the coercion of segregation..

So I recently watched a segment on ABC World News (tiny and short), which was focused the implementation of single-sex education in the Greene County school district of South Carolina. The news segment which aired on February 18th was supplemented by this news article, which states:

“Next fall, public schools in Greene County may be the first to implement single-sex education. By separating students by gender, educators hope to improve low test scores, and cut down on teen pregnancy and disciplinary issues, which trouble most of the school system in that rural district.

‘Our high school still ranks 332 out of 369 schools in Georgia,’ said Shawn McCollough, superintendent of the Greene County schools. ‘So, it’s pretty alarming when you see you’re that close to the bottom.’

The board of education approved the measure in a unanimous vote last week. The sports and band programs will remain mixed, and boys and girls will continue to ride the same buses to school. Only the academic programs will be segregated.” (source)

The article goes on to acknowledge that the parents of Greene County students were not able to vote for or against this measure, and that many parents feel helpless and rightfully upset over the “forced” segregation of their children. The way in which the Greene County board of education has dealt with a single-sex segregation enforced school district has outraged even Leonard Sax, from the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, and one of the lead advocates for single-sex education.

single-sex education in the news.

Nightly News began a 4-part series called “The Truth About Boys and Girls” on January 15th. The name alone makes me cringe, just because of the finality of the title. Anyways, they interviewed Leonard Sax on single-sex ed, so for anyone who is interested, you can watch it here.

 The other segments are also available for view msnbc.com, with the last segment airing tomorrow on Nightly News.

single sex public education? separate but equal?

I recently went home for the holidays and spent some time in Boston with friends. I’ve realized that meeting new and different people has taken on a new significance, one that stems from traditional and seemingly meaningless small talk that begins all new conversations. Introductions that include polite and obligatory inquiries such as, “so what do you do?” have led to some amazingly candid and unexpected conversations about sexuality and feminism. I’ve come to feel lucky that what I “do” is viewed as so unconventional, so surprising to some. Somehow as soon as I say “gender studies”, the conversation shifts from mundane small talk to animated intrigue. Over the past two weeks I have had the most spontaneous and involved discussions, on topics ranging from the basics of feminism to fluid sexuality to queer culture. One of these conversations I had with a friend of a friend in Boston, and he asked me what my views were on single-sex public education.

I admit that I am familiar with the push towards single-sex education, but I was not well-versed enough to respond with any sort of informed or formulated argument. Instead I responded instinctively and thoughtfully, telling this friend that I thought single-sex education would be a detriment to both female and male schoolchildren, for many reasons, one of them being the ultimate “separate but unequal” argument – that separate schools for genders would somehow result in the inequality of education. Secondly I responded that the answers to inequalities in education lies not in separation or segregation, but in a concerted effort to reform a unified educational system so that it is able to address the complex issues of a coeducational curriculum. He seemed relieved with my answer, echoing my sentiments, and while I was satisfied with the answer I was able to give, the conversation stuck with me. I came home and did some research in order to find out if somehow I had overlooked or oversimplified something.