Posted on 06/15/2008 5:58:09 AM PDT by SoftballMominVA
Mrs. Demshur's class of second-grade girls sat in a tidy circle and took turns reading poems they had composed. "If I were a toucan, I'd tweet, I'd fly," began one girl. When she finished, the others clapped politely.
Down the hall, Mr. Reynolds's second-grade boys read poems aloud from desks facing every direction. A reading specialist walked around with a microphone. "If I were a snow leopard, I would hunt, I would run," began one boy. One classmate did a backbend over his chair as he read. Another crawled on the floor.
So went a language arts lesson at Washington Elementary School last month, with boys in one room and girls in another. The Fairfax County school, in the academic year that is ending, joined a small but fast-growing movement toward single-sex public education. The approach is based on the much-debated yet increasingly popular notion that girls and boys are hard-wired to learn differently and that they will be more successful if classes are designed for their particular needs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Back to the 3 R's...not this teaching Spanish to 3rd graders, STOP teaching sex....instead of biology....
Stop teaching Darwin as the only permissable conclusion to man's existence.
You can take God out of schools but you can't take God out of the Universe. We live on Faith....Atheists?? That's their problem.
ping
For a tomboy like me, a sex-segregated all-girl classroom probably would have been miserable.
Yeah, simply forget about the fact that boys and girls learn differently and keep doing the same thing over expecting different results.
Some seperation is good... the present system tries to make little boys into little girls... in an elementary school I taught at had close to 90 students on “calming drugs” 80 were boys...yes there were as many, if not more, girls in that school.... what do think the reason is for this disparity?
Maybe, instead of sex-segregated schools, the solution would be to quit drugging the kids.
It’s best that children have both a male role model and a female role model while growing up so they can learn how to function in society and how to interact properly with the opposite sex. Conservatives understand this. If children go through school segregated by sex, they won’t know the right way to interact with the opposite sex. They won’t know what a normal relationship is supposed to be like.
Anyway, I don’t think boys and girls learn all that differently. Two plus two is always four no matter what kind of plumbing the child who’s learning it has. I studied for tests with guys and we studied pretty much the same way. Am I supposed to learn a certain way because of my plumbing? I’ve been told by feminazis that I’m “supposed” to vote Democrat because I’m a woman. UGH.
I would have welcomed a girls only gym class.
“I would have welcomed a girls only gym class.”
I too, had to wear a hideous outfit (one piece, elasticized at the waist, green and white stripes on top, solid green bottom).. but at that time there was no such thing as co-ed PE. I certainly don’t believe in doing so since no matter how ridiculous the uniforms are, the boys are still looking at the girls..
Although I must the say all girls PE didn’t help me not feel like a dork.. girls can be pretty cruel to each other.
girls can be pretty cruel to each other.
Vicious Cat! MEOWWWWWW
my oldest daughter attended an all girls Catholic HS in DC, my son currently attends the corresponding all boys Catholic highschool in DC. i think it is far preferable to mixed sex education. my daughter excelled there, and got into a top notch university where she has NO problem with having male students in the class. the foundation is now laid, her’s is rock solid. My son who was acting the fool to impress girls in 7th and 8th grade, has no one to impress in HS and things are going much better for him, academically. Studies have been done on this. single sex HS education does not impede men/women from attending mixed sex colleges or working together in a job situation. it is silly to think that it would.
why? because you think the girls would be prissy and girly? hardly. the girls at my daughters h.s. were super-competive, in academics as well as sports.
They would have better luck with separation of the cultures. ;)
Ahhh! But that separation comes naturally. Depending if you were born North or South of Madison Street, and continuing West on an imaginary line to California (State not Avenue). For example: When a Cubs fan gets withing 20ft of me the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I'm compelled to yell - DENIER!!
This trait is carried on to our offspring even after we move to the suburbs (South or Southwest) - it's in our DNA. :-)
Nonsense. I went to an all girls prep school. Almost everyone I knew who went to Catholic high schools went to single sex schools. The tomboys, the nerds, the Barbie-dolls, all did well. I don't understand this aversion to single sex schools. Especially at the high school level, girls in single sex schools don't have the boys to worry about and it allows them to concentrate on their school work, activities, and to have leadership positions they might not have (or they might not want because of how they want to appear before the boys) in a coed environment.
As for boys, 4 years with the Jesuits (who aren't afraid to use corporal punishment) or in a Christian Brothers school will keep most boys on the straight and narrow.
The idea that kids in single sex schools won't know how to interact with the opposite sex doesn't make sense. People have brothers and sisters, kids go to camp, Sunday school, etc. and have plenty of opportunities to interact with the opposite sex.
What they are in school to do is to learn and study. Taking away the immediate distractions of the opposite sex, especially at the high school level, allows them to do that.
You know, you’re right. We need to do nothing at all, because it’s all a slippery slope! /sarc
That is the most overused excuse these days.
susie
I once taught an advanced biology class (I was actually a long term sub for a teacher on maternity leave—I had the class for 10 weeks) that was all girls, just because only girls had signed up for it. It was mostly Srs a few Jrs. It was the most amazing class to teach, and I think it was very good for the girls.
I personally (and having taught it) think that sex ed should be segregated by sex, and I think if a school and/or parents think they want to have their kids in single sex classes, they should do so. There are advantages and disadvantages. However, if anyone thinks that boys and girls will not be able to function in the real world because they were separated in class, they need to give a reasoned explanation for why. And, the real question is, do you think that school is mostly about socialization? Personally, I think parents are in charge of socialization and schools should be in charge of education.
susie
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