Washington, Nov 11 (DPA) Separating boys and girls in school has long been considered reactionary in the US. But the practice has experienced a renaissance since a ruling by the education department last year gave the green light to separate classrooms under certain conditions.
Now, schools that separate boys and girls for maths or chemistry must be handled like any other schools as long as enrolment in the single-sex classes is voluntary and there are equal co-educational classes. The move has nearly doubled the number of schools that separate boys and girls in at least some cases to around 400.
Teachers and parents’ associations hope the trend will keep students less distracted and intimidated in the classroom.
Some students “may learn better in single-sex educational environments”, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said when announcing the department’s guidelines last year.
Students in single-sex classrooms tend to concentrate on their lessons better, the National Association for Single Sex Public Education claims. Proponents say that this is in part because the lessons can zero in on different interests and developmental levels between boys and girls of the same age.
Educators have long known of differences in learning methods between boys and girls, but now many public schools in the US are making the move to educate their children separately.
Studies show that American boys concentrate less, have more problems with reading and are overall weaker students than girls, leading more boys to fail than their female counterparts.
“Sometimes the adrenaline is so high that the boys shout out answers,” teacher Robert Slydell at West Riviera Elementary School told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper after his school began an all-boys fifth grade class.
As a result, teachers in all-male classes adapt to their students concentrating more on reading and writing and throwing balls to students instead of simply calling on them to answer questions.
In contrast, lessons designed for girls focus more on group work and teachers play classical music in the background during maths class.
Especially in the sciences, it makes sense to separate students by gender, Tom Carroll, a charter school director in Albany, New York, told the New York Times. Girls who have traditionally had little interest in “masculine” subjects like physics or chemistry thrive in the subjects when they study them in their own classroom.
But despite some success, the practice has received harsh criticism from those who see it as a return to sexist views and a move toward even more single-sex schools.
“What if we told our daughters and our sons that we value them equally, and we believe they can learn and work and play together?” National Organization of Women president Kim Gandy wrote in an opinion piece. “What if we demonstrated to them that discrimination and stereotypes are relics of the past, obsolete in a modern society?”
The American Civil Liberties Union has even threatened a lawsuit. “We are certainly in many states looking at schools that are segregating students by sex and considering whether any of them are ripe for a challenge,” Emily Martin, of the organization’s Women’s Rights Project told the New York Times.