And the George W. Bush Idiotic Idea of the Year Award goes to the Education Department for their fantastic contribution and solution to idiocy in America.
Boys have trouble with math because there are girls in there... what... befouling the information transmitted from the teacher's mouth? Or are you implying the girls hold the boys back because they're only good at shopping and cooking and couldn't possibly grasp the concept of an integral? Exactly what studies were these that suggested a gender fender would help kids do better?
I just watched Mean Girls the other day, y'know, where Lindsay Lohan is a math genius but fails quizzes on purpose to get the attention of that hot boy with the eyes. Basically I'm thinking this plan was based on that movie. But I mean, the movie was based on a book, so it's totally ok.
My favorite part of this plan is that it completely eliminates the threat of blame. Oh, it's not our fault education sucks, it's the mixing of genders, it's passing out condoms in health class, it's the spectre of gay marriage!
How about this? If there's a problem with education, there's a problem with the people in charge of it. So instead of throwing out gimmicky little solutions like gender segregation and the Atkin's diet based on a couple of little studies, why don't we go straight to the source (parents? I dunno, probably the government) and fix idiocy where it originates? But I dunno what that would imply or anything, hell, I don't know anything about politics. I think it's because I sat next to Irina in government class senior year.... y'know, and she was a girl and all.
Or maybe it's the Russians.
It's an interesting debate, actually. There is a lot of evidence that young men and women learn differently. Basically, some teaching methods are more effective than other for each gender. There is also evidence that girls do better in math if there are no boys in the room and boys do better in English if there are no girls. This is usually thought to be from sex roles in society (girls are supposed to be good at English and bad at math, and vice versa).
ReplyDeleteThe big objection I have to single sex schools is not with the education, since that pretty much suggests single sex is better than coed, but social interaction. I think each gender learns something from being in school with the other gender and it is more like life after high school.