Teaching Boys and Girls

I found the article relating to teaching boys and girls separately to be interesting, but I do not really agree with the idea. I never realized that there significant differences in how boys and girls learn. My first disagreement with separating boys and girls is the social aspect. Like I have read about in other articles, school is not just learning about math, science, English, etc. It is also important to learn how to socialize with others. School is a place where children are prepared to interact with one another, and be prepared for higher education and the real world. If students are put into a classroom that is segregated by gender, at a young age they are never going to have the initial interaction where they learn to socialize with people of the opposite sex. I think the reason I went into reading this article with somewhat of an opinion already formed is because I have discussed the matter in other classes and personally don’t agree with it.

The first quote I found interesting is “…a mix of cultural and technological forces-ranging from the growth of brain scan research to the increased academic pressure on kindergarteners and a chronic achievement gap between richer and poorer students and between white and minority students- new single sex public schools and classrooms are opening at an accelerating pace. “ To me I found this statement to make it clear of why these single sex classrooms are becoming more and more popular. In modern day, we live in a society where getting an exceptional education is a top priority, and competition of being the best is apparent everywhere in society. These single sex schools may becoming more and more popular because parents may see higher test scores, meaning the students must be smarter.

Leonard Sax makes his argument about teaching boys and girls separately: “Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology…”. I found it interesting to read about the differences between boys and girls. For example, how girls are better with hearing and listening, whereas boys are better at watching action. I found it kind of stereotypical of how the classrooms of the boys and girls were designed. The boys room is blue and set a cool temperature, whereas the girls room is a warm yellow color and set at a higher temperature. Yes, I agree that girls and boys are biologically different, and may have stronger attributes to learning, but I do think that is a valid reason to separate them. When men and women are in the work force they are not separated by gender, they have to learn to work cooperatively together.

To counter Sax’s argument of biological differences, Jay Giedd, chief of medical imaging researched this idea further. “Differences in brain size between males and females should not be interpreted as implying any sort of functional advantage or disadvantage.” From a medical perspective this proves the point that although boys and girls are biologically different does not mean that their learning capacity differs so much that they should learn in separate classrooms.

In conclusion, this article ends with a statement from Richard Kahlenburg at Century Foundation. “…it may be hard to remember that public schools were intended not to instruct children in reading and math but also to teach them commonality, tolerance and what it means to be American. ‘When you segregate, by any means, you lose some of that,”. I 100% agree with this statement. Yes, schools are very concentrated on meeting the standards in various subjects, but education also teaches youth how to interact and socialize with one another.