Posted on 03/02/2008 9:31:21 PM PST by neverdem
On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Ala., Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes. The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.
Foley Intermediate School began offering separate classes for boys and girls a few years ago, after the school’s principal, Lee Mansell, read a book by Michael Gurian called “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” After that, she read a magazine article by Sax and thought that his insights would help improve the test scores of Foley’s lowest-achieving cohort, minority boys. Sax went on to publish those ideas in “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” Both books feature conversion stories of children, particularly boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings and then pulling themselves together in single-sex schools. Sax’s book and lectures also include neurological diagrams and scores of citations of obscure scientific studies, like one by a Swedish researcher...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Amen to this! My wife agrees with this too, and we have our share of how to teach and discipline our boys and girls arguments.
Whew, that was a long read but essentially very fair. I’m glad that sex-segregated classrooms are growing in popularity a) because they work, and b) because they have the goofball liberals tearing their hair out. The asshat quoted in the last paragraph made it clear: the goofballs are more interested in some vague notion of “tolerance” (whatever the hell that is) than they are in doing what’s best for kids.
It’s about time. Enough with the “they’re all the same except with some plumbing differences.” The differences between male and female are greater than the differences between many species in the animal kingdom. Playing merely to what they have in common ignores developing their separate strengths.
One teacher named Bender, and another named Gay, in single-sex classrooms... the jokes practically write themselves!
Seriously, though, I think this is a great idea. A few co-ed classes every day, but have most of the day be single-sex and tailored to the kids’ needs and studying styles.
In the last few decades, primary school seems to be becoming more and more girl-oriented, with outdoor recess being eliminated and “guy-thinking” classes like mathematics deemphasized in favor of emotion- and feelings-based classwork.
Particularly the room-temperature thing; for years I’ve been sweating in hot classrooms and offices while women wearing much less clothing have felt fine.
Get the other sex out of the classroom and watch those kids focus on what’s on the blackboard!
This almost sounds like 'separate but equal' or something. But after 10+ years in the fully-integrated Navy, I wholeheartedly agree with your statement.
bookmarking the obvious for later.
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After a bit of research I must say that Foley looks like a wonderful place to live!
Real estate and taxes are cheap, thickly wooded and higher elevation reducing storm damage, close to the gulf coast yet has a small (less than 10K) rural population, and large lots available just outside of town.
Bump for later.
All of our sisters went to a Catholic All-girls school down the street. Our town had 4 all boy Catholic High schools and 7 all girl Catholic high schools. It was a great way to grow up.
We had to wear ties but nobody was showing off for the girls. The girls wore skirts and white shirts and most did not wear make up. Girls learn differently than boys. I guess that is why they did not have shop auto shop. My daughter went to an all girl high school and she talked about boys a lot. She did not date until she was a junior. Even then only on double dates. She is now married and mother to my grandson. When she knew it was the one, she KNEW. There is no pressure to date and while intrest is there and desire, there is also control and reason. You dont get pressured into doing somehting just becasue the other sex is there. IMHO
nd, you seem to be at your peak at about 1 am!
Many fine FReepers live in Alabama, but the homeschooling regulations there are ghastly.
Thanks Tax-chick, that’s something I would not have thought to look into.
http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp?State=AL
Here’s the summary from HSLDA. It doesn’t look that bad on paper, but it was a huge nuisance in practice. When we lived in Tennessee, there were some families in Alabama near the state line maintaining a residence-of-record in Tennessee, to get away from the Alabama law. And Tennessee’s law wasn’t great, either.
And she is no tomboy. She dances and sings and acts and is very girly in many other ways. But being with all girls would be a recipe for disaster. She is 15 and still prefers to hang out with the geeks ... almost all of whom are boys.
Yeah, I’d have been like. Even now I hate dealing with most women and am happy to be an engineer surrounded by other engineers.
I was homeschooled and will homeschool whatever kids I have. That way you can teach all your kids however works best for them - and that goes beyond simple boy/girl differences to different learning styles.
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