There are good ideas when it comes to teaching kids. There are bright ideas when it comes to how to discipline kids, too.
There are, however, NO good, decent, or bright ideas when it comes to segregation of kids in the public schools. None, what so ever. Segregation was a bad idea when we did it by race and it is a bad idea when we do it today by sex.
In my son’s middle school, Hankins Middle School of Theodore, AL, (a suburb of Mobile, AL), the principle has taken it upon herself - without any form of notice to the parents drom either the school or District offices - to segregate the students by their sex - males in one set of classrooms and the females in another set of classrooms. Moreover, Ms. Cheryl Wittner has the full support of the Mobile County School District.
Or maybe she only thinks she has… The District would not discuss it with The Bull save to say that in their opinion “children have no ‘rights’ and that it is entirely a school-by-school decision to be made by the principle of the school“.
OK, since when do Americans, middle school age or not, “have no rights“? 
I know that there are plenty of folks that will say that students will likely study better without the distraction of members of the opposite sex sitting within arms reach. Some of those same people will say that discipline in the schools will improve if the sexes are separated. To those people let me answer with the following:
Looking back through the last hundred years I can find no evidence of American students failing to learn just because a member of the opposite sex was sitting nearby. In fact, let us not forget that that those non-sexually segregated students gave us all the modern marvels we use in our daily lives. They even sent men to the moon. Not a bad record. As for discipline, there is also no evidence that behavior failed during all of those decades. No, discipline failed when corporal punishment and strict parenting fell out of favor. It had nothing to do with the sexes being mingled.
All of this, of course, is merely The Bull letting off steam and no one will care. So let’s look more closely at this trend of sexual segregation.
In the more modern times, indeed, until the year 2000, such sexual segregation was outlawed in America. However, laws have been relaxed to allow the “experimentation” with this sad, out-dated mode of education. Since that date several states have looked into the implementation of sex segregation including Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and now Alabama.
(Do you see a geographical trend?)
The Education Department issued final rules in 2006 detailing how it would enforce the Title IX landmark anti-discrimination law. Under the change, local school leaders have discretion to create same-sex classes for subjects such as math, a grade level or even an entire school. The idea being “separate, but equal, education“, (We’ve heard that before here in America, haven’t we?), for all of the ghost-reasons listed above - and others that you won’t believe!
The problem is that the education received may be separate, but is rarely equal.
Enter, the ACLU, stage left. (…and it is killing The Bull to write this. 
)
Note: Folks, I physically had to leave the computer at this point for several hours. This entire subject, the ACLU, & the fact of just how liberal I think I’m sounding here made me physically ill. It is now after midnight and I will try again to made my case against this “new” idea in education. The writing here does not, and will not, live up to my usual standards simply because of how upset I am over the entire topic. No words can describe the disappointment I am feeling that my beloved Nation that struggled so long over segregation would so willingly start down that path again.
So, the Bush Administration opened the door to this horror from the past. (Not one of Dubya’s better moments, for sure!) But why? Why would anyone even consider such an act? Where is this educational horse-shyte coming from? Here’s a clue…
Charlotte Allen, (author of an op-ed in the Washington (com)Post on Sunday, March 2, 2008) wrote:
The theory that women are the dumber sex…is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy.
Then we have Michael Gurian, (the author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently!, & founder of the Gurian Institute). He wrote in the Teacher’s Guide that accompanies his book:
Girls have difficulty learning some math, perhaps because they are not called on as much but also for biological reasons. Adolescent males receive surges of the hormone testosterone five to seven times a day; this can increase spatial skills, such as higher math. Increased estrogen during the menstrual cycle increases female performance in all skills, including spatials, so an adolescent girl may perform well on any test, including math, a few days per month.
What the hell? THIS is what we shall use as our guidelines toward training our young? We have just been set back several centuries in our gender roles. But wait! It gets worse!
A guy named Leonard Sax, a family physician and the founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, states that biologically, girls’ brains perform worse under stress, while boys’ brains perform better, and thus girls should never be given time limits on tasks, while boys’ classes should be structured around competition.
As it was asked on an ACLU website: “Who do you think will perform better in a demanding work environment after receiving such a gender-typed education?”
Let me ask this as well: What about the social skills that are being lost? How can children learn to behave around the opposite sex if they are not allowed to interact in any way without threat of punishment, such as what is happening at Hankins Middle School? How will this play out in the future lives of these children? It is too big of a gamble in my book.
The ideas proposed by the supporters of this segregation of children are fortunately NOT without their detractors. Many studies show that it is much better for male and female children to be together during the educational process. Prof. Analia Schlosser, from Tel Aviv University, wrote that boys and girls may learn differently, but American parents should think twice before moving their children to sex-segregated schools. Let me quote from the AFTAU webpage on the topic:
“Being with more girls is good for everybody,” says Prof. Analia Schlosser, an economist from the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. “We find that both boys and girls do better when there are more girls in the class.” She investigated girls and boys in mixed classrooms in the elementary, middle, and high-school grades of the Israeli school system.
In an unpublished paper, Prof. Schlosser concluded that classes with more than 55 percent of girls resulted in better exam results and less violent outbursts overall. “It appears that this effect is due to the positive influence the girls are adding to the classroom environment,” says Prof. Schlosser. She carried out the study while on a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton University, and will study the effects of gender in higher education lecture halls next.
This is one of few studies of its kind to use scientific data to address the question of gender effects in school.
Pulling out my best Master Yoda voice I have to say “Interesting, that last line was”.
It appears, from the research The Bull has done so far that most school districts starting sex-segregated programs today are doing so on the based entirely on these theories. The rest are using the simply stupid idea of improved behavior. There are a thankfully small number, (mainly in Canada), that are sexually segregating their students in order to conform to Islamic (Sharia) law. I pray that is never the case here. However, considering the attitudes in the Mobile District offices, who can be sure?
I wish assure my readers that it sickens me to have to agree with so liberal a bunch as the ACLU, NOW, and others. However, this idea of gender segregation is one that should be, must be, stopped. It is as vile as the idea of racial segregation and should be treated the same. To that end The Bull has contacted the ACLU of Alabama and have requested their help in this matter. I am now awaiting their response. There has been success in striking down this foolishness in other states.
I pray that this is squashed in Alabama soon.
Please, leave your comments and let me know just how far off-base you think I am. There will be follow-ups to this post. No doubt at all. Now I need to hurl… 
Bull, out. 
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Tags: ACLY · AFTAU · Alabama · Analia Schlosser · Bush Administration · Canada · Charlotte Allen · Cheryl Wittner · civil rights · Education Department · Florida · gender · Georgia · Hankins Middle School · Kentucky · Leonard Sax · Louisiana · Michael Gurian · Mississippi · Mobile County · NEA · NOW · school · Segregation · sex · Sharia Law · Tel Aviv University · Tennessee31 Comments
31 responses so far ↓
I will send this post to MY list of bloggers and lets see if we can’t shake up some support…
Do what you have to do Bull, this is some ridiculous BS in my not so humble opinion…
How the heck can it be a school by school decision and at the discretion of the principal? What happen to the power of the actual school districts? This is too fishy and I cannot see where the authority of the principal in this case, triumphs every other sane voice (students, parents, the super).
Bull do what you must do, even if it involves the ACLU, I would fight this until I received the results that I want.
Gender segregated classrooms need to be an option for parents who want that for their children, not in our public schools though. Sheesh, this has upset me.
As a teacher I would have been pissed off to go from a regular mixed classroom to a gender mixed class. I have no preference for boys over girls or vice versa. What is the REAL agenda for this school?
I attended a Catholic grade school, which you would think would have segregated classrooms, but such was not the case.
We had NO behaviour problems because as soon as someone would start to act up, male or female, the nuns would crack you across the knuckles with a ruler.
High school, where there was no discipline, was a different story, the fact that the classes were co-ed was not a factor.
And as far as men being smarter, most of the guys I went to school with, myself included, were as dumb as a bag of wet hammers compared to the females.
Second, it is disturbing to hear any public school administration suggest that parents have no rights in regard to their kids’ education. I would suggest getting a coalition of parents together to hold their children out for a few days and notifying this principal just how much control she really has over your kids. Worst case scenario, you should be able to send your kids to another public school in the area.
This is a rotten situation, and I don’t envy you. Best of luck getting it resolved!
This is total BS. Sounds like a principal trying an experiment for her own purpose. Segregation of the sexes is so wrong. Children need to develop socialization skills as early as possible. Keep them separate and you could develop the next sexual pervert who knows nothing of the other gender!! Students need to learn and grow together!!!!!!!
Bull, you are right on target!!!
2cents is right, get a group of parents to pull their kids from school for a few days - funding is based on attendance - and make sure you let the principal know that you are willing to move those kids to another school permanently if the crazy don’t quit.
Regarding the male and female brain and the capacity and nature in which we learn, communicate etc. Those topic are completely accurate. However; It has also been suggested , and in my opinion proven, over and over and over that classrooms in which sit students of each gender and of a varied cultural and ethnic background excel well beyond classrooms of any segregated sort.
We should all jump all over this BS and gain support to help the Bull put an end to what it happening in his backyard.
Please visit http://letsgetthisright.com This is exactly the type of thing our conservative movement will help with.
Slainte’
Mad
Wanna bet? You weren’t sitting next to the best looking guy in the school in English class!
Ok, personal experience with the hottie aside, and having to take summer school that year….. The ONLY classes that should be separate, IMHO, are health and P.E. But do they even have those classes anymore?
I find it insulting that some yahoo said, because I’m female, I do worse in math. Wonder why I got the HIGHEST score in math that school had ever seen? Hmmm…..
Yeah, males and females ARE different. Viva la differance! But to implement such practices because of a couple of ’studies’ and evidently extremely BIASED ones at that…..setting education back even farther than it is already. I wonder if it’s more of mind molding and not actual teaching that is pushing this trend?
There is no discipline in schools anymore. Have you seen how some of those kids dress??? Criminy! Thugs and hookers. And they’re just “expressing” themselves. Pfft! What they’re expressing is a complete lack of respect….for themselves, for their parents, and for the people around them.
They cuss, they attack teachers, and other kids, they destroy property, and the list goes on. Maybe if they brought back the discipline…..REAL discipline, they might see an improvement in test scores. Putting girls in one room, boys in another…..that’s not going to resolve the problem.
Oh, and they might want to start by getting rid of tenure too. Crappy teachers being paid for being crappy just chaps my hide!
Stand up and fight ‘em Bull. Someone has to, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t alone. Find the others, and stand firm together! If that doesn’t help, you can always start a home school group.
9,11, 12 comments already!And, I thank you all for your support in this fight. Please, send this around and continue to support the Rights of our children to have a normal life. Not to mention their Rights to assemble and associate with whom they please. Then, of course, there is that pesky (…in the eyes of the Gov’t…), Right to Free Speech…
Segregation of any kind is wrong.
DISCIPLINE AND REPERCUSSIONS is what the kids need…NOT more studies, theories, trial situations, or analyzing!
Teach them strongly. Hug them when they do good. Encourage them to be the best they can be. PUNISH them when they’re bad…in front of everybody! It worked fine with us
Bias can go two ways. Past research has shown that even though female teachers tended to make excuses for boys, they usually pushed them to excel evidencing a maternal bias toward the boys. At the same time, these same (majority) of female teachers were also allowing excuses for girls while dumbing down their level of expectations for the girls. This often occurs in math and the sciences.
No one is denying the differences in the sexes — “viva la deference.” But separating the sexes in regard to fundamental education in middle school and secondary schools is at best questionable. If educators would focus on the fundamental building blocks of education, verses the adding extraneous items that detract from the fundamental education, our student nationally would not have over a 50% remediation rate in English and math. Education is failing the students, parents and society.
I also agree with the Mad Irishman who said, “Please visit http://letsgetthisright.com This is exactly the type of thing our conservative movement will help with.” Ask yourself, which group, conservatives or liberals, are destroying or “wasting” the valuable education time that is allotted for the education of America’s children.
Have more to say but the grandson wants to type for a while
Follow some of my posts at the ARRA News Service http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/ or via Twitter at http:www.twitter.com/arra
Keep up the fight my friend, go down swinging and keep us informed.
It is very true that men and women think & learn differently. It is also true that different races think & learn differently. Both of those statements are in general. Within the same race and sex you can have many different types of learning styles as well.
That being said, it is very wrong to separate people based on any of these reasons. At the very least it will rob the students of the social skills needed to excel at just about anything in “the real world”
Just as disturbing is the students have no rights statement. Of course there are some restrictions on privacy rights and such (locker searches et al) depending on the school - but to say that students have “no rights” is absurd. What’s next - Torture?
It would seem that this type of sex segregation would make Muslims happy for sure - the rest of the people, not so much.
It seems that a lot of folk are for sure interested in the story. I’ve been informed that the Fox News Network is looking at the story.
The ACLU has been officially informed. There are a few cases being litigated now elsewhere in the Country. So far, to the best of my knowledge, of the cases completed this insane notion has been shot down at every turn. Let’s hope that the ACLU, (gag) picks up this ball and runs with it.
Keep the fight alive! Send the link, or the entire story, to everyone you know. Let’s FIGHT!
Bull, out!
I think my daughter’s school district was trying to do the exact same thing. At the end of last school year they sent a questionnaire out asking if we would be interested in our child being segregated by gender. I of course put no and haven’t heard anything else about it.
Don’t let this little tyrant speak for everyone in the district. Start calling your state senators and congress and don’t give up. If they don’t do anything keep calling and bugging them. Also give complaints to the superintendent and write your local papers. Get the community involved in anyway that you can.
Hang in there and God bless.
The problem is that the school in question is a PUBLIC school, funded by tax payer dollars and supposedly run by elected officials. A principal should never be allowed to make such drastic changes on his/her own.
The mere segregation by sex is no big deal in and of itself, in my opinion, just not in its context in this particular instance.
All that hogwash about female inferiority is just that–hogwash. Look at our military, where females are doing the same jobs as males.
Outstripping the garbage psychobabble about boys and math, etc., the difference is not gender, but verbal skills vs. mathematical skills. Some people have both, I am male but I know more than one female that can run rings around me in math–differential calculus, integral calculus, differential equations, what have you.
Single-gender classes deprive children of developing social skills in dealing with the opposite sex and make that sex into an unknown area.
Please, PLEASE keep me updated on this situation and may I ask permission to cross these articles?
I would like to point out one thing. The revisions to Title IX don’t even mention anything about an “equal” education for boys and girls, but rather a “comparable” one. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but “comparable” is NOT “equal”! (see Sadker & Zittleman’s “Gender Bias Lives, for Both Sexes,” 2005) And history has proven that even “separate but equal” is not EQUAL, so why should the idea of “separate but comparable” be any more so?
And don’t even get me started about the utter garbage that Gurian and Sax argue! Sax even goes as far to claim that girls will do better in school if they are allowed to bring their “blankets to cuddle with.” Wow, talk about perpetuating gender stereotypes!
I am a woman. I am a mathematics major. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve told someone that I’m majoring in mathematics and they respond with something so stereotypical, it makes me want to scream! It’s always something about how, being female, I’m “breaking the mold” or something similar. The only reason there even EXISTS a “mold” to be broken is because of people like Allen, Sax and Gurian. Society dictates that women suck at math and science, so they [women] avoid these career paths. As a member of a private, liberal arts, WOMEN’S college (Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA), I am well-educated aobut women’s rights and woomen’s lib. A hard-core feminist, I am not. But I do believe in fighting to break those ridiculous biases that women cannot go into math and science.
I’d really like to meet one of these people [Allen, Sax or Gurian] and give them a peak at a FEMALE mathematician who IS good at math. Better, perhaps, than some of my male counterparts at Emory or Georgia Tech. I understand all the material presented in my Linear Algebra and Multi-variable Calculus classes just fine, thanks.
And that’s pretty much what my paper is about; that sex-segregation in the classroom will only perpetuate and reinforce gender stereotypes and will only limit, rather than expand, educational and career opportunities.
Well, I believe I’ve rambled on long enough.
Keep on fighting, Bull! =)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/education/11gender.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=education
It sounds like there are some benefits, but the children and their families in those specific cases are given the chance to opt out of the program.
I disagree with those who say any sort of segregation whatsoever is wrong. I do not believe that there are intrinsic differences in the aptitude for intelligence between males and females, but there are certainly different environments in which a certain percentage of each sex tends to thrive.