AgainstTheWind

Busy today, busy yesterday, on the road tomorrow.

Do you see the pendulum swinging...again? In education, the norm is to claim some great fix (the new math comes to mind) and then pound everyone into submission, only to abandon it when it doesn't work. It's called the reform cycle. Institute a reform, with a testing program in place, but abandon the reform just as it's time to test, so no one has to take the blame. On NPR this afternoon they had a segment about re instituting same sex classrooms in public schools, an idea as old as the nation. So do we really know whether sexual integration or segregation is better for learning? I certainly have some experience in both settings at the high school level, and I know what I prefer. But good solid data?

Let me do some googling...

Any number of studies show that single-sex education is beneficial for college-age women. But the work done so far to study the issue for students in kindergarten through 12th grade is, at best, spotty and inconclusive.

(this from some sort of a gender bender political group, with an agenda)

And there's this from a parent's magazine.

Segregation. It’s a word that shocks most of today’s mainstream, liberal parents. But segregating the sexes in schools may, in fact, be a great equalizer: Research points not only to higher grades for both sexes, but, ironically, to a breaking down of prescribed gender roles. At the root of the research are fundamental physiological differences between boys and girls, differences in inner-ear mechanics, brain structure and basic neurological wiring. These findings help explain what teachers have long observed — that boys and girls tend to learn at different rates and in different ways.

Etc. etc. and so on. Thus ends my quick google search.

So here are some of my impressions from the trenches...high school math in a public secondary girls school, low s.e.s. My observation first of all conformed with the statistical observation that the differences between individuals are much larger than the differences between groups...but the capable girls when exposed to decent teaching bloomed. They had little trouble learning math. Sadly one of the teachers in my department could often be spotted sleeping during class at his desk. One of my colleagues was a serious screecher. We were five in the department and my judgment was that there were three competent individuals and two that were drawing a pay check. My personal habit of intellectual snobbery was probably visible and distasteful from a mile away.

The consensus from the front office was that the better teachers were in the boys school, as boys are harder to handle. I. E. a good teacher is first and foremost a good disciplinarian. But I came to love my spot tucked away from central office politics and manipulation.

I liked my students. I became a reasonable teacher of the weakest ones, by demanding they give as much as they had and find what they could do, instead of falling back on some sense of hopelessness wrt math classes. I also usually taught the highest level classes that were offered, and enjoyed what bright lights there were. I loved the fact that in a girls school the sports teams were girls, the yearbook photographer and editor were girls, the class presidents and student council positions were girls. There was never a question of stepping back and letting the boys lead.

When the schools were reintegrated, I was thrown upstream to the co-ed school a tiny bit higher on the socio-economic scale. They scorned the schools down the road, so I had to earn my reputation again, and finally was tossed 'upstairs' to the local community college. It only took fifteen years for me to realize I was a damn good teacher and wasn't likely to get any better, and I wanted out. But that is a different story.

Boys and girls do learn differently. Boys often need the 2 x 4 to get their attention. They need the yellers and drill sergeant types. I can do it, but it's not my preferred style at all. Out machoing a room full of fifteen year old boys is my idea of a sort of hell. And if it's only half a room of fifteen year old boys, the girls are so much more mature at that age, that mostly they just sit back and let the boys act out, testing their feminine wiles and running their own sorts of games.

It's never boring.

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