Apparently, students from nations that use "hands-on" approaches to Math score poorly when compared to students from nations who don't learn Math that way. I have midterms today and tomorrow (both in Math, haha) but I will try to find the article afterwards.

If we make that assumption, this automatically puts girls at a disadvantage in Math, and since I remember Tom talking about a friend of his who had to put her son in a sex-segregated school because there was no option, we should be concerned about this.

I recognize the role women's colleges have in opening up leadership positions to women, but even there, we see a dearth in Math/Science opportunities. I wanted to study Engineering, and the only women's college I could apply to at the time was Smith, because of their joint program with Dartmouth.

Is pushing females out of Math and Science-related fields the goal? Because I strongly feel that that will be the result.

I will note that one of my friends went to an all-girls private Catholic high school in Maryland, and her school gave her a very strong background in Math and Science. She's a Mechanical Engineer now. However, I don't think that's going to happen here. Maybe I just have too little faith.

Do you guys have school league tables in the States?

At least it would prove that girls taught using different methods fair less well than their traditionally schooled counterparts fairly quickly.

How do I get my boys into the girls' classes, to avoid some idiot teaching them "heroic" behavior and "what it means to truly 'be a man.'"?

Christ.

"Heroes fight for what's right! It's good to be a Delta! Join the Army now!"

I mean, who benefits from this? Really? This is a bad idea all around. And I don't think you'll have trouble finding a lot of support to oppose such practices from BOTH genders.

Totally agree with that. The only thing it's liable to do is reinforce gender stereotypes.
I really don't get the point of sex-segregated education anyway. I think it's much healthier to be mixed from an early age. It tends to undermine the whole "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" crap. Diversity breeds tolerance: by being around many different types of people (from both genders, different races, social backgrounds, etc.), you tend to realize that we are all humans in our own right, regardless of our supposed or actual differences.

I've been blogging furiously about this. It's ugly and depressing.

And it's getting a disgusting amount of support from the mainstream media. Anyone see the CBS Evening News last night? All this gushing about an all-girls public school in Miami where there are fewer disciplinary problems and everyone scores better on tests. At somewhere in the report, there was a throwaway line about how the smaller class sizes are helping, too, now that there aren't boys in there increasing the size of the classes.

Hey, geniuses:

The Miami-Dade School District is full of teachers who have been pleading for smaller classes for YEARS because they know it'll cut down on disciplinary problems and increase test scores. The District finally accommodates in this one specific case...but only so that it can put a right-wing agenda into effect? WTF?

Cheers,

TH

chem fem, ye of too much faith!

And here's another thought: If mandatory racial segregation improved student behavior and test scores, would that make it right? If not, why is mandatory gender segregation being defended on the same grounds?

Cheers,

TH

Racial segregation has a more serious tone to it. We've got knuckledraggers running the US who fear uppity women and too many women who still like traditional gender roles.

I'll admit to knowing a few brilliant women scientists who went to all-girls schools, but anecdotal evidence does not make much of a case either way.

I'm a major fan of women-only colleges, but not of girls-only schools. To me, the difference comes from the fact that little kids are kind of genderless. You know how in older novels, children are sometimes refered to as "it"? I think that's good - not because they aren't people, but because gender just doesn't matter to small children.

Oh, and what the hell is "hands on math"? I understand in the very early grades children use manipultives for counting and such. But after that?

I just don't understand how segregation of any kind can be positive. What about diversity?
Are we going to end up creating ghettos for women, gays, African-American people, Asian people, tall people, short people...?
Diversity is always an enriching experience, the mere mention of segregation gives me the creeps.

I can see both positive and negitives to seperating students based on gender. Some positives are that sexually segrated schools can help prevent young women and girls from being harrassed and abused by male students. It can also allow female students to be able to speak out, where maybe in a male classroom they would feel they are unable to. I have been in lots of all female, or mostly female classes in my life and had very good experiances in many of them. However, these types of classes occured always by accident, they weren't geared to be all female and the students didn't know they would be all female when they signed up for them. The biggest issues I see with sex segration occuring in schools, espeically where both males and females attend at the same location, but are seperated, is that one group will end up thinking they are better then the other group and the girls and boys will always be in a sort of competition. I also think its really important that at a young age, children of different sexes learn how to get along and work together. Also gearing education towards how men and women might learn differently could have a extremely negitive effect and only encourage such differences. I don't think seperation of people based on gender is always bad, just like seperation of people based on race or religion isn't always bad (for example black colleges or religious rallies) but at the same time when done the wrong way it can breed hatred and sterotypes and be very negitive.

I really don't understand how segregation can be positive when what we're striving for is for everyone to be able to live in harmony. How can you achieve that if you've been separated during your whole education?
As for girls being afraid to speak up in front of boys, I don't think separating them makes anything better. The point is to show them that they're entitled to speak up too, just like Black students are entitled to speak up in front of White students, etc. The concept of separation enhances differences instead of levelling them.
On a pure anecdotal level, my experiences in all-girl classes were dreadful.