for at-risk kids. They were taken out of their home schools and brought there for intensives to catch up on credits, deal with emotional issues and learn organization and study habits. They found they had the best success when they seperated these kids by gender. There were less fights, les distractions and grades went up for boys and girls.

The school also tried to whenever possible use male staff for the boys school and female staff for the girls school because it gave the kids positive same sex role models, something that the vast majority of them lacked in their homes.

I don't know about kids in general, but it worked with these inner-city, predominantly minority underachieving kids.

A major problem, though, is that these gender specific differences are relatively small magnitude, with a lot of overlap.  I would worry that the "boy-style" girls and "girl-style" boys would be disproportionately disadvantaged.  Nobody wants to be "wrong" for their gender - that's a disaster for a child!

I liked the comparison with height.  If you put all kids taller than median height in one class and all shorter in the other, you'd partially sort boys from girls.  But there's enough overlap that you'd have plenty of boys in the girl class, and vice versa.  And the ratio would change over time.

I can see having a few sex segregated classrooms as long as there were a choice of a regular classroom as well.  But I do find it curious that there seems to be little to no benefit of gender separation for white kids.  This alone would make me nervous about what we'd actually be doing to minority kids.

I personally do better in a group of males.  But I sure wish I'd had the opportunity to study in 74 degree classrooms!

had a piece on this in 2006 and says that most of the recent NYT article,

is a big ad for the bullshit ideas of Leonard Sax.

Apparently, his book on how girls and boys think differently is used by conservatives to reify and justify gender normativity and lame stereotypes.

I like the idea of same sex classrooms (for girls really, not so sure how boys benefit from such an environment) but think there are way too many variables and intangibles to manage in order to make them truly innovative and effective. And, there is always the danger of hidden agendas.

In 2006, the Feministing blogger noted,

Sure, some studies have shown that both girls and boys can benefit from being in a sex-segregated learning environment. But the right-wingers who are pushing for more single-sex schools don't have these benefits in mind. This is more of a tool to reinforce traditional gender roles than it is to improve learning.

Finally, I especially liked the last line of the 2006 feministing piece,

I don't know about you, but "separate but substantially equal" doesn't sound good enough to me.

Yeah, that minor detail.

working with had a lot of problems, home-life, family environement, addictions, teen pregnancy (there was an after school parenting class almost daily), poverty, malnourishment. I am not sure that single sex schooling works for all kids, but it should certainly be an option.

I also think about the great tradition of "girls schools" -- historically female colleges like Smith.

Its controversy as an idea is only when it is exclusive e.g boys and girls CANNOT attend the same classes. I personally would have killed for an all-girl class in 7th grade and killed to get out of one in 11th. In 5th grade I was in private school and went to class with 9 other girls and only 3 boys. Best grades I ever got in my entire education (pre-college)... I never stopped to consider if it might have been that I was in the "majority" in that class.

I guess what I am saying is that it should be an option because it is appropriate for some children. There should be an abundance of choice in education.

everyone learns differently and I imagine that single-sex education works for some people and not for others.  It concerns me when generalizations on learning are based on gender.  It seems to not account for the variety we have w/in each gender.  What if a girl leans more toward the "masculine" way of learning or behavior or a boy leans more toward "feminine" way?  Would having single-sex education reinforce or favor certain people then?

On a side note, I went to a women's college.  I can't say whether or not this was good academically because I didn't also try co-ed education and therefore can't compare.  But I've always felt that I missed out on the socialization with men part, which itself is very important once you get out into the real world and have to deal w/ them, esp in the tech industry.  I think that learning how to get along with the opposite sex is also part of education.

It would be nice if there were optinos for people who felt their children would learn better in a particular environment, be it same-sex or co-ed. I always attended co-ed schools and never wanted anything else-- I loved the fact my junior high had twice as many boys as girls-- it made the atmosphere so much fun, since the junior high boys were very goofy and kept things light.

Conversely, I think DH would have died of misery if he'd gone to an all-boys school-- he's one of those boys who got along better with girls, and contuinues to do so.

I think we really need to throw this challenge back to our education system in general. I'm a teacher and I've heard the expression, "School is for girls."  I worked at a progressive charter school and we were very thoughtful about how we approached curriculum.  In every unit, we tried to included different projects that appeal to kids with different learning styles.  It does seem like there is a connection between gender and learning style, but the truth is that, like with the height argument, you can't assume that boys learn one way and girls learn another.  It's individual.  So by structuring curriculum to approach different learning styles, hopefully you're hitting everyone's needs somewhere.  Some kids learn best through modelling and sculpting, some through drawing, some through music, some through reading and writing, etc.

I also worry that separating by sex just perpetuates stereotypical strengths, instead of helping kids in their weak areas.  For example, I once did a geography project where kids built a model house for a country they were studying, and then wrote about the house.  If kids were in gender-specific classes, one might say that the boys should build and the girls should write.  But in reality, if genders do have different strengths, the boys need practice writing and the girls need practice building.

From the article, it seemed like there were two rationales for same-sex education.  The first was the Sax guy who said they learn differently and should be taught differently. This I don't support.  The second talked more about the girls' school in Harlem, and implied that same-sex education is safer and more comfortable, especially for girls. This made more sense to me, and I wouldn't object to taking some of the boy/girl dynamic out of middle and high school classrooms so kids can be more focused on academics.

My oldest is only 3, but from what I know about him so far I strongly doubt I would ever consider a same-sex environment.  I'm guessing he learns more like a girl, and right now prefers wearing pink and playing with girls.  I feel like same-sex education can be really tough on kids who don't fall into typical gender roles.  Not only do they need to deal with that socially, which is tough enough, but then they're not being taught in a way that's appropriate for them.

Sorry for the rambling, but my basic point is that if we work on designing curriculum that's appropriate for all learning styles, this wouldn't be an issue.  Many people seem stuck in a very traditional idea of what school is, and we need to move past that.

What a fabulous discussion - it's been so great to read all of your view points. I found myself nodding the whole time.

Education is such a tricky thing - I totally agree there isn't a one size fits all solution to our system's problems.  That's what made this article interesting to me - it offered an alternative I hadn't ever considered (in large part b/c I naturally had the same reaction as the feministing article). But reading the article made me think that it seems we need to offer educational experiences that mix things up more than we do right now.  

Thats why to my untrained mind the concept of - at least at a young age - having a few single sex subjects like math or science or English might be good. It would allow kids to establish a love of learning by providing different environments - with a combo of same sex and mixed classes everyone would surely find something that clicked.  And establishing that love of learning early seems so important to me.  I think we lose all to many of our kids before they ever get to middle and high school where we blame absentee parents and drugs and sex for their loss. But I wonder if a lot of those kids aren't lost when their little b/c they never find a love for learning and never find the subject that they excel at to build an identity on.  So then when these other obstacles and distractions present themselves they are all the more vulnerable to them.

But enough of my ramblings - thank you for the amazing discussion!  A follow up question - How many of you are satisfied with the educational alternatives in your area?

is ok sometimes, especially for very young children at the height of development. say, in preschool, when neurons are developing in direct relationship to what they have a chance to experience (great book-- something like 'brain development in the first five years'-- really opened my eyes to this).

But then again, there is a case to be made that as adults we don't have the luxury of living in a bubble-- men and women must be able to get along professionally, we have to mingle with different races, cultures, abilities. Shouldn't part of school be learning how to do this? Imagine the shock of an affluent white guy only ever schooled with affluent white guys having to function with his first intersex interraccial office, and then extend that out to other subgroups.

This all just seems like a dangerous road to take. Not to mention regressive.