My parents are what I like to call "First Amendment Liberals." (Have I said this before? Too lazy to check.) I am much like them. The big tenets are that you can't censor anyones thoughts or feelings, no matter how odious, that segregation is a great evil, things like that. So we sometimes find ourselves like 1% uncomfortable with things like hate crime legislation (cuz you can't punish someone just for HATING) and that high school for gay kids (and believe me, admitting that I was 1% uncomfortable with that, though officially supportive, got me in trouble with some people). This also applies to same-sex education--since we believe that separate is not equal, segregating the genders seems somehow...wrong.
My mom and I had a conversation about this recently. The thing is, we do know that an all-girls' education is probably a good idea. The statistics are a little depressing if you're a co-ed like me--how the overwhelming majority of women in politics went to women's colleges, and stories like this. We talked about whether or not I should've gone to an all-girls' school myself. I remember saying, "Thinking about it now, if I'd gone to an all-girls' school I probably would've been class president."
But then we talked some more, and realized I wasn't exactly a slouch--I headed up the literary magazine, the Gender Issues Committee, and, yes, the a capella group, I was a Peer Leader, I was vocal in assemblies and student body government and spoke at graduation, blah blah blah. I'm not trying to brag (I mean, high school is over folks), but the point is: would it have been better if I'd been class president? And doesn't saying that sort of mean that I think the other girls in this hypothetical school would've been inferior to me?
Well, not really--it's possible that being in school with boys did somehow teach me that those leadership positions were, yknow, covered. I, like most girls, have that typical story of speaking up in class and being shut down for not raising my hand...and then a boy says the EXACT same thing without raising HIS hand and gets praised for it. (And btdubs, I didn't raise my hand because there had been a dumb pause, so I obviously wasn't interrupting anyone. Yes this was eighth grade and yes I still remember. It was something about Friar Laurence.) But in general my teachers thought I was pretty cool. One time I shouted an obscenity in history class (long story) and went to apologize to the teacher later, and he was all "eh whatever, don't worry about it."*
Of course I am acutely aware that I am one of the lucky ones, that I not only had my basically-cool-for-high-school education but also my awesome-feminist-parents upbringing. Maybe I was pretrained to withstand SOME societal conditioning. A lot of smart, innately feminist girls don't get those advantages. So maybe more young ladies SHOULD go to schools where they won't be criticized for being too "aggressive." Thoughts?
*But then this was also the teacher who smiled and stepped aside when we decided to "overthrow" him for French Revolution week. (We took turns teaching, and addressed Mr. Dix as "Turnip.") God I miss that man.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Separate But Finally Equal?
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4 comments:
My mom has been teaching at various all-boys schools for the past few years (second grade). As such she’s done a lot of research into same-sex schooling, and she tells me that most studies on the subject show that girls generally do better academically in a co-ed environment, whereas boys generally do worse. I think the prevailing wisdom on the subject is that a co-ed environment is best, if you’re mature enough to handle it, and girls allegedly mature sooner. My high school had a weird set-up, where there was an all-boys school and all-girls school across the street from each other, and they gradually integrated starting in 9th grade (starting with arts and languages). I don’t think that makes much sense, saying boys and girls can handle french together but not math, but I guess it’s been working well enough for a while.
--dhh
That's really interesting--has your school's set-up shown results?
It's hard to tell really. I mean it works, but I think that's also largely due to the fact that it's a small private school that aggressively weeds out anyone who might dent their annual rate of 100% of graduates going to college. I had two friends whose younger brothers were shown the door in elementary school, which is harsh.
The one thing I can speak to is the fact that within this system, you can really tell which teachers work best in boys-only, girls-only, or co-ed education, because there are definitely teachers that are suited for each. It would be easy to assume a teacher or a learning environment is bad when in fact it's just a bad match between the two.
-dhh
Glad you commented on that NY Times article. I read it and thought it was interesting. Something to keep in mind: as I understood it, the argument for single sex ed is strong for lower classes and less convincing for middle class white kids...and I think your experience demonstrates exactly why most middle-class kids don't show much improvement in single sex classrooms: the kids' parents instill them with the necessary protection from societal norms and the dangers of low self-esteem. The article seems to present that it's in cultures where women are treated like dirt and men are praised if they merely manage to stay out of jail that single sex education is most helpful. At least, that's how I read the article.
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