ABOUT SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION (USA, 2005)

[To most Americans, single-sex education seems strange and old-fashioned. Few Americans have had firsthand experience with single-gender education, and fewer still have ever been inside a single-gender public school. Besides: Women and men work together and live together, so shouldn't girls and boys go to school together? The argument in favor of coeducation seems obvious and intuitive. But, as neuroscientist Dr. Joseph LeDoux has writen: Sometimes, intuitions are just wrong -- the world seems flat but it is not ... Things that are obvious are not necessarily true, and many things that are true are not at all obvious. The strongest arguments for single-sex education are not obvious. In the current school year, 154 public U.S. schools are offering same-sex education, compared with four public schools eight years ago, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE), a nonprofit group created by Montgomery County physician Leonard Sax. He said the number represents 35 public schools that are completely single sex and 119 that are coeducational but also offer single-sex educational opportunities.]

# 108 ::Educare Categoria-Educacion

by Newspaper and Magazine Articles

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Thirty years ago, many educators believed that the best way to ensure equal educational opportunity for girls and boys would be to insist on educating girls and boys in the same classroom. However: a thoughtful review of the evidence accumulated over the past 30 years suggests that coeducation may not work as well as expected. In fact, the best evidence now suggests that coeducational settings actually reinforce gender stereotypes, whereas single-sex classrooms break down gender stereotypes. Girls in single-sex educational settings are more likely to take classes in math, science, and information technology. Boys in single-sex schools are more likely to pursue interests in art, music, drama, and foreign languages. Both girls and boys have more freedom to explore their own interests and abilities in single-gender classrooms. In recent years, there has been significant press coverage of success stories such as the Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Seattle, Washington, where an imaginative principal reinvented his school as a gender-separate academy, and -- with no additional funding -- transformed his school, with students' grades and test scores soaring, disciplinary problems vanishing, and everybody's attitude improving. These press reports, unfortunately, have often failed to mention the careful preparation and professional development behind these stories. As a result, other educators have sometimes experimented with gender-separate education, simply putting all the girls in one classroom and all the boys in another. No professional development. No careful consideration of which teacher is right for which classroom -- because neither the principal nor the teachers understand how girls and boys learn differently, and therefore they have no clue how to determine which teacher is right for which classroom. The results of such poorly-thought-out experiments are not impressive. Sometimes they're disastrous.

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