For years, women have been put on the back burner of society; forgotten about and left out. Historically, when it comes to careers, men are dominant in science and math disciplines. In the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, it states that “women are less likely to obtain a STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] degree” (Tyson et al., 2007, p. 267). Why this is and what can we do to fix it? Many researchers have proposed the Gender-Divided Class room as one option. Maybe by focuses on how each sex learns and emphasizing that in segregated classrooms would help improve the gap in careers.
Segregating class rooms—haven’t we been there before? If we divide the classrooms because women are not equally represented in the STEM careers, aren’t we basically telling these women it’s their fault? They are less than, and because so, we have to rearrange the classrooms so they can be brought up to speed? In Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, she discusses a testing situation, where, if you go into a class and tell one group of girls to try especially hard and ignore the notion that typically they will do poorly on the exam, and you go into another group of girls and give the exam, the girls who were not told of the stereotype do better (Dweck, 2006). By separating the girls and boys in the classroom, aren’t we doing the same thing Dweck did to the girls who were told girls typically scored below boys?
Research done by Sherrilyn M. Billger on single-sexed education systems reveals that those who graduated from a SSE school are less likely to meet their educational goals, and they did not receive BA/BS degrees any more so than coeducational graduates. “Taken together,” Billger says, “these results do not provide a ringing endorsement of single-sex education” (Billger, 2009). So why do it? Why separate the boys from the girls if there are not significantly significant benefits to their furthering their education?
It is thought that boys and girls think differently, and that by separating the two in the classroom, you can focus more on how one learns, therefore maximizing what they learn. While many people would like to believe so, school is not just about learning the curriculum; it’s about learning to socialize and mingle with people to ensure your social skills and communication skills develop. If you separate the classrooms, especially at a young age and for an extended amount of time, how will the two sexes learn to coexist?
By dividing classrooms, we can lead to further discrimination of women. If you separate the two sexes, it can be argued that the men are getting a pat on the back for doing so well, and that women are being given the chance to “catch up.” We must keep the two together to ensure equality and equal opportunity in learning and development.
But how would the students know that girls are "behind" and boys are "ahead"? To further your argument, which you may have hinted at, segregated classrooms for minorities didn't work out well. The separate but equal usually doesn't work. Locker rooms and bathrooms may be separate but equal, but getting classrooms to be that way would be a challenge. There's no third gender to give a third opinion. Just like there's no third party, for the most part, in politics.
ReplyDeleteI agree that gender-divided classrooms just don't seem to make any sense. We can deffinitely draw a connection between gender divided classrooms and racially segregated classrooms in the past. Furthermore, gender divided classroom might simply promote the stereotype that women dont perform as well in STEM fields rather than hlp them learn in their own way.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. I guess I was thinking more about kids that are in school who would be seperated, say, next year. They'd know. But the incoming kindergarten class wouldn't know.
ReplyDeleteRight, that's exactly how I feel.
I never thought of gender divided classrooms as being a pat on the back for boys. That's a new perspective and it really makes me think a little differently about it. The boys may then feel that they are gifted just because they are boys, which definitely isn't true.
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