Study: Divided classes promote stereotypes
A new report from the ACLU confirms what feminists have long suspected: Single-sex classrooms don’t help kids learn
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/02/study_divided_classes_promote_stereotypes/
Based on what I have read, it is not so clear cut as this article makes out. When separated students are treated equally (the opposite of what is described in the article) my impression is that the classes can move through the curriculum more smoothly. Girls and boys, as groups, tend to process different information at different rates (meaning what is clear to girls might need extensive discussion for boys, and vice versa) and when you have combined classes (and all other conditions being equal, a very important caveat) the pace tends to bog down since ‘excess’ focus is on elements that might be clear to one gender or the other.
As this article indicates, though, it is very difficult to _not_ treat the genders differently and I have read extensive reports about how there is bias in the way teachers (women or men) treat boys and girls even when their (the teacher’s) attitudes indicate they are bias free. Girls, as a class, tend to be quieter and better behaved then boys, and as such, tend to get a bit less attention than the boys because they are more noisy and rambunctious. Attention does not necessarily equate to better education, but it does dilute the effort the teacher has to expend on the the rest of the students. One reason why I think that private schools tend to do better than average when compared to public schools: they can toss the trouble makers out. If classes with trouble makers (not necessarily that they are mean or impossible to control, but whose behavior absorbs a lot of the teacher’s energy, thus subtracting from the overall educational experience) were segregated from classes with better behaved students (which, according to what I have read (and experience!), means most of the girls and about half the boys would be in one class and half the boys and a handful of girls in the other) the teacher could focus on different educational techniques better adapted to the target audience.
Of course, this sort of wishful thinking is just daydreaming; tain’t gonna happen here in the US where the factory education method is the only one that gets attention.
