Segregated classrooms by gender?

[redspicyflag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02sex3-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Teaching Boys and Girls Separately

On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Ala., Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared

I swear this is a short term fix, but the issue runs deeper

plus I'd hate not to be able to flirt in class

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

...I swear this is a short term fix, but the issue runs deeper

plus I'd hate not to be able to flirt in class

No, it'll actually work for some. Doing it will increase the gap between the amount of high scoring female students and high scoring male student. Separating them will raise the scoring levels of young, lower scoring males but the amount of high scoring females will grow at a faster rate. Keeping the classes integrated is allowing the boys to be able to compete with the girls academically.

 

[SmoothTalker]

Francisco, did you just say boys are dumber than girls? That seemed to be the gist of it, in which case I strongly disagree..

The problem is not one of intelligence, it's the culture that doing well in school is geeky, nerdy, and the antithesis of coolness.

 

[lordson]

it's the culture that doing well in school is geeky, nerdy, and the antithesis of coolness.

thats just a fvcking horrible attitude mate

that kind of thinking will get you nowhere in life

you can still spend your time wisely at home studying, and not mucking around in class and still be a nice person with a good personality and a good group of friends. sure, muck around abit during class, but you still need to get the work done

you wont ever meet a high salary, doctor, lawyer, accountant who didn't do well in school


i sure hope its not like that in the US and Canada, because that shltty attitude will hamper your countries. Its certainly not that case in Australia

 

[redspicyflag]

you wont ever meet a high salary, doctor, lawyer, accountant who didn't do well in school


i sure hope its not like that in the US and Canada, because that shltty attitude will hamper your countries. Its certainly not that case in Australia

unfortunately

yes

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Francisco, did you just say boys are dumber than girls? That seemed to be the gist of it, in which case I strongly disagree..

The problem is not one of intelligence, it's the culture that doing well in school is geeky, nerdy, and the antithesis of coolness.

You're a guy right? Girls learn more readily in the manner that educators teach, the article even sites studies performed by several institutions which substantiate this. Also, look at the test scores of each of the sexes graduating high school. Look at the amount of women in college as compared to men. The numbers show that males are not getting as much out of education as females. The book "Why Gender Matters" and "Boys Adrift" go into great detail about how males are lacking in the current educational system.

 

[SmoothTalker]

Lordson, oh I know that kind of attitude doesn't lead anywhere, I resisted it, thought at times it was hard. I really never understood why, but indeed North Americans do have that exact attitude, the smart people get no respect and the Athletes/ musicians etc gods. Of course that changes pretty quickly when you get out into the real world, but high school here is a very odd society that seems to value most of the wrong things.

That's why we have so many people that were 'losers' in high school coming to their high school reunions happy and driving a Lexus, and see the former cool kids and prom queen fat, broke, and having gone nowhere in life. Many of those people's lives literally peek in high school. Hence the saying, be nice to nerds, you'll end up working for one.

As for girls learning better, I don't agree. Any guys that I know who have applied themselves in class learn quite well in that manner. It's again the cultural things, it's okay for a girl to put in a lot more work at goof off less than for guys.

As for the college statistics, I call bs. I'm currently going to what's considered a very good university in Canada. First off, in the university as a whole, the percentage of females is MUCH lower than in schools that are considered bad. I mean significantly, as in at my school the ratio is 7 guys/3 girls and at most 'weak' schools it's more like 2 guys/8 girls.

Even within the school, there is very sharp segregation. A far greater concentration of girls is in the easy, fairly useless programs, like Women's studies, classical studies, sociology, fine art, drama, etc. Frankly I'm not just biased into thinking my program is better; even though my strengths are definitely not in arts, I've taken some arts courses as electives and typically get the top mark in the class despite doing what I consider little work. And people there had the tenacity to ask the professor to bell curve their marks.

Now my first program was Computer Engineering, and I am not exaggerating, out of 150 students there were 5!! girls. Maybe less extreme, but most other demanding, technical programs are similar.

So yes, in total more girls are getting an education, and they may be getting higher grades. But to say they are getting more out of education is to not really see what is going on. If anything, they are getting very little out of education - most of their Bachelor of Arts degrees are about as valuable as high school diploma's used to be.

 

[Dongfu]

Gotta go with Francisco on this. Girls simply mature faster physically and intellectually. Many boys don't really care about school, where as girls love to be recognized academically. Guys get smarter later in life.

 

[thehexman]

In high school we were 2/3 girls and 1/3 guys. More than half of the best ten were guys, and the worst ten were guys as well. It seems that a small group of guys got thte best grades, while at the same time guys were also the worst performing group of students.

Fast forward to college, most guys go to higher paying fields such as

Engineering
Natural sciences
Law
Medicine
Economics/Business

Girls:
Teacher (more than half)
Nursing school
social sciences
Art

So you see, school grades are not really what matters, but rather what field you go in. In engineering school (my field), about 50% of the class fail every test. In other fields, it's much less. But engineers are paid well.

 

[djtdot]

Now my first program was Computer Engineering, and I am not exaggerating, out of 150 students there were 5!! girls. Maybe less extreme, but most other demanding, technical programs are similar.
QUOTE]

Heh tell me about it! In my electrical engineering at UofT , there's literally 3-4 girls in a class of 100 or so.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Now my first program was Computer Engineering, and I am not exaggerating, out of 150 students there were 5!! girls. Maybe less extreme, but most other demanding, technical programs are similar.
QUOTE]

Heh tell me about it! In my electrical engineering at UofT , there's literally 3-4 girls in a class of 100 or so.

Psstt... Take a look in the business, finance and healthcare classes. That's where you'll find the majority of women. If you want to wind a bulk of women in the engineering sciences you will need to look in other countries.

 

[penkitten]

what the sam heck is this crap?
didn't we desegregate public schools where the girls could be in the same classes as the boys like 100 yrs ago?

 

[SmoothTalker]

Actually my new program is in the business/finance area. There's definitely more girls than in engineering, but they're still the minority. I really don't know why you don't believe me, I see it every day, and I've heard similar things from my friends in other schools. If I may ask, when's the last time you've actually gone to a college?

 

[wootapotky]

Men are smarter and dumber than women. I thought this was well known. I believe the stats are 2 men to 1 woman for an IQ over 135 and then something like 8 to 1 for an IQ over 160 or something. But the majority of dumbasses are men as well. The average IQ however, is something like 4 points higher for men.

And I also saw more men than women in my business classes, something like 1.5 to 1.