Single-sex education improves outcomes for boys and girls, concluding a working paper by economist C. Kirabo Jackson, a Northwestern professor.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Single Sex Classes
If the study referenced here is valid, would we in the United States think that single sex classes would be worth the philosophical cost?
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2 comments:
I think it depends strongly on whether the proposal is for single-sex classes in a mixed school, or single-sex schools. I think the second is definitely more worrisome.
If I could go back and send our boy to an all boys school, I think I would. Boys aren't doing very well in school or life these these days, and I think more emphasis on helping them is needed.
They are far less likely to succeed now than girls are: fewer graduate, fewer are in honors and AP classes, fewer are involved in school activities outside of sports, fewer go to college (even with likely positive discrimination in their favor happening in admissions), fewer college men graduate, fewer go to graduate school, etc. On the flip side, more are arrested, more have mental illnesses, more are diagnosed autistic or AD/ADHD, are 4 to 5 times more likely to commit suicide, etc. And when they begin their working lives, women are outpacing them in salaries and achievements (until they have children.) It's great that women are doing well, but the goal is equality, not a flipping from one dominate sex to the other.
We've spent decades telling our girls that they can be anything they want to be, but the whole time the boys have been sitting in the room too, and no one is saying the same thing to them. The assumption is that boys already know that. But if all they hear growing up is how girls can be scientists! girls can be leaders! girls can succeed! and no one says that to them, they get the point: girls can do all that, you can't.
I'm not sure single sex classrooms within a co-ed school are enough to help.
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