Stagnant Axon Terminal wrote:Haktiva wrote:An interesting article on how male's learn in single sex and coed classes, as well as girls later on
We hear a lot about women being at a disadvantage in school, at least when it comes to STEM fields(because of choice for the most part), but there's also been talk about how guys are doing worse in school across the board. As discussed in the article above, most schools tend to prefer female or girlish behavior because on average it's more calm and not boisterous, willing to cooperate. Sadly, this isn't how most boys learn very well. Being stuck in a classroom for hours on end and not being allowed to be boys stifles them, to put it in simple terms.
The article also shows an experiment where in one school where the teachers all had the same credentials(and I'm assuming in the sex-segregated classrooms they were the same genders of their students) and were taught the same material, boys and girls performed better in same-sex classrooms than students in a coed classroom(though girls still outperformed boys in the coed classroom).
I would actually support any school that had such classes, whatever helps the student learn better. All boy's schools and all girl schools seem to work.
Here's my question - are boys not learning as well in coed classrooms because biologically they are different, or because people raise their sons and daughters differently?
There is no proof that male and female brains actually work differently, so we have to assume that it is based on social teachings. We teach that "boys should be boys," and that often includes not enforcing patience and stillness, where in girls we demand them to be complacent and quiet. But if you look at young children who haven't yet had these things forced on them, it's not difficult to see that boy and girl children behave the same way. I used to work at a preschool where children were taught to play and act in ways other than gender stereotypes. There wasn't much difference in the students ability to grasp different ideas or lessons, and they all acted similar. Until, of course, you got to the older classrooms. There we began to see differences. The girls were obedient, the boys were defiant. The girls didn't speak much, where as the boys would talk your ear off.
So, I think, that maybe instead of necessitating single-sex classrooms or schools, perhaps we need a more intensive gender-neutral approach. Both for boys and girls.
Would be nice if the feminist movement launched a campaign to push for that.
Of course, girls aren't being disadvantaged, so they won't.