Throughout the US more money is given to public school districts to open more single sex schools, because some studies show that male and females learn better in an enviroment surronded by people of the same sex, sometimes it includes the teacher!
There are a number of rules for these school though, enrollment must be voluntary,and "substaintially equal" school must be avaliable for both males and females. Since 1995 the number of these schools has gone from 3 to 241! Though this is a tiny fraction of the 93,000 public schools in the country, they are being created more and more frequently.
I personally think that students do learn better with people of their own sex, and sometimes taught by the same-sex teacher, but by being enrolled in these schools you lose irreplacable things. Some of these things would be the social interaction with people of the other sex, this was often a critisicm of English schools in the early 1900s. Another thing these students would lack would be, being able to analyze things from both male and female points of views, without the debates I feel like students would be losing more than they would be gaining. Also certain things like suffrage may not be stressed as much with male teachers as the female teachers. This is all up for debate, so I encourage you to do just that!
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I think that we have gender-typed children enough, now making them have solely single-sex interactions in schools is ludicrous. Look, in the real world, your dealing with men and women (unless you live in a convent and even then the priest comes around once in a while). School also teaches social skills, I don't think that the education would be a broad or as valuable in just a same sex school.
if this movement continues be prepared to return to a world pre-1957 as far as the improvement in gender roles has gone
I think same sex classrooms are a horrible idea. We already have same-sex private schools. This kind of messed up my boyfriend. He went to a private all guys school. He stayed with this girl he had no feelings for and didn't like because being at that private school he wasn't sure if he would meet other girls. It just caused a lot of problems, and i can't blame the school completely. But it does sometimes leave people with a lack of confidence while around the other sex.
The more diversity existing, the more you will learn. There are some good points to single sex schools. But it will only end up enforcing the idea that girls are for english, guys are for math, because you know that they would emphasis differently in different schools. I'm a big math/science girl, I wouldn't appreciate having my face forced into english...
Does any government at the federal, state, or local level believe this will in any way improve our education system? If so, they're governments full of morons.
Gender isn't that important. In fact, it's one of the less important factors that go into one's education. A teacher's gender isn't important. The things important about a teacher include years of experience, quality of education, specialization vs. generalization, communication skills, speech and rhetoric, and common sense. No matter what environment we provide children and young adults, the fact of the matter is that if one does not have a good teacher, one will more likely have a difficult time learning a single bit of information.
Furthermore, these children's parents and young adults must work for their educations. Even if one has a quite dismal teacher, there are more subjects one can teach himself than subjects he cannot. It may take a few books, extra study, and maybe some external help, but students can indeed teach and help themselves. Part of their responsibility is to focus and discipline themselves.
And, of course, there must be a proper environment in which students can actually learn. There shouldn't be too many distractions, and a class environment should be generally open and safe.
What many people seem to like doing is categorizing broadly. People do that with "left brain vs. right brain" and all kinds of other things. It's not the issue at hand here.
"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
"Freedom of press is limited to those who own one."
H. L. Mencken
Please read my blog on this topic: http://www.progressiveu.org/131159-gender-specific-classes-in-public-schools-reboloke
Thanks