The cover story of the New York Times magazine this weeks features a story about the resurgence of interest single-sex education as education reform, particularly in public schools. I do not want to suggest that this is a simple matter, that single sex education should be immediately dismissed, but, much of this new reform embraces a certain rhetoric that disturbs me. This rhetoric embraces ’scientific’ research on brain function that suggests that education should be based on the ‘inherent’ brain differences between boys and girls. What worries me about this approach is that it subtly embraces the gender binary, and validates old fashioned and culturally dependent views of girls and boys, and eventually, men and women (not that there is anything in between!) arguing that boys preform better in this particular room temperature, boys do not hear as well as girls, girls react better to warm colors, they are more expressive in their artistic choices, blah blah blah. So, what do you guys think about all of this? Here is a little vignette outlining one schools approach:
On that November day in Foley, Ala., William Bender pulled a stool up to a lectern and began reading to his fourth-grade boys from Gary Paulsen’s young-adult novel “Hatchet.” Bender’s voice is deep and calm, a balm to many of his students who lack father figures or else have parents who, Bender says, “don’t want to be parents. They want to be their kids’ friends.” Bender paused to ask one of his boys, who said he was feeling sick, “Are you going to make it, brother?” Then he kept reading. “ ‘The pain in his forehead seemed to be abating. . . .’ What’s abating, gentlemen?” The protagonist of “Hatchet” survives a plane crash and finds himself alone by an insect-infested lake. Bender encouraged his boys to empathize. They discussed how annoying it is, when you’re out hunting, to be swarmed by yellow flies.Meanwhile, in Michelle Gay’s fourth-grade class, the girls sang a vigorous rendition of “Always Sisters” and then did a tidy science experiment: pouring red water, blue oil and clear syrup into a plastic cup to test which has the greatest density, then confirming their results with the firsthand knowledge that when you’re doing the dishes after your mother makes fried chicken, the oil always settles on top of the water in the sink.
posted by eagle fire
yikes – i hate the idea that you are a sex first and a student second.
not to mention the conspicuous absence of society and culture in creating these ’scientific’ programs or how such educational models might propagate the very things they intend to rectify.
and just ick:
“Sax refers to a few other studies that he says show that girls and boys draw differently…This apparent difference, which Sax argues is hard-wired, causes teachers to praise girls’ artwork and make boys feel that they’re drawing incorrectly. Under Sax’s leadership, teachers learn to say things like, “Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like it’s going faster.” “Now Damien feels encouraged,” Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. “To say: ‘Why don’t you use more colors? Why don’t you put someone in the vehicle?’ is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, ‘Well, this is nice, but why don’t you have one of them kick the other one — give us some action.’ ”
and oh come on:
“Sax also goes out of his way to note that Bender had this conversation with the boy “shoulder to shoulder,” not “face to face.” “Just remember this rule of thumb,” Sax tells readers: “A good place to talk with your son is in your car, with you driving and your son in the passenger seat.”
(sorry for the 3rd post, but i just keep reading this and getting annoyed)
but how can this guy claim he is not a gender essentialist and that he recognizes that gender is socially constructed?! silliness!