Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls. Such is the mantra of a growing group of educators and policy makers who argue that boys and girls are so different from one another that they should be taught in separate classrooms—single sex classrooms. A few public schools in Albuquerque have already implemented such a scheme. It may be that, on an individual basis, some students perform better in gender-segregated environments. However, before we move to institutionalize this radical approach to public education, we should consider the serious questions that have been raised about the constitutionality, legitimacy, and effectiveness of gender-segregated teaching methods.
The movement towards gender-divided classrooms owes much to the work of Leonard Sax, a psychologist, and Michael Gurian, a corporate consultant and novelist. Although they characterize their theories as hard science, their rationale for separating boys and girls in the classroom often strays into the bizarre. For example, according to Sax:
- Teachers should not look boys directly in the eye or smile at them because boys’ brains perceive this as a sign of weakness.
- Boys do well under stress and girls do poorly. Therefore, girls shouldn’t be given time limits on tests.
- Girls’ hearing is better than boys, so they should be spoken to in soft tones, while boys should be spoken to in loud, short sentences.
Gurian offers equally strange rationale, claiming:
- Boys perform better than girls in math because their bodies receive daily surges of testosterone, while girls are equally good at math during only a few days in their menstrual cycle.
- Boys are abstract thinkers and are therefore naturally good at subjects such as philosophy and engineering, while girls’ brains are inherently suited to more concrete thought processes.
These pseudo-scientific claims were dismissed in Newsweek by David Sadker, an education professor at American University:
“While it’s true that brain scans show differences between boys and girls, no one is exactly sure what those differences mean. Differences between boys and girls are dwarfed by brain differences within each gender. If you want to make schools a better place, you have to strive to see kids as individuals.”
Sax and Gurian’s claims have no basis in rigorous science and generalize so broadly that they cause educators to overlook students’ individual strengths and weaknesses. Many girls are highly competitive and thrive under pressure, and many boys need a less stressful, more cooperative learning environment to excel. Making gender the primary educational distinction between students is an oversimplification of the learning process that not only robs students of their individuality, but also conditions female students according to disempowering stereotypes.
Proponents of gender-segregated classrooms also claim that separating boys and girls reduces distractions in the classroom. This may be so, but real life is not segregated by gender. Students need to work, play and learn in a diverse environment that reflects the society that they will one day enter. Furthermore, the argument that students’ emerging attractions to one another are so distracting that boys and girls must be separated ignores the fact that gay and lesbian students would not benefit from this arrangement. Must gay students study with the girls? Will lesbian students be assigned to boys-only classes? Should bisexual students be taught by private tutors? There is too much diversity in the world to lump every student into one of two categories.
One of the most fundamental problems with this type of arrangement is that it could easily lead to inequalities between boys’ and girls’ educational experience, creating two separate curricula for two separate classes of students. If history is any indication, we should react with skepticism to the constitutionality of any “separate but equal” arrangement in our education system. In fact, New Mexico’s constitution contains an equal rights amendment that explicitly protects against this kind of discrimination.
Laying aside the constitutional concerns, it is far from certain that gender-segregated classrooms give students any significant advantage. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education extensively reviewed the effectiveness of gender segregation in classrooms and found that, overall, students in gender-segregated classrooms are no more likely to succeed than those in which boys and girls are taught together.
Instead of dedicating more resources, time and energy on experimenting with gender-segregated classrooms, Albuquerque Public Schools should focus on what we know works: smaller class sizes, increased parental involvement, better funding and improved teacher training. These are proven methods for increasing student performance, and require only the political will to implement.
Peter Simonson
Executive Director
ACLU of New Mexico
This article originally appeared as an Op-Ed in the Albuquerque Journal on April 15, 2010.
