by modern educators. I don't know if I'd go as far as single sex education without considering its impact if any on socialization, but the school system is generally considered to be lagging behind in its recognition of the facts - in a nutshell, little boys learn differently than little girls, and school is generally, if inadvertently, oriented towards methods most appropriate to the teaching of little girls.

As one child psychologist put it to me just a week or two ago, "with little girls, it's 'sit down at your desk, open your books and learn' - with little boys, it's 'run around, bump into things and learn'". Anyone who's raised both boys and girls can tell you there's far more than physical differences between them.

5th grade boys are big 3rd grade boys. 5th grade girls are just barely pre-teenagers. Then at some point (usually around 9th or 10th grade, or maybe a week after the first real kiss), boys rocket past the girls.

their pants.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

me to put the educators out of biz. But you don't need studies to confirm simple poetic common sense.

"What are little boys made of, made of?
Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails;
That's what little boys are made of.

"What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice;
That's what little girls are made of."

Of course, we can thank Bob Southey(Not an Ed.D) for this.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

As is so often the case, there's an enormous amount of hard-won folk wisdom, based on hundreds of generations of up-close-and-personal experience, lying behind that bit of doggerel.

the problem with the psychologist's analysis is stereotyping. i.e. as a male, I'm supposed to like competitive sports rather than individual sports, etc... and I don't.

it would be nice if teachers cared first and then consulted their theories second.

however mainstreaming is probably the only possibility given the way our schools are set up.

In general, that's why I support "school choice" and home schooling since those models often put the kids first instead of adult led beauracracies.

in an American context; we've exercised school choice up here, and recently.

I'm opposed to homeschooling.

It flatters notions of "choice" and "freedom" (in their context as trademark and brand, as opposed to their traditional meanings) but what may be a boon to the educated and intelligent immediately acts to open the door to radical ideologies to form de facto madrassa systems.

It's not a luxury a liberal democracy can afford; when you permit the self-selection process of parent educators to depend primarily upon the degree of energy they're willing to invest as opposed to their degree of fitness to the task, the most energetic you're going to find will often be the most extremely radical.

You've got the first wave going through now, but you ain't seen nothing yet. The radicalization you're permitting with homeschooling will, through the process of distillation, become increasingly focused and militant.

The radicalization you're permitting with homeschooling will, through the process of distillation, become increasingly focused and militant.

I think that's the way our nation is going; for beter or worse.

This isn't new since, as far as I know, the federlist letters argued for a merit based bureaucracy which would amass together a group of world class executives (at the top) who would make the nation great.

And, in this day and age, I don't think it's good policy for the brightest and best to be teachers since teaching algebra II, or natural science, is a thankless task. So, instead, elite workers would simply ask the good students to join their communities and become an apprentices.

In general, I agree with you that revolutionaries start revolutions but, after some time, the calmer folks jump on board; and, while I might love technology too much, I feel that what's available on the internet is, in many ways, better than what my "major public university" offers.

And, in my opinion, the biggest problem of home schooling, and independent learning, is that k/12's and universities don't have a good way to accredit the efforts of independent (outside of the system) learners and I think this needs to change.

when you permit the self-selection process of parent educators to depend primarily upon the degree of energy they're willing to invest as opposed to their degree of fitness to the task, the most energetic you're going to find will often be the most extremely radical.

My belief is that it's better to offer freedom to those who can handle it than to unconditionally withhold it.

In general, I don't think that the public schools have a choice since parents in california, etc..., are already hiring tutors in India to help their kids learn and I'm sure that the future will be full of similar examples.

One can do it on one's own time as a supplement, which is what all good parents do anyway.

If one wants to try to persuade their children of the logical validity of, say, the Young Earth theory, they are perfectly free to have at it. If the children are simultaneously being exposed to critical thinking at school, good luck to them. The reality is that some ideas are so patently jackass-stupid on their face that the only way they can survive is by forestalling their critical evaluation.

Now let's talk about the real issue here: it's not about the parent's selfish Freedom or Choice to perpetuate their own ignorance. It's about protecting the child's Freedom from that.

Home schooling as often practiced is most emphatically *not* about Choice or Freedom. It is about their complete opposite: *indoctrination*, which is effectively the intentional circumvention, or removal, of choice. As the radicals frame it, it's performed to achieve freedom from indoctrination in "liberal beliefs"; they indoctrinate, while thinking that what they are doing is "counter-indoctrination".

It's interesting to hear the brand names of Freedom and Choice invoked to mean their complete polar opposites; homeschooling is absolutely not about freedom *of* education, it is about an attempt to gain freedom *from* education.

Induced ignorance is not "freedom"; replacing one's children's critical reasoning abilities with indoctrination is not "choice".

San Francisco Chronicle, By Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, March 7

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."

The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.

The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.

The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.

My Kindergarten and University were co-ed. Primary school and high school were all girls - mostly spend at boarding school. I'm not sure if I missed out on something or not but like Ian said, there wasn't as much drama as there would have been had there been boys (in his case girls) - judging from the often rambunctious behavior of two of my three brothers.

People ultimately have to live together since the real world is coed.

and, AP scores, for example, haven't been able to measure who will be successfull, etc... or not; however, those with high AP scores try to use them as leverage, etc...

my reading of history is that women and men are both human and are equally dumb no matter how educated they are.

'Living together' and 'learning together' are two different creatures, that look different and act different.

I see no particular reason that one should be enforced over another, though. Both can be made to work well (single-sex and co-ed), if the requisite pre-work goes into development of the lesson plans, the material taught, and the ability of the Faculty to deal with/work with the students.

As a Coed-school graduate, I can definitely see Ian's and adrena's point regarding 'drama', and the relative absence of it in single-sex schools. There will be a certain amount of emotional turmoil between the sexes, ondividually and collectively, in a co-ed school. If the faculty is adequately trained and prepared, though, this need not be a problem, if the staff can work out methods to re-direct the eneergy otherwise put into the 'drama' into things more constructive to the students' personal developments.

Not that it can't be done, but form what I've seen, it's definitely more difficult in a co-ed environment than in single-sex.

My question to the prosepctive teachers out there: Are you up to this challenge? It's burned out many generations of otherwise good, idealistic persons....but it *is* possible.

-5.75,-4.05
"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that." --George Carlin

My biggest worry about single sex schools would be that males would be exposed to a much bigger dose of military rhetoric than the girls, etc...

Perhaps you're right and teachers won't be forced to recognize political goals but, in this day and age, it's happening more and more.

For example, the CBS program "Numbers" was shown in one of my math teaching courses and, in my opinion, the show was terrible since it talked about islamo fasicists, glorified agression, etc...

In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer

Because I am a B type in Ayurveda, which is dominated by the principle of heat, blue is a much better color for me then yellow. Likewise, a warm yellow light and a higher temperature would have made me feel uncomfortable at that age (as we age the cold principle becomes more dominant). The A, B, and C types are scattered amongst both sexes in varying degrees and combinations. One can be A or AB or AC or C etc.

I believe that gender research is influenced by an apparent need to reinforce preconceived ideas. I doubt there is even such a thing as gender research in Muslim countries. It's not needed when boys and girls are expected to behave according to predetermined rules and when deviation from the norm is not acceptable.

Not just to reinforce preconceived ideas, but to reproduce them. For a good 25 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the slow progress of women towards pay and career equity was blamed on their not having the same sense and experience of teamwork as men. If you decide that boys learn by doing and don't challenge them with different learning modes, they'll grow up to be executives whose assistants do the work. The girls who supposedly learn better by reading and who were never encouraged to be active will grow up to be the assistants.

Preconceptions about appropriate behavior work with race and class, too. When white G. George Gotrock's son interrupts, he's being a bright "all boy" showing initiative. When minority Mike Minwage's son interrupts, he's got a behavior problem.

There is pretty good research showing that less privileged groups thrive in short-term segregated settings, where the problems of dealing with the privileged are eliminated. However, the settings have to have high aims for their students (like women's or historically black colleges), not be institutions to funnel everybody in the group into a lower-status track than they might otherwise choose.

"the slow progress of women towards pay and career equity was blamed on their not having the same sense and experience of teamwork as men"

and families now struggle to make ends meet with two paychecks!

in my eyes, women do less valuable work nowadays but SOME have more power.

in general, I hope that, long term, women achieve more than simply earning the right to join the army.

..."anomalous males" -- boys who like to read, who don't enjoy competitive sports or rough-and-tumble play, and who don't have a lot of close male friends -- should be firmly disciplined, should spend as much time as possible with "normal males," and should be made to play competitive sports.

Yeah. I'm sure Stephen Hawking would be a nice healthy plumber with a beer gut if he'd just played rugby instead of spending 3 years at a girl's school.

"should spend as much time as possible with "normal males," and should be made to play competitive sports."

my 8th grade gym teacher pushed me against the wall and screamed at me because I wouldn't get dressed for gym and play competitive sports (even though I had bad asthma). So I told him: "if you touch me again, I'll ask my mom to sue you" and, after that experience, he was a changed man. for example, he stopped telling people that his mother did situps during commercial breaks and, instead, he seemed to reflect that his ambitions weren't the worlds.

and, when I was in a student teaching program, a "teacher," who was a failed financial advisor with a personality like Gordon Gecko's, talked about a winning coach who threw chairs against the wall during motivational talks and concluded that, because the coach's team won, his agressiveness was something that males needed.

I think reducing teaching loads and reducing class sizes would eliminate more problems than segregating the sexes during the school years.

Why will they try everything except actually fixing the core problem? Might also try upgrading teacher salaries.

that lack of funding drives many of the real problems. This is the key here, I think - that the larger issue is actually overwork and overcrowding in the system which forces a "big box" approach to education and robs the teachers of the time and resources to find appropriate delivery mechanisms for individuals.

Solving it with a "brute-force" approach such as segregation of sexes, given the variation between learning styles within the sexes, would merely be perpetuating thinking on the same level.

It's the kind of thinking better suited to abbatoirs than educations - and as we're beginning to see, perhaps not even particularly well suited to abbatoirs either.

The current system is a Procrustean bed for many students - the extremely bright tend to fare as poorly as those struggling to overcome disabilities.

Might also try upgrading teacher salaries.

that's silly; the Iraq war has supposedly cost us 3 trillion dollars, or more, and it's leaving behind an economic and social disaster too!

personally, I belive that kids should get paid for achievement and given the ability to invest what they earn in educational opportunities.

I say this as an ex student teacher who learned that it's impossible to carry the weight of 200 students on your shoulders; in the end, the kids have to do their work. unfortunately teachers, who are simply talking books in many cases, are assumed to be beneficial.

my happyiest day was high school graduation since I was finally free!

and, just yesterday, I was talking to my boss from the netherlands and "mein kampf" was banned in his country and, as far as I remember, my teachers only talked about the more US friendly "the diary of anne frank."

at the end of the day-- and as a taxpayer, I certainly question why I should support the local schools which sensor and rewrite history.

Might also try upgrading teacher salaries.

that's silly; the Iraq war has supposedly cost us 3 trillion dollars, or more, and it's leaving behind an economic and social disaster too!

Yes, yes, a Republican administration has spent the wealth of a generation murdering people instead of bettering the lives of the citizens it was elected to serve. Standard operating procedure. Why do these people get votes?

personally, I believe that kids should get paid for achievement and given the ability to invest what they earn in educational opportunities.

On average, college graduates have lifetime earnings almost a million dollars more than high school graduates. So this is, in fact, what already happens.

unfortunately teachers, who are simply talking books in many cases, are assumed to be beneficial.

Good teachers are absolutely life-changing, as anyone who has been lucky enough to have one can tell you. It's sad that there was never a high school environment where someone could be that good teacher for you.

just yesterday, I was talking to my boss from the netherlands and "mein kampf" was banned in his country and, as far as I remember, my teachers only talked about the more US friendly "the diary of anne frank."

at the end of the day-- and as a taxpayer, I certainly question why I should support the local schools which sensor and rewrite history.

I think you're saying that your teachers were insufficiently antisemitic. In which case, please contact your nearest Rabbi for treatment. This will also give you the opportunity to meet a good teacher.

"Good teachers are absolutely life-changing". You are spot on about that. And I usually found, from HS onwards, that there was usually one teacher good enough to give me something to be interested in.

OTOH, this year my son was doing very poorly in geometry, until I counseled him (from my own experience) to ignore (don't even listen) to the teacher. Just read the textbook. His grade jumped from D to A.

was the teacher good or did you simply resonate? i.e. many teachers will tell that they were a marginal teacher in the inner city but wildly successful out in the suburbs without effort.

my own view towards college professors at this point is: "let them build the roads and let me fill in the pot holes" since it takes two to tango.

...is necesary to be even a decent teacher. A really good teacher can change the way at least some of their students look at the world.

The environment, social attitudes towards learning etc. is a whole different issue.

I only remember the ' outstanding' teachers - either for their gift to make the complex simple or for their humor and passion.

I'm afraid there are teachers who have a gift for making the complex more complex. A particular teacher I had acted as if any question from any student was a stupid question. I also had to resort to my textbook in this course (behavioral statistics). At the final exam, I had an anxiety attack when I saw the questions. However, my survival instinct kicked in, and I proceeded to answer the ones I knew. I finished about 70% of the exam. I passed with 68% which to this day I still believe was a miracle. Saved by the textbook, for sure!

exactly! the core family really needs to step up and model the enjoyment of reading challenging material (more than harry potter) to their kids. I'm nearly 37 years old and work hard to be a better reader and writer every day because the better I read and write, the happier I am.

and, it's not only turning off the TV and stepping away from video games, it's learning how to play music, doing art, reading, using mathematics, dancing,etc... and yes, even athletics and diet since I lost 80lbs and feel that life is better than ever!

... and famously so! To infer that the parochial school system is reaching for equality through segregation is somewhat ironic.

It's a fact that many researchers including their sponsors seek to find conclusions that support their preconceived ideas. This is especially true of gender research.