The federal government is changing the rules about permitting single-sex education:
Two years in the making, the new rules, announced Tuesday by the Education Department, will allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary. School districts that go that route must also make coeducational schools and classes of “substantially equal” quality available for members of the excluded sex....
While the move was sought by some conservatives and urban educators, and had backing from both sides of the political aisle, a number of civil rights and women’s rights groups condemned the change.
“It really is a serious green light from the Department of Education to re-instituting official discrimination in schools around the country,” said Marcia Greenberger, a co-president of the National Women’s Law Center....
To open schools exclusively for boys or girls, a district has until now had to show a “compelling reason,” for example, that it was acting to remedy past discrimination....
Although the research is mixed, some studies suggest low-income children in urban schools learn better when separated from the opposite sex. Concerns about boys’ performance in secondary education has also driven some of the interest same-sex education.
Even if you don't think single-sex education is good, don't you still want to allow parents to choose if for their kids, at least for a while as an experiment to produce evidence about whether it's good? Or do you think the new rules violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act?
“Segregation is totally unacceptable in the context of race,” [said Nancy Zirkin, vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella organization representing about 200 civil rights groups.] “Why in the world in the context of gender would it be acceptable?”
The American Civil Liberties Union signaled it might consider going to court. “We are certainly in many states looking at schools that are segregating students by sex and considering whether any of them are ripe for a challenge,” said Emily Martin, deputy director of the Women’s Rights Project at the A.C.L.U..
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David: It looks to me as though the ACLU is not being all that aggressive here.
Parents absolutely should be able to choose to send their children to single-sex public schools or to single-sex classrooms in public schools, provided that there are enough of them in a district or area to support that choice.
Racial differences are, essentially, imaginary. Gender differences are not. If enough parents want education tailored for boys and tailored for girls, they should be able to choose it.
Don't let Bob Corker know about this new rule. He'll spin it into a rule to force black boys and white girls to school together and blame Fancy Ford for it.
I think that the two sexes are different, on average, in significant ways, and that those differences are most significant at the high school level, has to be kept in mind here. Boys are not unsocialized girls. Rather, their drives are very different, as are their ways of relating to their peers.
Many kids do just fine in mixed sex schools. But not all of them. I think, at least with girls, that it partly depends on how they relate to the opposite sex. Some girls play helpless around boys, and others just try harder. I would think that the more boy crazy a girl is, the more same sex education would benefit her - if she can handle it.
I think that I would have done better in a male only high school. A good part of my problem there was my feeling that the girls were able to sweet talk esp. the female teachers into better grades, and that many of the female teachers, even back then, were heavily biased against us males. It seemed to matter more how well you got along with the teachers than how well you knew the subject matter.
In other words, it appeared that the class was graded such that the girls, by their very nature, had a significant advantage. And, because of that, I resented those classes to such an extent that I ultimately engaged in a lot of self-defeating behavior that resulted in a GPA far below what my SATs would have predicted.
Looking at my entire family of five boys, I believe that one of my brothers would not have done as well at a same sex high school (he had a 4.0 and was very popular), two or three would probably have done the same, regardless, and I, and maybe one other, would have benefitted from it.
Where are these girls who are into tea parties? I never met any. I hate the way the opposite of aggression is painted as passivity and pinky-finger lifting. Boys are thugs, girls are ninnies. Boys get dirty, girls get frilly. Ugh! What stereotypical thinking still! We confuse aggression and activity. If not shamed out of it, little girls run around like crazy and get dirty (as do little girl monkeys, puppies, kittens, etc.), they just don't wrestle as much. And they show more interest in infants. (I have a feeling I've said all this before; it's one of my pet peeves.)
That said, there's evidence that some high school and college kids, at least, of both sexes, do better academically without the distraction of the opposite sex around. Many girls are either intimidated, or coy about their intelligence, in the presence of boys; they won't speak up the way they do among themselves. And many boys act up and show off in front of girls, although that could be positive as well as negative. With hormones running higher than they ever will again, sex -- particularly when it's no longer required to be sublimated -- can really take your mind off learning.
P.S. I speak from personal experience.
don't you still want to allow parents to choose
Sure, I do.... but if there's one thing that's resisted in the realm of public education, it's choice! There are a lot of "civil rights" groups that routinely fight to keep the sorry status quo in our public schools--even if it means trapping kids in a horrible school. Their biggest fear is any sort of experimentation.
I Thought for sure some one else would bring it up before I had a chance. Yet , no one did and I get to be the first.
Just this term…..
“The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether public schools can consider skin color in student assignments, reopening the contentious issue of affirmative action in a major case that will turn on the votes of President Bush's new justices.
The announcement puts a contentious social issue on the national landscape in an election year, and could mark a new chapter for a court that famously banned racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education.
At its heart, the court will consider whether school leaders can promote racial diversity without violating the Constitution's guarantee against discrimination.”
It always struck me as absurd the contortions one must perform to both support racial preferences (the heart of the 16th amendment proscriptions & Brown v Board) and Maintain Gender “neutrality” as an Iron principle (something tacked on to the 64 civil rights act & only worth Intermediate scrutiny- requiring an ERA that never passed)
These so called “Civil Rights” groups need to either proffer a single standard when it comes to race, or drop their manic (read –feminist) standards when it comes to gender.
I'm strongly in favor of freedom of choice.
For example, I'd like the choice to not have to pay for the education of these peoples' kids.
Eric said...
"Gender receives "intermediate" scrutiny (it's not THAT simple, but for beginning this discussion...). The law is unconstitutional unless it is 'substantially related' to an 'important' government interest."
I thought that gender where it relates to educational institutions was now subject to "skeptical scrutiny", requiring a showing of an "exceedingly persuasive justification," United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)? I don't see how this is distinguishable from that case? Enrollment in VMI was "voluntary", that wasn't (or at least, so said the Supreme Court) the point.
Of course, if the government is perhaps setting the framework for the court to reconsider U.S. v. Virginia, then I wholeheartedly agree. However, while two of Ginsburg's majority are no longer on the Court, and Justice Thomas would presumably not be required to recuse himself this time, that still leaves a presumptive 5-4 majority for Ginsburg. But she might have to work harder this time to retain Kennedy, on whom the decision to overrule U.S. v. Virginia would now turn, and Kennedy might be willing to turn the court's scrutiny down a little.
Seven machos said it but it's worth repeating. There are already same-sex schools and everyone seems to accept them. I don't know of any attempts by the ACLU or any other group to get rid of them.
My daughter went to one (Smith College) and there's another just up the road that our next president may come from (Wellesley College).
Personally, I wouldn't mind my tax dollars going to public education if I had any faith in the system. They waste such an ungodly amount of money on 'administration' and can't seem to even teach our children the basics of American History that it really makes me resentful of all the money I'm spending (unwillingly) on it.
I'm a libertarian, too, but not a heartless one.
Or a thoughtful one, apparently. I didn't say I wasn't interested in funding public education -- I said I'd like the choice not to.
I'm quite willing to pay for other people's education, provided it (a) is my choice and (b) I get to decide how, when, and how much I contribute.
Your support for mandatory, government-controlled funding of public education through coercive taxation doesn't make you a libertarian who cares. It makes you a non-libertarian on the issue of education.
It is absolutely a proven fact that black people "learn better" in all-black schools.
Why, just look at Grambling State University - where blacks graduate at a stunningly higher rate than do black graduates at mixed-race schools like Louisiana State University.
So, if this is true ... why not allow black parents to choose to send their children to an all-black high school, or junior high school, or elementary school.
They would get a better education that way - and it would be voluntary.
What's wrong with that? Everybody wins, and nobody is forced to go to an all-black school. Black parents, if they wished their children to get a worse education, could still be allowed to enroll their children in mixed-race schools, instead of all-black schools.
And then if that is a good thing, then why not give white parents the same choices? Why not give white parents the choice to send their children to an all-white school?
Have I made my point yet?
Slim999,
You effectively can segregate your kids by moving out into the hills or to the coast or the subsuburbs or wherever there aren't many black kids. I'd be surprised if that's not exactly what some people do.
Derve,
Yes, yes yes ... because girls employ "girl-learning" and boys employ "boy-learning."
I think that's just about what Larry Summers said at Harvard ... that men and women are different in the way that they learn things.
Didn't work out too well for him.
On the other hand, it's been proven time and again in many societies that girls learn better when they have their faces and bodies covered with cloth, so that the boys aren't distracted by their youthful good looks.
Why don't we experiment with Burqas ... totally voluntary mind you! Nobody would be forced to send their girls to an all-Burqa school.
Parents, if they wished their daughters to go to non-Burqa schools and get a worse education, would still have that right.
A billion Muslims can't be wrong.
Can they?
I dislike the notion of "girl learning" and "boy learning", mostly because (less the physical stuff) I tend to learn and test like a boy and being in a "girl learning" school is a horrible thought. I also dislike the idea because of an offhand conversation I once had with another lady while our kids were at gymnastics class. Some boys who'd never met before were clustered around playing Pokemon on a Game Boy. The woman looked at them and sniffed and said that *that* was why boys had such an unfair advantage in business, they didn't actually *communicate* or have to relate in any real way to each other, they just jump right into this superficial discussion, and that girls didn't communicate like that. It must have escaped her notice (she tended to be myopic) that one of the boys was mine until I replied (a bit chilly, I'm sure) "Well, maybe girls should learn how."
Because different people have different natural strengths does not mean that they shouldn't learn to work with their weaknesses. They *particularly* shouldn't be limited to what someone else feels is their "natural" way of learning or "natural" way of communicating. Plus there is enough over-lap between genders that "girl learning" would be hell for quite a few girls and "boy learning" would be oppressive and horrible for quite a number of boys.
Giving parents the option of all boy or all girl education, however, seems like a no-brainer. Allowing parents who can not afford that choice to have the option of chosing an all girl or all boy classroom for their child seems a small thing. More choices is better.
Slim made a comment that I think really gets to the heart of his (and other's) opposition to single-sex schools. In his hypothetical, he DOESN'T offer a choice between burqaed and non-burqaed schools (if he did, I don't think too many people would object, just nobody would choose the burqas and it'd be moot). He offers a choice between a burqaed school and a non-burqaed but crappy academics school. That's obviously non-choice.
Slim, I think what you're objecting to is not so much single-sex schools per se. You simply don't believe that "seperate but equal" is logistically possible. Is that a fair characterization?
But isn't it true that we seperate students all the time by relevant divisions? Geography, age, interest, past performance are all divisions that split students from one another and result in not-necessarily-equal educations.
Macho,
I think it goes without saying that people who read this blog are educated enough to know about Brown v. Board of Education; they are aware that, while Grambling State University cannot EXCLUDE students on the basis of their race, that it is overwhelmingly a black-only college, having been established as one in 1901.
The question isn't whether Grambling is "all-black," but if that is the question, then yes, for all intents and purposes related to this discussion, Grambling can be thought of as an "all-black" college.
Incidently, I know a little bit about Grambling from my days as a journalist, cutting my teeth in Lincoln Parish. So, I'm pretty sure I'm playing not just a good game, but an informed one as well.
Segregation (in all its forms) WORKS, if your goal is to just ensure that kids "learn better." If all that means is they score better on tests.
It is poor public policy and does little to educate kids on what real life will offer them - and we should all be against it.
My prediction is that soon, our Muslim population will be demanding their own schools, forcing their girl students behind veils and making the exact same argument that others are making when they talk about excluding boys from girls schools: they will "learn better" that way.
We should be careful what we wish for in the name of "learning better," or we'll get it.
Macho,
If there's no such thing as an all-Muslim school, how do you explain the existence of the Toledo, Ohio Islamic Academy?
From its website:
"Toledo Islamic Academy offers school children of all ages an Islamic environment to grow and learn. Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade high schoolers attend class together in a supportive and unadulterated environment."
The "unadulteraded environment" they are talking about means it's a "non-kaffir" school. No infidels like you need apply.
So, you know, maybe you should learn about Google? You appear to be clueless about what's occurring in your own country.
"The Establishment Clause unequivocably prevents an all-Muslim public school"
If there's no such thing as an all-Muslim school, how do you explain the existence of the Toledo, Ohio Islamic Academy?
That would be the private school in Ohio, founded in 1994?
Hint: pay special attention to the boldfaced words above.
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