I am so angry at this sexist....

My idea of hell in 7th grade would have been a class of all boys. I hated P.E.--not the running around (although the old-school teaching methods of East Junior High did set up a "you can do it or you can't" mentality that had nothing to do with educating me on how to do things)--but I hated the locker room. It was so... stereotypical. I stunk at English, and loved science, was a Boy Scout, played Little League, and had plenty of male friends, but "boys being boys" was so, well, stupid.

It is with great anger that I read Elizabeth Weil's piece in the New York Times, "Teaching Boys and Girls Separately". Read it here. Ms. Weil is fine, although with the sensational nature of the topic it seemed (through my lens of rising rage) to take forever to get to the critics. I cannot see straight on this topic.

It is Dr. Leonard Sax that causes my ire to rise. He so.... wrong. The impression I get is that he picks and chooses his science, and backs it up with half-formed theories.

Worse, it feeds into a pseudo-intellectual discourse of people who are frustrated with the problems in our schools, feel their child is "special" when they are normal, and are looking for fixes that sound smart. It's the fix for an excuse.

Male violence, for example. In the old days, boys punched other kids in the shoulder and bullied. Although there were rules, and these boys, for the most part, were taken care of, a certain amount of "boys will be boys" and lax supervision ruled. It was what I grew up with. Then, we got tired of it. Girls got pumped up (like boys already were) and given equal opportunities (like boys had) and started succeeding. As part of that, a cap was put on bullying and other physical issues. People also got tired of what I experienced in locker rooms, and kids doing self-destructive behavior (suicide, cutting, and the like).

Not everyone got the memo, and when boys are hauled in today the cries of women-dominated schools not allowing boys to be boys rise. Let them decide it on the playground. Ms. So-and-so doesn't get boys. Etc.

From the New York Times article, Jay Geidd gives this thought:

Imagine trying to assign a population of students to the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms based solely on height. As boys tend to be taller than girls, one would assign the tallest 50 percent of the students to the boys’ locker room and the shortest 50 percent of the students to the girls’ locker room. What would happen? While you’d end up with a better-than-random sort, the results would be abysmal, with unacceptably large percentages of students in the wrong place. Giedd suggests the same is true when educators use gender alone to assign educational experiences for kids. Yes, you’ll get more students who favor cooperative learning in the girls’ room, and more students who enjoy competitive learning in the boys’, but you won’t do very well. Says Giedd, “There are just too many exceptions to the rule.”

That, I feel, is the main problem. I have girls who like to move around, and boys who like sit and read. There are girls who appreciate good gross-out humor, and boys who don't. So, how do we sort them? The entire issue is insulting to the boys who do their work and excel (and, perhaps, to the girls who fail).

Finally, why shouldn't boys learn to be cooperative? Is it the teacher's responsibility to entertain? What happened showing up and working hard. I am a male teacher in the middle school. I am very flexible. You know why my boys fail? They don't do the work. They believe they will pull it out later in life. They believe they have other options (options which are disappearing but their fathers won't tell them that).

All students are different. Let's celebrate that, not put kids into little gender boxes.