The 60's and 70's of the 1900's will always be remembered for the inroads made into our culture and society by the Feminist Movement and its associated allies. As part of its so -called "championing" the rights and interests of women and girls, the Movement began an all-out assault on what was then perceived as a patriarchal society.
All male institutions, clubs, colleges and especially the military, were targeted as places where gender divisions and separations were not only unconstitutional but were (claimed to be) inherently wrong and damaging to the general psyche of the female population .
As is usually the case, our society went from the ridiculous to the sublime when political correctness went awry as it tried to appease the women's rights lobbyists by succumbing to demands that in many instances had neither scientific evidence nor common sense to support them.
Now at last, as we march further on into the new century, a policy shift is occurring in both political and educational spheres. In May 2002 (and again in March 2004), the U.S. Department of Education announced that it intended to revise the regulations on gender ( substitute: single-sex) education, so that school districts could have more flexibility in the establishment of all-boys or all-girls Public Schools (1). Although co-education has been a part of our history for over a hundred years, there is now new mounting evidence that such educational philosophy and teaching methodology can cultivate situations and strategies that may hinder academic progress in both girls and boys. In fact, some research is showing that co-ed settings may actually reinforce many of the gender stereotypical ideas, and prevent boys and girls from achieving their best in school and college.(2)
The main thrust of this new evidence is that medical, neurological and psychological research clearly shows that boys and girls DO learn in different ways.
Boys and girls are different!
They look different.
They act differently.
They think differently.
They process information differently and do so in environments that should be greatly different.
The "cookie-cutter" approach to education is therefore long overdue a decent burial.
Yet, it would seem that the established leadership in the field of education has failed to grasp these simple truths.
Forty or fifty years ago, the conventional wisdom was that co-education would break down gender stereotyping; that boys and girls are exactly the same and learn alike and that we were in some way ( as yet still unexplained) "damaging" students by isolating them in any way. That type of "innovative thinking" has turned out to be as flawed as many of the other idiotic ideas that came with the times.
The fact is that from the lowliest rural school to the megalithic institutions of the urban sprawl, education today is organized and managed for the convenience of adults. Schedules are built around teacher availability; classroom settings are geared towards teacher comforts and ease of instruction; quizzes and tests are (even sub-consciously) often used more as a tool of teacher assessment than as a means to discover a student's areas of learning gaps and weaknesses.
It's time now for an education reality check, but the problem is that many of those involved with the responsibility of educating children are more focused on teaching "things" rather than educating our young people towards becoming productive members of an ever-evolving society and culture.
The sad fact is that the empirical data is readily available to anyone who wishes to consider honestly its far-reaching implications. A few hours on the Internet will provide more than sufficient details for anyone to be able to make an "informed decision" as to the methodology we should employ in all of our schools.
Since the beginning of this new century, the interest in single-sex schools has risen dramatically among parents and educators. New government regulations (under the No Child Left Behind Act -- especially sections 5131 (a)(23) and (c)) authorize Public Elementary and High Schools to offer at least single -sex classes under certain provisions. However, as is often the case, many school systems "jumped on the band wagon" without taking enough time to make a thorough investigation of all of the repercussions and complexities associated with such a dramatic shift in educational programs.
The result has been that these "failures" ( and indeed many of the experiments were abject failures), have given fodder to the negative notion that single-sex education is a fad that now deserves to be thrown out into the garbage with all the other failures that have popped up in the field of education from time to time.
The number one reason for these failures is a rush to action without first considering the intricacies of educational gender differences. Recent scientific discoveries have shown that the differences in boys and girls is far more distinctive than was first imagined. While all of the evidence is not yet fully tabulated and at hand, there is sufficient data to warrant a far greater investigation and debate than has been evoked so far. The suggestion for example that girls' brains develop much sooner in the area of language than in spatial thinking ought to be a starting point. For boys, the reverse is true. Medical science verifies that these differences begin in the womb. Two Israeli scientists ( Reuwen and Anat Achiron) (3) have discovered that when a mother is around 26 weeks pregnant, it is possible to distinguish between a female and a male brain . Research also shows that brain development is so permanent that nothing---- neither education. lifestyle nor even clinical operations ---will change a person's brain from male to female or vice versa.(4). So then the question must be asked : "Why are we teaching geometry and language to boys and girls at the same age when they are ready for this at different ages?" In effect, a case could be made that in school, we are in a way actually abusing children of both sexes by demanding from them academic success in areas in which they are neurologically and mentally incapable of gaining such success.
