Single Sex Schools...

Peter Siner

“Foley Intermediate School began offering separate classes for boys and girls a few years ago, after the school’s principal, Lee Mansell, read a book by Michael Gurian called “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” After that, she read a magazine article by Sax and thought that his insights would help improve the test scores of Foley’s lowest-achieving cohort, minority boys.”

I thought this was a little strange how the principal could change the entire system of the school based off of a reading that she had done.  I also find it strange that there wasn’t a complete uproar from the parents of the children, generally when something changes, people have a problem with it. I thought that fundamental changes in a schools system had to be done by the superintendent not the principal.

“Sax estimates that in the fall of 2002, only about a dozen public schools in the United States offered any kind of single-sex educational options (excluding schools which offered single-sex classrooms only in health or physical education). By this past fall, Sax says, that number had soared to more than 360, with boys- and girls-only classrooms”

The change from coed schools to split boys and girls public schools in the US greatly increased. However I wonder if the change has occurred due to results in other schools or because parents and school committee members like the idea of it. I would think that parents would want the interaction between boys and girls inside of the school to help promote a more socially inclined individual. However I really can’t say from experience as whether or not being in an all-girls or boys public school changes things, and if it does how much it actually does.          

“early proposals was that boys should start kindergarten at age 6, a year later than girls, in order to ease the “sense of scholastic incompetence” that so many boys feel early on because they tend to develop later.”

This concept seems to be a little ridiculous. It seems as though we are making an extremely soft generation by saying boys should be going to school later so they don’t feel bad that girls are doing better. I went to a public school, and I went to kindergarten at 5, whether I thought girls were smarter than me or not at the age, it hasn’t affected me now. As a matter of fact the top students in my class of high school were mainly boys. The sense of competition between boys and girls at the elementary age seems to be almost vital. Interaction between both boys and girls I would assume is important to a child, friendships are built at young ages as well as a general understanding for one another.

“That certainly appears to be the case for single-sex schools. The data do not suggest that they’re clearly better for all kids. Nor do they suggest that they’re worse. The most concrete findings from the research on single-sex schools come from studies of Catholic schools”

If I were a principal or super intendant this statement would have scared me a little bit. While there are certainly schools that have improved due to the change there were also those that did not have the same luck. In these cases I am curious as to if the change in the school environment led to improvement or the actual change from the coed school to a single sex. It would have been interesting if studies were done to compare coed classes that had changes done to the lesson plans and the schools that changed to a single sex school and compare any improvements.