Separate and Unequal - The Sequel!

[I Will Deny You]

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 9, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration, reversing three decades of federal policy, yesterday announced its intention to encourage single-sex education in the nation's public schools.

A proposal by the U.S. Department of Education would change the way the federal government enforces the 30-year-old Title IX statute, the landmark law that outlaws discrimination based on gender. Instead of discouraging all-girls and all-boys public schools as it does now, the government will encourage and help establish them, officials said.

Education Department officials said the move is intended to expand public school choices. They offered hope that new regulations they will soon propose will help school districts provide all-boys and all-girls classes and schools without fear of running afoul of federal law.

"It is one more option we think ought to be made available to parents," said Brian W. Jones, general counsel for the department.

The proposal marks an unprecedented change in the federal government's view of gender discrimination law. Advocates, supported by a growing body of research, say encouraging single-sex schools offers the promise of benefiting both boys and girls, some of whom do better in such settings. But detractors said the proposal, endorses a form of segregation.

The department's move was sparked by a little-noticed provision in the far-reaching education reform bill passed late last year by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in January. The measure clarified federal law to throw government support behind single-sex schools and encouraged them by offering school districts a $3 million pot of federal grant money for which they can compete.

"Many boys do better in a single-sex atmosphere without the extraneous distractions of girls," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), who authored the provision clarifying the law governing same-sex schools. "Similarly, many girls do better, especially in terms of speaking up and being assertive, without the extraneous distractions of boys."

Yesterday's proposal begins the process of implementing that law. After a 60-day comment period, the department will write new regulations codifying its intentions.

A notice published yesterday in the Federal Register explains that the administration wants to "provide more flexibility for educators to establish single-sex classes and schools at the elementary and secondary levels."

The law currently allows federal funds to be used for single-sex public schools and classrooms as long as a school district makes comparable educational opportunities available for students of both sexes -- which can be difficult and expensive. As a result, fewer than a dozen single-gender public schools exist in the United States.

Now, officials said, they intend to give school districts much more latitude in determining what constitutes a comparable educational opportunity.

The proposal ran into immediate opposition from some civil rights groups, whose leaders contended that it relies on questionable research about the effectiveness of single-sex schools. Moreover, they said, separate schools are inherently unequal.

"This proposal sends a bad message," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, which plans to oppose the change. "It certainly is not the best way to prepare boys or girls for the world we all live in."

Said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union: "When the government promotes separate schools based on gender, it raises serious concerns about educational equality."

The New York ACLU is enmeshed in a dispute with the Young Women's Leadership School, a small, all-girls school in East Harlem. Shortly after the school opened in 1996, the group filed a complaint with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, alleging that the school was in violation of Title IX. The complaint is still pending.

The school, with many low-income students, sent all 32 of its graduating seniors on to college last year. But critics of the school's girls-only admissions policy say its success has more to do with its small classes and intensive parental involvement than with the single-sex enrollment.

"We're not satisfied that in order for those students to get a good education, they have to be separated by gender," Lieberman said. "It exhibits all the criteria that educators identify as typical of successful schools: small class size, adequate resources, leadership, vision, educational mission."

Before the implementation of Title IX, single-sex schools were a regular feature of the nation's educational landscape, particularly in big cities. But many of those programs have been phased out by gender discrimination lawsuits and threats of legal action.

In addition to the few single-sex public schools in the nation, a small number of experimental programs exist across the country in which girls study math and science separately from boys. Other programs offer all-boy classes, often with male teachers who serve as role models and provide discipline.

In many cases, those programs have proven to be popular and successful. At Baltimore's Western High School, which has admitted only girls throughout its 159-year history, 94 percent of the students go on to college.

Landa McLaurin, the school's principal and a 1968 Western graduate, attributes the school's success not just to an enrollment policy that essentially bars students who were weak academically in middle school, but also to the confidence girls derive from going to school with one another.

"They're free to exercise a great deal of leadership traits," McLaurin said. "They are aggressive academically and athletically. They want to excel in every area, and they don't feel inhibited. They emerge as leaders. In coed environments, girls are less apt to do that."

*******************

This is disgusting. It's like saying that a classroom with too many colors in it will distract the students from their work, if you get my drift. Didn't Thurgood Marshall teach those goddamned right-wingers that separate=unequal less than half a decade ago? The idiots in the White House must have amnesia.

[Valkyrie]

Can't even read half-way through these articles, they make me fucking sick. Again - these low-life reactionaries would love to turn the clock back a half a century and keep us barefoot and pregnant.
HA HA HA HA HA. fuckers, all of them. That's cause they know that women make up the largest portion of the left in this country.

[Menshevik]

I think I missed something--my understanding of the article was that they were trying to increase single-sex education. What's wrong with that? I didn't read anything about discriminating against race. It's true that girls (especially in middle school) thrive in a single-sex enviornment; what's the problem guys?

[vox]

What's the problem? The problem is that women exist in a sexist culture, and to create a federally sanctioned system of separation is to deny that men and women are equal.

I've recently been sickened by the thread about models and anorexia, where supposed "leftists" judge women entirely on the basis of how they look. These are not my comrades.

This all plays into abstinence, by the way. Keep 'em apart so they can't fuck.

The Bush administration is attempting gender apartheid, and I won't stand for it. Perhaps you trust the Bush administration. I do not.

vox

[Valkyrie]

Right! Gender aparthied and sexist culturalism - The Death of Women as a being-for-itself.

the red flag in the article is the half-way point, (the last part I was able to read before puking all over the keyboard) where it reads: (paraphrase) "BOYS are distracted by the presence of girls in the classroom...." HA!!!! Girls are a distraction to the fAR more important birthright of male education. Boys are entitled to be educated without having the distraction of girls who of course are just rebelliously being educated secondary as a leisure activity until they fullfill their natural role of being housewife and mother, which accords with these fuckers right-wing christian fundamentalist shit.

It is so pathetic that the women's struggle in the democratized United States appears to have conquered all the obstacles that have kept them down since the beginning of time. But, that is really not so. The Equal Rights Amendement written specifically to be inclusive of women was introduced to Congress in 1923 and is yet to become part of the Constitution lacking only in just 3 votes!!!!! It has been introduced to Congress every year since! Unfuckingbelievable!!! Are women moving forward? Backward? Stagnating? Are we even being taken serious at all as human beings in our own right. I don't know.... I am sure if there was a job shortage, women would be expected to go home and give up the job to the man.

If you want to read how hard the women's struggle has been, how pervasive the attitude against giving woman any rights at all, read "The Feminine Mystique." It's 40 years old and still apropo. It just blows you away by the mindset of the time and it's arrogant audacity.


THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

As supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment between 1972 and 1982 lobbied, marched, rallied, petitioned, picketed, went on hunger strikes, and committed acts of civil disobedience, it is probable that many of them were not aware of their place in the long historical continuum of women’s struggle for constitutional equality in the United States. From the very beginning, the inequality of men and women under the Constitution has been an issue for advocacy.

In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, "In the new code of laws, remember the ladies and do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands."1 John Adams replied, "I cannot but laugh. Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems."2

The new Constitution’s promised rights were fully enjoyed only by certain white males. Women were treated according to social tradition and English common law and were denied most legal rights. In general they could not vote, own property, keep their own wages, or even have custody of their children.

19th-Century Women’s Rights Struggles

The first visible public demand for equality came in 1848, at the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who had met as abolitionists working against slavery, convened a two-day meeting of 300 women and men to call for justice for women in a society where they were systematically barred from the rights and privileges of citizens. A Declaration of Sentiments and eleven other resolutions were adopted with ease, but the proposal for woman suffrage was passed only after impassioned speeches by Stanton and former slave Frederick Douglass, who called the vote the right by which all others could be secured. However, the country was far from ready to take the issue of women’s rights seriously, and the call for justice was the object of much ridicule.

After the Civil War, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth fought in vain to have women included in new constitutional amendments giving rights to former slaves. The 14th Amendment defined citizens as "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" and guaranteed equal protection of the laws – but in referring to the electorate, it introduced the word "male" into the Constitution for the first time. The 15th Amendment declared that "the rights of citizens . . . to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" – but women of all races were still denied the ballot.

To Susan B. Anthony, the rejection of women’s claim to the vote was unacceptable. In 1872, she went to the polls in Rochester, NY, and cast a ballot in the presidential election, citing her citizenship under the 14th Amendment. She was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined $100, which she refused to pay. In 1875, the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett said that while women may be citizens, all citizens were not necessarily voters, and states were not required to allow women to vote.

Until the end of their long lives, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony campaigned for a constitutional amendment affirming that women had the right to vote, but they died in the first decade of the 20th century without ever casting a legal ballot.

Victory for Woman Suffrage

The new century saw a profound change in the lives of women, as they joined the workforce in increasing numbers, led the movement for progressive social reform, and finally generated enough mass power to win the vote. Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association were a mainstream lobbying force of millions at every level of government. Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party were a small, militant group that not only lobbied but conducted marches, political boycotts, picketing of the White House, and civil disobedience. As a result, they were attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and force-fed. But the country’s conscience was stirred, and support for woman suffrage grew.

The 19th Amendment affirming women’s right to vote steamrolled out of Congress in 1919, getting more than half the ratifications it needed in the first year. Then it ran into stiff opposition from states’-rights advocates, the liquor lobby, business interests against higher wages for women, and a number of women themselves, who believed claims that the amendment would threaten the family and require more of them than they felt their sex was capable of.

As the amendment approached the necessary ratification by three-quarters of the states, the threat of rescission surfaced. Finally the battle narrowed down to a six-week see-saw struggle in Tennessee. The fate of the 19th Amendment was decided by a single vote, that of 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn, who switched from "no" to "yes" in response to a letter from his mother saying, "Hurrah, and vote for suffrage!" The Secretary of State in Washington issued the 19th Amendment’s proclamation immediately, before breakfast on August 26, 1920, in order to head off any final obstructionism.3

Thus mainstream and militant suffragists together finally won the first, and still the only, specific written guarantee of women’s equal rights in the Constitution – the 19th Amendment, which declared, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." It had been 72 years from Seneca Falls to victory, and ironically, the most controversial resolution had been written into law first. But many laws and practices in the workplace and in society still perpetuated men’s status as privileged and women’s status as second-class citizens.

The Equal Rights Amendment

Freedom from legal sex discrimination, Alice Paul believed, required an Equal Rights Amendment that affirmed the equal application of the Constitution to all citizens. In 1923, in Seneca Falls for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention, she introduced the "Lucretia Mott Amendment," which read: "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." The amendment was introduced in every session of Congress until it passed in 1972.

Although the National Woman’s Party and professional women such as Amelia Earhart supported the amendment, reformers who had worked for protective labor laws that treated women differently from men were afraid that the ERA would wipe out their progress.

In the early 1940s, the Republican Party and then the Democratic Party added support of the Equal Rights Amendment to their platforms. Alice Paul rewrote the ERA in 1943 to what is now called the "Alice Paul Amendment," reflecting the 15th and the 19th Amendments: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." But the labor movement was still committed to protective workplace laws, and social conservatives considered equal rights for women a threat to the existing power structure.

In the 1960s, over a century after the fight to end slavery fostered the first wave of the women’s rights movement, the civil rights battles of the decade provided an impetus for the second wave. Women organized to demand their birthright as citizens and persons, and the Equal Rights Amendment rather than the right to vote became the central symbol of the struggle.

Finally, organized labor and an increasingly large number of mainstream groups joined the call for the ERA, and politicians reacted to the power of organized women’s voices in a way they had not done since the battle for the vote.

The Equal Rights Amendment passed the U.S. Senate and then the House of Representatives, and on March 22, 1972, the proposed 27th Amendment to the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification. But as it had done for every amendment since Prohibition (with the exception of the 19th Amendment), Congress placed a seven-year deadline on the ratification process. This time limit was placed not in the words of the ERA itself, but in the proposing clause.

Like the 19th Amendment before it, the ERA barreled out of Congress, getting 22 of the necessary 38 state ratifications in the first year. But the pace slowed as opposition began to organize – only eight ratifications in 1973, three in 1974, one in 1975, and none in 1976.

Arguments by ERA opponents such as Phyllis Schlafly, right-wing leader of the Eagle Forum/STOP ERA, played on the same fears that had generated female opposition to woman suffrage. Anti-ERA organizers claimed that the ERA would deny woman’s right to be supported by her husband, privacy rights would be overturned, women would be sent into combat, and abortion rights and homosexual marriages would be upheld. Opponents surfaced from other traditional sectors as well. States’-rights advocates said the ERA was a federal power grab, and business interests such as the insurance industry opposed a measure they believed would cost them money. Opposition to the ERA was also organized by fundamentalist religious groups.

Pro-ERA advocacy was led by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of nearly 80 other mainstream organizations. However, in 1977, Indiana became the 35th and so far the last state to ratify the ERA. That year also marked the death of Alice Paul, who, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony before her, never saw the Constitution amended to include the equality of rights she had worked for all her life.

Hopes for victory continued to dim as other states postponed consideration or defeated ratification bills. Illinois changed its rules to require a three-fifths majority to ratify an amendment, thereby ensuring that their repeated simple majority votes in favor of the ERA did not count. Other states proposed or passed rescission bills, despite legal precedent that states do not have the power to retract a ratification.

As the 1979 deadline approached, some pro-ERA groups, like the League of Women Voters, wanted to retain the eleventh-hour pressure as a political strategy. But many ERA advocates appealed to Congress for an indefinite extension of the time limit, and in July 1978, NOW coordinated a successful march of 100,000 supporters in Washington, DC. Bowing to public pressure, Congress granted an extension until June 30, 1982.

The political tide continued to turn more conservative. In 1980 the Republican Party removed ERA support from its platform, and Ronald Reagan was elected president. Although pro-ERA activities increased with massive lobbying, petitioning, countdown rallies, walkathons, fundraisers, and even the radical suffragist tactics of hunger strikes, White House picketing, and civil disobedience, ERA did not succeed in getting three more state ratifications before the deadline. The country was once more unwilling to guarantee women constitutional rights equal to those of men.

The Equal Rights Amendment was reintroduced in Congress on July 14, 1982 and has been before every session of Congress since that time. In the 107th Congress (2001 - 2002), it has been introduced as S.J.Res. 10 (chief sponsor: Sen. Edward Kennedy, MA) and H.J.Res. 40 (chief sponsor: Rep. Carolyn Maloney, NY). These bills impose no deadline on the ERA ratification process. Success in putting the ERA into the Constitution via this process would require passage by a two-thirds in each house of Congress and ratification by 38 states.

An alternative strategy for ERA ratification has arisen from the "Madison Amendment," concerning changes in Congressional pay, which was passed by Congress in 1789 and finally ratified in 1992 as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. The acceptance of an amendment after a 203-year ratification period has led some ERA supporters to propose that Congress has the power to maintain the legal viability of the ERA’s existing 35 state ratifications. The legal analysis for this strategy is outlined in "The Equal Rights Amendment: Why the ERA Remains Legally Viable and Properly Before the States," an article by Allison Held, Sheryl Herndon, and Danielle Stager in the Spring 1997 issue of William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law.

Under this rationale, it is likely that Congress could choose to legislatively adjust or repeal the existing time limit constraint on the ERA, determine whether or not state ratifications after the expiration of a time limit in a proposing clause are valid, and promulgate the ERA after the 38th state ratifies. H.Res. 98 (chief sponsor: Rep. Robert Andrews, NJ) in the 107th Congress promotes this strategy by stipulating that the House of Representatives shall take any necessary legislative action to verify the ERA’s ratification when an additional three states ratify.

The Congressional Research Service analyzed this legal argument in 19964 and concluded that acceptance of the Madison Amendment does have implications for the premise that ratification of the ERA by three more states could allow Congress to declare ratification accomplished. As of 2002, ratification bills testing this three-state strategy have been introduced in one or more legislative sessions in five states (Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Virginia), and supporters are seeking to move such bills in all 15 of the unratified states.5

In her remarks as she introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in Seneca Falls in 1923, Alice Paul sounded a call that has great poignancy and significance over 75 years later: "If we keep on this way they will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are. . . . If we had not concentrated on the Federal Amendment we should be working today for suffrage. . . . We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government."

NOTES

1 Letter, March 31, 1776 (in Alice S. Rossi, The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir, New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).

2 Letter, April 14, 1776 (ibid.)

3 Carol Lynn Yellin, "Countdown in Tennessee, 1920," American Heritage (December 1978).

4 David C. Huckabee, "Equal Rights Amendment: Ratification Issues," Memorandum, March 18, 1996 (Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).

5Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.




(


(Edited by Paris at 11:51 pm on May 10, 2002)

[Fires of History]

Truly nothing surprises me anymore from Shrub. He really has his head so far up his ass that he can't see how pathetic he looks when he attempts to turn back the clock at every turn.

Learning to live together and understand each other is not best accomplished by separating each other. It's hard for me to be detached right now, because ideas like this piss me off so much.

If boys are distracted by girls so much, why have them work together after school!?! Why not just have single-sex businesses!?! And single-sex restaurants!?! Single-sex everything!?! The Bush administration is so fucking full of shit!

The idea of single-sex education leads to an inherent difference. With time, the tops graduates of the male school will be looked on as better than the top graduates of the female school. Whereas if they were together, the males and females will be able to show their true rankings together. The female school will, inevitably, be looked down upon; and the male school will be seen as the 'better' school and students.

Why do people think that school needs to be a place with no distractions? Learning to live and succeed with distractions is essential!!! Do people honestly think that such distractions don't exist in real life!?!

Gonna go now, this is such a piss off!!!

[liderDeFARC]

What the hell is this bullshit?!!!! Disctraction my ass! It all has to do with the person..... Obviuosly these schools will have less students in each class or more money,idk. Thats lies. Great this just proves my long term theory that Bush has been around since the "constitution". He stilll thinks that way.

Thats it thats all i can say... im too sick right now to continue.

single-sex what kind.... : grumbles:

[vox]

Of course schools should be male only (or female only). Have we learned nothing fron Eve and Pandora?

The female seeks to destroy the male, to seduce the male into sexual submission. The female cannot be trusted. She's as bad as the Jew!!!!

vox

[queen of diamonds]

Quote: from vox on 9:33 pm on June 21, 2002
Of course schools should be male only (or female only). Have we learned nothing fron Eve and Pandora?

The female seeks to destroy the male, to seduce the male into sexual submission. The female cannot be trusted. She's as bad as the Jew!!!!

vox


that's a joke, right?

the problem is that school is abt so much mroe than what's written on the syllabus....there are tons of single-sex schools, and as a general, those who go to co-ed schools come out with much better people skills than those in single sex schools - at the very least there's no opportunity to teach both sexes that the other is evil or something....

[Fires of History]

Quote: from vox on 5:33 am on May 11, 2002
Of course schools should be male only (or female only). Have we learned nothing fron Eve and Pandora?

The female seeks to destroy the male, to seduce the male into sexual submission. The female cannot be trusted. She's as bad as the Jew!!!!

vox


Vox,

You're "spot on." Why is it that women are blamed for men's sexual impulses? Why is it that women are seen at the distraction, when it is men who create that situation? Why is it that to remedy the situation a complete separation is the only cure that can be found?

This idea is such crap. And I would even go so far as to say that "education" without exposure to the opposite sex is a limited education. Education is more than facts and numbers.

This topic is still pissing me off. Over and out for now.

FUCK BUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! May I never see the man in person...believe me.

[j]

Well, if anyone has read any of my posts before they might already know that I am a teacher--special education. My students are HIGHLY distractable and impulsive. I have to admit that I prefer a classroom of all boys because it is easier to manage. However, I would in no way support a law mandating this or even offering it as an option. My students are seperate from what we call "regular education" and that sucks for them. But it is my job to normalize their education (and hopefully get them back to regular ed) and that includes mixing the genders. Are my male students distracted by girls? Yes. Are my female students distracted by boys? Yes. Are my male students distracted by boys? Yes. Are my female students distracted by girls? Yes. Are my male students distracted by learning difficulties? Yes. Are my female students distracted by learning difficulties? Yes. Are my male students distracted by troubles at home? Yes....I think you get what I'm saying.

Students are distracted by A LOT of things!!!!!

Try this one BUSH-If distraction is what you want to get rid of then how about offering adequate health care for all students so they won't be distracted by health complications. How about letting no child starve so they are not distracted by hunger? How about letting families make enough money to survive so they won't be distracted by poverty? How about letting no family be homeless so no child will be distracted by not having a home?

President Bush, get your mother fucking priorities straight you fucking asshole!!!!!!!!

j

[Menshevik]

My friends, you are all mistaken. No one is being denyed anything by single-sex education. What, are they taking away the God-given right to learn in an enviornment with the opposite sex? Who is being harmed here. Yes, it is totally stupid to propose that girls are the sole reason some boys do badly in school, but that's not the philosophy behind single-sex education. I think it is simply a case of preference for one's child, there will never be a law separating boys and girls in public schools--they just don't have the budget. No rights are being taken away here, I don't see what you're contesting to.

[Valkyrie]

I don't knowwhat they're planning but my indignation comes from the statement -- Boys are being distracted by girls in the classroom. It's a subtle reference implying that a male's education is more important than a females education. It's an affront to women everywhere. Remember what happened at the Citadel in 1995 when Sharon Faulkner tried to enroll. Why the hell someone would want to get into a military Academy is beyond me.. but that's not the point. It was an all-male school and they gave her soooo much hell, she had to leave a few days later. I'm sick of it.

[Hattori Hanzo]

I'm seeing some very intellignt imput here. too bad we can't get that from Bush!

[Hattori Hanzo]

Yeah- Fires of History- this topic is starting to sicken me

[Fires of History]

Menshevik,

Can I ask you why a parent would take their child out of co-ed and place them in single-sex schools?

[I Will Deny You]

Quote: from Menshevik on 7:55 pm on May 11, 2002
My friends, you are all mistaken. No one is being denyed anything by single-sex education. What, are they taking away the God-given right to learn in an enviornment with the opposite sex? Who is being harmed here. Yes, it is totally stupid to propose that girls are the sole reason some boys do badly in school, but that's not the philosophy behind single-sex education. I think it is simply a case of preference for one's child, there will never be a law separating boys and girls in public schools--they just don't have the budget. No rights are being taken away here, I don't see what you're contesting to.
No G-d-given rights are being taken away, but there is also no "G-d-given" right for white people to learn in the same classroom as black people. Boys may be distracted in Algebra class by girls, just like girls may be distracted by boys. But the purpose of math class is more than to simply teach algebra. School is supposed to prepare kids for their lives as adults, and this requires being able to get along with people much more than it requires knowledge of the pythagorean theorem. (I don't even know if I spelled that right . . . perhaps you could say I'm living proof that people skills are more important than math.) queen of diamonds was right when she said that students from co-ed schools have better people skills. Let's face it, there is still a lot of sexism in schools today. And one of the best ways to fight ignorance is integration. Personally, I'd prefer that males learn to function around females before they're of marrying age and making a fist. (This is, of course, not to say that all men are wife-beaters. Some of the best feminists on this site are men. But domestic abuse is still a huge problem in America, and almost all domestic abuse, especially spousal abuse, is committed by men.)

Lindsay

[Menshevik]

At some point, students should have intellectual interaction with the opposite sex in school, especially in High-school. But in Middle School, studies have shown that boys and girls do remarkably better in school when they are not near each other. This doesn't mean that boys should have no contact whatsoever with girls, all it means is that during class they perform better if girls are not present and girls likewise regarding boys. It is not sexist to advocate single-sex education, it is merely someones preference. You gain no life experience by going to junior high-school anyway.

[sypher]

I am a strong believer that school is for much more than learning what is taught in the class. I believe that school is to help young people understand each other and show people how others act in the real world. If you suport isolating someone from a social class or gender than you suport creating ignorant people.

allow people to learn all they can about one another so that in the end we respect the different cultures of the world and DESTROY sexism!

[Menshevik]

Bullshit, do you really think that generations of young men and women have been completely ruined because they had a couple years at a single-sex school?

[Fires of History]

This is why I am for co-ed education:

Boys are conditioned by our society to believe that they are better than girls. This is sad, but true (right now anyway). However, when boys and girls are put together, they are able to see that both are able to tackle the same work, to more than adequately achieve the same goals put forth in the course material.

I have seen how the male community of a school reacts to a female valedictorian. My own high school had one. And the reaction was astonishing. I saw even the most "chauvinist" members of my class openly verbalize and recognize the abilities of their women counterparts. They were forced through experience to see that women can achieve the same level of academic honor and prestige. I even heard an extremely sexist classmate of mine say of the valedictorian, "Well, she always did have the right answers, so good job I guess." His name was Parker, and will forever have that memory to think of before he thinks women are less able or less intelligent.

I simply think exposure to the opposite sex is necessary if we are truly going to expect both sexes to regard each other as equals. Menshevik was mentioning an earlier single-sex education. Perhaps, I don't really know. But the thought of single-sex eduation the entire way through is a travesty at best.

Separation is never a good thing for mutual understanding.

And I Will Deny You has a good point. I personally believe that the main reason so much sexism continues to this day is because of isolation and misunderstanding between the sexes. What better way to continue that than single-sex education?

Yay for co-ed!!!

[Menshevik]

I can't deny that, Fires.