School District Attempting Gender Separation

[The Straight Story]

School District Attempting Gender Separation

February 19, 2008

Greensboro, GA (ABC News) -- The news came as a surprise to parents in Greene County: when their children return to school next fall, the boys and girls will no longer share classrooms.

At the grade schools, they will be in separate classes. And by the time they get to high school, they'll have separate buildings.

The administrators who decided this say they had to do something to rescue their failing schools. Test scores are at rock bottom, with the high school one of the lowest ranked in Georgia.

"Girls tend to do better in small groups. Quiet time," says Board of Education Chair Janice Gallimore. "Boys tend to do better when they are able to express themselves."

But many parents say separating the sexes is a terrible solution. "I just disagree with it," Mary Evans said.

"It is like they are bringing segregation back," parent Cynthia Brown added. "I don't like it at all."

http://www.wtvm.com/Global/story.asp?S=7893223&nav=menu91_2

[MissB]

1. Boneheaded idea.

What about the tomboys?

[aikoaiko]

31. they'll kick butt in the girls classes.

;)

[xchrom]

2. i actually approve of this.

it'll start a fire -- but -- i think girls do better and are treated better by teachers in all girl enivironments -- your mileage may vary.

[VP505]

9. I agree with that,

there might be some positive things about seperating them.

[SoCalDem]

14. me too... especially from 5th-10th grades

Girls do better in math & sciences when they are challenging each other and are not exposed to the "that's BOY stuff"..

and the same goes for boys who may not be as embarrassed to admit he likes poerty or writing or literature, if he does not feel the need to be "macho" around girls..

And the sexy dress-up/make-up games that start around that time, would be greatly reduced if there are no "opposite sexes" to perform to..

It has always amazed me when people get their panties in a wad, when these ideas get floated.. Many of these same people would sell Grannie's blood to get their kids into a chi-chi private academy..and many of the higher-performing ones are single-sex..with uniforms :rofl:

[Book Lover]

15. "And the sexy dress-up/make-up games that start around that time, would be greatly reduced...

if there are no "opposite sexes" to perform to."

Not in my experience. With no boys in the classroom around to show off for, this game transforms into "Let's see who can't afford these clothes!" (worn either when going to school or under the uniform, in case you are wondering). Another game that flourishes in this environment is "Guess who's picking me up after school!" and of course, you have to dress up for your boyfriend picking you up, now don't you?

[SoCalDem]

16. Well, I am in favor of uniforms too

:)..
and if a 5th grader's got a boyfriend picking her up after school, clothes are not the biggest problem..:(

10th graders are usually 15-16, and by then a boy-girl school combination makes sense to me..but not before..

And it's not as if the boys & girls would never see each other..just not in the same classrooms all day long :)

[Book Lover]

18. Please see my post #13

for my reply to this. Segregation is just not a one-size-fits-all solution.

[walldude]

29. Wait a sec... boys may not be as embarrassed

to admit they like poerty or writing or literature, if he does not feel the need to be "macho" around girls?

Can't agree with that statement. And I know from experience. Young girls are much more accepting of boys who like poetry or writing or literature than young boys are. My oldest has almost no male friends because those are the types of things he's into. He's a spaz at sports, so he's gotten into more intellectual hobbies and is shunned by most boys because of it. The hilarious thing is his one male friend is a staunch freeper and all they do is spend all day arguing about politics.

If I'm not mistaken you are a teacher so I would yield the rest of the points to you who would know better, but I don't believe boys would feel more free to discuss T.S. Eliot with other boys...

[my2sense]

3. What's the Worst That Can Happen?

I'm glad they are making at effort at addressing the problem of sub-standard performance. I don't see a problem with it. Hopefully there will be fewer distractions for both the males and the females.

[cbayer]

4. Actually, they are right about the research.

Single sex education has its merits, especially for girls. I think the issue here is more about the lack of choice. But then again, parents who can only access the public school system rarely, if ever, have the choice of sending their children to a single sex school, while the wealthy do. And they often choose all boy or all girl schools when they have the option. Why not try it?

[Xithras]

8. Yep. The idea works but I don't like that it's forced.

There's lot's of research showing that children are better suited to learning in same sex environments. It decreses distractions, reduces peer pressure, and improves study skills across the board for both sexes (though the benefits are apparently greater for girls). What I don't like is the concept of forcing kids into this sort of situation. If the parents aren't comfortable with their kids attending a same sex school, they shouldn't be forced to do so. I think that, in time, most parents would choose to send their kids to these schools anyway, but there's lots of emotional issues tied up with the civil rights movements that make many people naturally hesitant about it.

I was reading about a school district recently that implemented a rather novel solution to ensuring that the kids STAYED seperate AND equal. They sex segregated on a single campus. They'd have the same teachers, and the same classrooms, but they rotated the periods to keep the genders apart. One teacher might have two periods of all boys math, and two periods of all girls math. Same books, same subjects, same teachers, same classrooms. Even the lunch was split, with the girls having lunch during one period, and the boys during another. Even though the girls and boys were on a single campus, they only saw each other for a few minutes every day while changing classes.

There were some objections at first, but the results couldn't be argued with. Everyone's grades went up, disciplinary problems went down, and the teachers all reported more attentive students.

[endarkenment]

5. With a crowbar?

We are a nation of prudes and dunces.

[CottonBear]

6. I think this is a great idea. I live near Greene Co. & I attended a girl's school.

(BTW, I loved same sex education. I attended a private girl's prep school from 7th-12th grades.)

The vast majority of Greene county's student are poor and black and rural. The county is divided into two distinct areas: the poor, rural part and the super-exclusive resort area on Lake Oconee.

Part of Greene County is occuppied by a number of super-exclusive, gated, private luxury resort developments (Reynolds Plantation, Great Waters and Cuscowilla to name a few...) located on Lake Oconee. There is even a Ritz Carlton Hotel at the lake. None of the wealthy white) people send their kids to Greene County Schools. The kids are shipped off to private college prep schools in the Athens area. The wealthy folks just convinced the state to allow them to build a charter school near the lake communities. Of course, the poor, black residents were pissed off that the school attendance zone was designed so that only the wealthy white kids couls attend. There was some compromise (a few blacks will get to attend.)

The existing school system is a disaster. The children are poor, few graduate and there are many teen pregnancies. I think that this drastic step can only help. The classes will be separate but the children will still attend the same schools if I understand correctly.

[Cabcere]

7. Just from my experience at Girls' State a few years ago...

...this is a horrible idea. :thumbsdown: By the end of the third day, we were all suffering from an estrogen overload, and instead of focusing on the topics at hand we were bitching at each other and daydreaming about even being able to see boys. And according to some of my friends who attended Boys' State, the atmosphere there (and resulting lack of productivity) was similar. :shrug:

(Of course, this could have just been because of the nature of the program in my state in 2003, which seemed to be - at least for the girls - focused on cheerleading and designing pretty "spirit posters" and crap like that. :puke: Seriously, the first day there, they made us cheer for our supper, and told us that the loudest, most "spirited" group would get to go first. This turned out to be a blatant lie - they told us later, after we'd been screaming our lungs out for the better part of an hour, that the dinner order was predetermined and cheering had no effect. x( Yeah, I'm a little bitter.)

It's possible that this could work in a different context, but my initial feeling is that it has the potential to backfire enormously.

[Dr. Strange]

12. This explains so much about you!

I figured you just weren't university material.

[Cabcere]

21. *gestures with a piece of chewing gum on tip of finger*

:P :rofl:


University, I can handle...Nazi Cheerleading Camp from Hell, not so much. :hi:

[Iris]

17. not much estrogen overload going on in k-3, though, is there?

[endarkenment]

19. yes well how about middle and high school

I see nothing in the article that limits this experiment in retro-edumication to k-3. In fact, the segregation gets more intense as age increases.

I went to a coed progressive prep school a long time ago, and we would interact with the traditional conservative new england all boys schools (like for soccer matches) and they were the sorriest horniest bunch of pimple-faced hormonal crisis cases you've ever seen, even if they were kicking our asses on the field we still were laughing our asses off at their predicament.

[Iris]

23. If they go to all girls school from the beginning, they won't know what they are missing.

in terms of the boys, I mean.

I personally don't have a problem with same-sex education. I think we're enlightened enough at this point to not let the girls' school become a pink ghetto.

[endarkenment]

24. Huh?

Are they sequestered?

[Iris]

26. No.

[endarkenment]

27. Then they will know what they are missing.

Besides, as far as I can tell it is boys that are at risk these days, not girls.

[Iris]

28. But they won't necessarily think they are missing anything by not having them in the classroom.

And, yes, boys are more at tisk these days. Which is one reason why I am for same-sex education. The boys' schools need not be a blue ghetto, either.

[Cabcere]

20. I was thinking more about the high school aspect of the article

but you're right, it likely wouldn't be as much of an issue for the younger grades.

[Iris]

25. I was thinking if they started that young,

in high school they wouldn't think they were missing out on anything!

[Cabcere]

30. Hmmm...interesting point.

You may very well be right. :hi:

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. It's worth a try. By 5th grade, boys are 1 1/2 years behind girls in reading.

I will be very interested to see how this works out. Hopefully it'll improve the education of girls and boys so that both groups succeed.

[BigDaddy44]

11. This is why I love DU :)

Long time lurker, but this is a reasonable idea with pros and cons that we can discuss rationally. I don't think anyone has bad intent here, but I see basic problems that to me make it unworkable.

[Book Lover]

13. As someone educated in a single-sex environment, I think this idea stinks

Throw a socially awkward girl in a room full of nothing else but girls, and you'll get a feeding frenzy the likes of which you would normally only see in a piranha tank. Plus, since I never knew any boys socially, guess who went boy-crazy in college after being segregated from them for 12 years? El-hi is a broken system, but gender segregation is not the answer.

[Firespirit]

22. The only thing that concerns me about this is transgender students

Particularly boys. It seems to be more acceptable, at least at the elementary school level, for girls to be "boyish" than for boys to be "girlish." And many Ts experience gender dysphoria as adolescents or children.

[The Straight Story]

32. A very important post

One which needs a lot more discussion.