Single-Sex+Education

=Single-Sex Education=

While single-sex private schools and colleges are becoming increasingly rare, the authors of // Boys and Girls Learn Differently  // suggest bringing back single-sex education at the classroom level might actually be a good thing. Here are some reasons why:

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1. // As the book title suggests, Boys and Girls Learn Differently //
Brain research suggests that boys and girls tend to be wired to have different strengths and weaknesses. For instance, because verbal skills tend to develop earlier in girls, they are better verbal communicators than boys are, while boys tend to use nonverbal communication, which can include acting out in the classroom. (26) Meanwhile, the right side of the brain tends to develop more easily in males and females, meaning that boys tend to be stronger in spatial activities like "measuring, mechanical design, and geography and map reading." (27) While there are, of course, exceptions, we are wired to be stronger at some things compared to the opposite sex, and weaker in others.



These differences play themselves out in classroom instruction as well. The authors point out that "when mathematics is taught on a blackboard, boys often do better at it than girls. When it is taught using manipulatives and objects--that is, taking off the blackboard, out of the abstract world of signs and signifiers, and put into the concrete world of, say, physical number chains--the female brain often finds it easier." (45) Biological differences also play themselves out in other subjects as well.

 Realization of this recently led Cony High School in Augusta, Maine to adopt a new single-sex option for math last year. In their pilot programs, they found that both boys and girls were performing as much as 20 percent better on standardized tests than they were before. Currently, this approach is only being implemented in their "math strategies" class, a remedial program for students struggling with math as they make their way into high school.

// 2. The opposite sex can be distracting //
 Early adolescence is a period of tremendous social and emotional upheaval for boys and girls in or entering middle school. The authors of // Boys and Girls Learn Differently  // say that "Middle school boys often find themselves in strange moods, angry, aggressive, clumsy, and awkward, unable to verbalize feelings, focused on girls but scared of them, competing against boys for the attentions of girls, and relatively unable to verbally discern the complexities of their own developing nature.” (208) Girls, they add, “are faced with mood swings, vacillation of self-confidence, hypervigilant to how they fit into the world of other girls, and competitive with other girls for boys’ attentions. They are often chagrined at how immature boys are in comparison to themselves; they mask their real selves in order to find romance.” (208) While boys and girls find the opposite sex unattractive and cootie-laden in the elementary years, by middle school, they are clearly on each others' radars, and they will waste few opportunities to impress. On the same token, they will do anything to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of the other sex, leading young adolescents to shy away from taking risks even has they charge head on into others.



Understanding the ways in which boys and girls begin to interact with each other in middle school should have a profound impact on how we approach teaching them, and the authors suggest that they offer an additional rationale for why single-sex education should be pursued. These new social pressures on young adolescents can be a distraction from what you are trying to teach. Say the authors of // Boys and Girls Learn Differently //, “The adolescent community, especially in a classroom of thirty or thirty-five boys and girls age twelve to fourteen, focuses more of its verbal and nonverbal communication than we realize on the hidden psychosocial agendas of adolescent mating desires and psychosocial hierarchies, to the neglect of actual learning.” (209) Instituting single-sex education can help relieve some of this psychosocial stress, as boys has less incentive to let their attention wander to the crush across the room, and vice-versa. Furthermore, because girls are more likely to understand other girls, and boys are more likely to understand other boys, working more closely with those who will understand you can also build self-confidence, especially among girls, who tend to be dominated in group discussions by boys (210)