Classroom gender de-segregation by any means - nice but a hollow victory

Submitted by Matt on Wed, 2010-02-03 19:24

Stories like this one occasionally popping up are nice to see, but bear in mind the victory is hollow. The reasons are not because the people involved have come to realize that gender segregation is wrong and they are reversing their bad ideologies, but instead, they just want to save/make money. If they could get away with it, the all-female allocations for classroom space and learning resources would be increasing, not decreasing. Excerpt:

'The Aquinas Institute and the Nazareth Schools announced a partnership today to merge student bodies into one school system.

Beginning in September, pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade classes will be held at the Nazareth Academny campus on Lake Avenue. Classes for grades 7 through 12 will be at the Aquinas Institute campus on Dewey Avenue.

The move will combine the all-female Nazareth Academy with the co-educational Aquinas Institute.'

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Comments

Actually, gender segregation in education shows a lot of promise (especially for the education of boys).

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Submitted by lance on Thu, 2010-02-04 04:37

But then if the girl classrooms do better, they'll get more funding to expand it, and if they do worse they'll get more money to offset the sexism that must be causing the difference.

I also feel that in the real world, men and women need to work together. Neither boys or girls are helped to prepare for that by being sheltered from it. We need classrooms that pay attention to the needs of ALL their students, regardless of gender or race or any other factor.

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Submitted by ItsDan on Thu, 2010-02-04 16:33

I have said many times that I support single gender classrooms.

Here at MANN we may have different opinions about single gender classrooms, but I assume we all want the same outcome which is to focus on the needs of boys and help them get a quality education.

One point that frequently comes up is wether the classrooms/programs for boys would receive the same funding and attention that the girls would receive.

I have a distrust for the government and public schools in general, so I share your concern.

But when I think about 'boys only' school I think more about it in a private school setting. In private schools they have to sell their product (which would be a high quality education focused on the needs of boys) to the customer (the parents). Unlike public schools, they have to compete for their customers and parents get to choose what they want or go elsewhere. They are ran as a business. They only stay in business if they work and customers keep coming back.

So in a private school that only teaches one gender there would be no issue of one gender getting more funding.

My reasons for separating boys and girls would be so teaching methods, material and assessments can be done in a way that is in line with the physical and mental developments of boys. Currently everything is taught and assessed to give girls the benefit (even the desk arrangement in kindergarten is suited for the social needs of girls) .

Of course there will always be boys and girls that learn differently and will be an exception to the rule, but I think the more choices available, the better.

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Submitted by Kris on Thu, 2010-02-04 21:28