the betterment of society or humanity.
.

The problem is that it will never be really possible to evaluate single sex education, because you will not be able to have the 'gold standard' of a random assignment trial. Therefore, to do any kind of evaluation, you would have to control for all of the other variables which might be influencing the outcome other than the single sex classes, and that, given the complexity of social factors which influence educational performance, is essentially impossible to do. The studies which I am aware of which have attempted to do have not found any effect which can be attributable to the single sex classes. And BTW, the plural of anedote is not data, so it does not matter HOW many people say, "Well, it worked great for me" - that doesn't prove a thing

Wow! I never attended a single sex school, therefore I don't have any experience, (coed Catholic school)but I attended single sex boot camp(Marine Corps). Does Brad Plumer know something we don't? Home economics classes and high schools as glorified finishing schools. Would parents put up with that? And more importantly, would female students stand for it?

I better read up on Louisiana's plans.

Thank you agingbabyboomer!

My advisor has a shirt he wears on days we're conducting experiments. It says 'Got Data'. I now want a shirt that says 'The plural of anecdote is not data'.

Will they forbid 'immodest' attire in these all girls schools? Will they specify the length of girls' skirts in inches? Will they mandate the pallete of colors for the clothes that the girls will wear?

I have also heard that African Americans do better if they are educated in seggregated schools. If for nothing else, it is worth trying just for its experimental value.

In other words, what Kevin is saying is:

STAY THE COURSE!

Sure, we're sacrificing innocent lives for unworkable ideologies, but so what? Stay the course!

We tried this experiment, it ended in tears in the 1950s, we're not going to have a better result this time just because we've changed the sorting criterion.

gregor: I have also heard that African Americans do better if they are educated in seggregated schools. If for nothing else, it is worth trying just for its experimental value.

I am unclear whether gregor means this comment to be sarcasm. In fact, some racially segregated black schools worked very well. Howard University comes to mind. Another example was Dunbar High School in Washington D.C. You can read about it at http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html

Clair: "every time, the fucking dykes were hitting on the kids."

Strictly speaking, dykes don't fuck.

Is gregor capable of making a comment with substance?

Fact:

"I went to a single-sex high school and believe I got far more out of it than I would have in a coeducational setting....I'd always been outspoken in class but it wasn't until I was at an all-girls school that I felt my comments were heard and challenged. It's one thing to speak up in class with an opinion and have it ignored or dismissed and entirely another to be engaged and forced to defend it."

She did not attend a coed school, she can look at the situation anyway she chooses.

When you cut through the B-S, the American public school system is the greatest the world has ever seen. No other nation provides so many students with so much education of such a high quality while preserving so much local control. That's just the simple fact of the matter, and people ought to think twice before deciding to "experiment" with it.

What the fu...? What flavor is that Kool Aid you're drinkin' there, cat lady?

But I still don't think the fact our education system ain't all that justifies "experimenting" with the only crack at education an entire cohort of kids will get. Something a bit more thoughtful Kevin, pu-lease.

As with so many issues in education, my first reaction is that experimentation is a good thing.

Kevin writes as if there are no single-sex schools in this country. The fact is, this 'experiment' has been performed by private schools for generations. Some of them are great, some of them are mediocre, some of them are bad. The same can be said of public schools, as well.

I have a huge problem with the public schools going down this route. We've got too much history of separate-but-equal segregation. In no way will this be a real experiment - it will be run by politicians, not scientists, and politicians already know the answers they want.

Most political proponents of single-sex education believe in stereotypical male and female roles. Men are good at math, women are good at talking. Men hunt, women nest. Men like sports, women like knitting.

God forbid anyone fall outside these stereotypes.

It is pretty typical of the modern "liberal" mindset that they feel that experimenting with children's lives is a good thing, and that the feel that outcomes where people who are provably different are treated the same are "better" than outcomes where they are treated differently.

It is hardly deniable at this late stage that single sex schools work better than mixed schools - get the stats for goodness sakes. The reason why is simple - sexual competition gets in the way of scholastic and sporting competition.

From multi-culturalism to education, "liberalism"'s desperate yearning to believe that people are fundamentally the same has blown up in its face time and again. When will you "liberals" stop ruining peoples lives?

(e) The "separate but equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, has no place in the field of public education.

Brown v. Board of Education

Human beings naturally segregate along lines of gender, race, intelligence and age, often, but not always to good effect. Our social and cultural institutions attempt to control the natural tensions created by integration along the same lines.

For example, we segregate children in public school by age, and for many good reasons. We try to control the ways that mid schoolers are allowed to integrate with high schooler, again for very good reasons.

Both segregation and integration are natural features of human societies and institutions, and both have a place in schools. Boys and girls at my high school segregated for PE, and unfortunatelty, we didn't shower together. That worked out well. Classes were also segregated by academic performance. That seemed to make sense in some classes. We partially integrated at lunch, although we tended to stick to our tribes, unless we were bold enough to by a coke for a girl. The dances were called mixers, but the rest rooms were segregated.

Forced, universal integration is as crazy as forced universal segregation. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that some level of segregation by gender might be very beneficial.

MHR....you make it sound sooo easy....have you ever worked in public education?

To start with, how do you tell incompetent teachers from competent ones? From test scores? Comments by angry parents? How?

Secondly, where do you find new teachers to replace all the incompetent teachers you just fired? There is already a huge shortage of teachers nationwide, especially in math and science.

The solution isn't to fire all the incompetent teachers....the solution is to train them better and provide them with better ongoing support so that they never get a chance to fall into incompetence. It also might not be a bad idea to pay teachers more so that you can attract higher quality candidates to the profession in the first place.

Spend a few days in an overcrowded classroom full of hormonally challenged kids who do not all speak English before you spout off about firing incompetent teachers. Then you might get a better idea of how difficult it truly is to become a good teacher!

as a public school teacher in los angeles, i can tell you that the best way to improve the quality of education is to lower class sizes and provide more prep time during the school day for teachers.

you just can't teach math to a class of 39 hormonal, mostly poor English learners without at least some of them falling through the cracks. try 5 of those classes every day, and you've got close to 200 students to keep track of. most teachers get 50 minutes a day to plan, grade, and conference with parents. it's not enough time. i get up at 5:30, am at school by 7:15, and typically don't leave until 4:30. after dinner, i put in another 2-3 hours of work. teachers can't be expected to work miracles.

maybe single sex education would be helpful. maybe not. it should really be up to the parents and students to choose what they want.

as a public school teacher in los angeles, i can tell you that the best way to improve the quality of education is to lower class sizes and provide more prep time during the school day for teachers.

you just can't teach math to a class of 39 hormonal, mostly poor English learners without at least some of them falling through the cracks. try 5 of those classes every day, and you've got close to 200 students to keep track of. most teachers get 50 minutes a day to plan, grade, and conference with parents. it's not enough time. i get up at 5:30, am at school by 7:15, and typically don't leave until 4:30. after dinner, i put in another 2-3 hours of work. teachers can't be expected to work miracles.

maybe single sex education would be helpful. maybe not. it should really be up to the parents and students to choose what they want.

Umm, since single-sex education was the rule for centuries, I don't know how much we need to experiment. There are, after all, still many many single-sex parochial schools (high school, anyway), so it's not like we have no evidence for judgment.

It just gets a bit troubling that this comes up just as girls are making enormous leaps, especially in math and science, and yes, in co-ed schools. Back when girls really had to worry about getting shot down or ignored if they tried to talk in class, you guys weren't pulling for single-sex schools. But now that boys have lost the traditional privilege that used to come with being male, and have fallen behind, suddenly it's because they're distracted by girls or something? And I say this as the mom of two boys who simply haven't tried very hard in school... I don't blame the girls, let me say.

There's no doubt that boys, especially in the middle and lower group, are doing worse... or maybe girls are just doing better. How about we let THIS experiment work for awhile, huh? Girls going to co-ed schools but encouraged to be leaders. Boys learning that they can compete fairly with girls even without the male privilege. Give that a chance-- it's not like that's been around for very long.

It's hard to say that the workplace should be integrated if we're saying that kids shouldn't be in school together. It's not co-education that is causing boys to fall behind. How about we look for the real cause instead of inventing one?

Yeah...yeah seperate but equal has worked out so well in the past.

I keep seeing in my head the Simpsons (that ran this weekend) about the boys school and the girls school and Lisa wanting a more stringent math so dressed up like a boy.......

Saying that, I am from NOLA and went to an all girls Catholic school. I will only speak to Ursuline Academy, but it was college prep (no home ec class) and had a 260 year (I graduated in 1987) history of teaching and graduating girls (even those of Native and African descent). So while I don't know the specifics of the Louisian plan, NOLA at least has a long, long history of gender segregated schools. These schools are not touchy feely or any way inferrior to, all boys schools.

Personally as a teen I was not the most out-going, confident girl, and in retrospect, it was the best thing for me. Some girls/femals might find it less than ideal.

Is this a case of failing to see the forest for the trees? Most comments imply that gender seperation would benefit girls more than they would boys, since boys tend to be louder and more aggressive, thus hogging more of the teacher's time.

Yet statistics say:

* The High School graduation rate of girls is over 10% higher than that for boys.

* female college graduates outnumbered male graduates by 35% during 2003.

Can anyone present statistical evidence that male aggressiveness actually harms female educational achievements? Do all-female high schools have higher college attendance rates than co-ed private high schools which have similar economic resources?

Boys compete.

Girls co-operate.

Co-ed is fine once those properties of human nature are accounted, and schools and classes should be structured accordingly with, where appropriate, segregated activities to allow each group to focus itself. When we try to de-nature the boys or girls, problems arise. There'd be hell to pay if teachers were pushing girls to be more competitive; the question is why the push to make boys unnaturally co-operative passes muster.

I think it's an idea that should not be rejected without at least trying it. In the inner cities, some schools are experimenting with all boys and all girls schools. Considering the plight of inner city education, if it works (and evidence shows that african american boys could benefit from it the most) it may be worth a try.