ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603290111
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
AT A private school in Charlotte, N.C., boys and girls are separated for seventh- and eighth-grade algebra classes. Teachers say the results have been positive.
The girls, unable to wait passively for boys to jump in with the answers (or guesses), have been more assertive. The boys, no longer compelled to show off for the girls, reflect more before blurting out answers. Test scores are up.
Despite this experience, public schools in North Carolina haven't duplicated the experiment. As publicly supported institutions, they dare not risk violating someone's rights by separating students according to gender. We're not saying they should.
But the experiment is worth thinking about. Surely, there's no point in ignoring differences in the ways kids develop, or in refusing to take such differences into account if doing so can improve learning - within limits set by common sense, the law and sound educational philosophy.
With the expansion of horizons and role models for girls, the problem being addressed here may be easing. And yet, once both sexes reach that age when each wants to impress the opposite, girls who excel academically still sometimes stand aside and let the boys take the initiative. Teachers have observed, too, that boys and girls often respond better to different learning situations - boys tend to compete more, girls to cooperate more.
In light of evidence that adolescent males sometimes leap ahead of similarly intelligent girls in math, one might argue that coed classes are unfair - better suited, that is, to the learning style of boys.
If separate math classes - just during the couple of years when, developmentally, girls and boys are extremely conscious of their newly budding sexuality - could help imbue girls with more confidence and boys with more thoughtfulness, why reject the idea out of hand?
Reasonable efforts to accommodate the reality of gender differences are allowed in other endeavors, notably physical education. Just because kids are in math class doesn't mean biology can be ignored.
One danger, of course, is that the two classes in ways subtle or unsubtle might be compared, and one group might come to be regarded as less able by virtue of its sex. It might even be given dumbed-down curriculum.
An even broader problem with the segregation strategy, however, is that it assumes a continuation of old teaching styles.
If the styles attend more to aggressive boys, girls might be better off in separate math classes for a year or two. But why preserve the styles? Educational methods that emphasize individual competition, pleasing the teacher, and rapidly regurgitating the right answer are, after all, increasingly incompatible with the needs of the world outside the schoolroom.
Our world doesn't need more loners adept at giving or taking orders. It needs people who can work cooperatively in teams, who can think critically and solve problems creatively, and who can discern linkages around them other than their own place in the world.
If teaching occurred more often, say, in cooperative settings, girls might find themselves on a stronger footing. It's a thought, anyway.
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