Shawnee vs. Catholic Central
Edgewood vs. Miamisburg
Alter vs. Centerville
Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > March > 05 > Entry
Boys vs. Girls: A scientific divide?
Give my seven-year-old daughter a box of crayons with a sheet of paper and here’s what you’ll get — a drawing of a girl with a multicolored dress and brown hair standing on green grass with a friend and a dog and a cat beneath a blue sky with a yellow sun and a rainbow over a field of colorful flowers.
She draws that picture all the time.
My friend has a son about the same age. Give him the same crayons and paper and you will get a very different picture — perhaps a scene filled with gray soldiers carrying swords, chopping and swatting at each other across a battlefield and lots of red blood everywhere.
Apprently, many other parents have seen the same drawings — colorful, detailed pictures of people and animals from girls and less colorful fast action drawings from boys. The question is why?
One expert says its biology and argues schools should be single gender to account for the differences in learning styles in boys and girls. But Sunday’s New York Times raised questions about whether the science behind the exploding movement in favor of more separate schools for boys and girls is legit.
The first time I saw Leonard Sax speak about gender differences, he flashed up on a Powerpoint screen of a drawing nearly identical to the one described above that I had seen my daughter draw so often. There was the girl, the dress, the friend, the pets, the sun, the flowers, the rainbow and all those colors. Then he flashed the same picture up several times. The interesting thing was these drawings, he said, were not from the same girl but from girls all over the world.
Then he went through a series of boys’ drawings — bloody red battle scenes, gray rocket ships and black speeding vehicles. Same story — similar drawings from boys all around the world.
Sax, a doctor and psychologist and the biggest star of the recent movement toward single sex education, argues that there is a biological reason for the similarities of those drawings within gender and the differences across it. It’s all about the way they process information in their brains. Boys and girls, Sax argues, develop at different paces when they are very young. By the time they are teenagers, those difference virtually disappear. But in elementary school, he says, they are pronounced enough that educators should be accounting for them.
Sax has been hugely influential in Dayton. The city school district now has an all-boys and an all-girls school and it has experimented with single gender classrooms at one other school. He has been here to visit, including a training session for teachers that I wrote about in 2005.
But on Sunday, in a long story in the New York Times Magazine, reporter Liz Weil examines the Sax-led explosion in single sex education in public schools in the U.S.
Weil really dismantles the science behind some of Sax’s most interesting claims — such as the argument that a young boy’s eye is more adept at seeing motion while a girl is better able to see color and texture — showing much of the evidence is flimsy. And Weil exposes a rift in the single-gender movement between those who believe in seperate schools because of the science Sax cites and those who think Sax’s ideas are bunk but support boys and girls schools for other reasons.
Sax’s presentations are very persuasive, in part because much of it rings true to parents and teachers. Who doesn’t notice that girls and boys will draw different sorts of pictures and come up with different ideas for how to play with each another? It is credible to many that there could be scientific explanations for the differences.
But not everyone is ready to go to single gender schools for all, even if they see some advantages to it. My older daughter is in third grade and her best friend for three years has been a boy. As hormones have begun to emerge, she has been confused by the insistence of other kids that they are “a couple” and she complains often about kids who tease them or other boys who act out because of jealous crushes.
These issues certainly are distracting and sometimes truly upsetting to her. Even so, I haven’t thought about looking for an all-girls altentative for elementary school. The fact remains that the world has men and women in it. I guess I’ve always been of the mind for my own children that they might as well start now to learn how to navigate the always choppy waters of gender interaction.
What do you think about the idea that boys and girls should be taught differently based on biological differences or perhaps even seperated completely?
UPDATE: This week in Education’s Alexander Russo interviews Liz Weil about the story.
(Image credit: Blueyonder Blog)
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By ID_TEN_T
March 11, 2008 11:14 AM | Link to this
Mr.Elliot: Why have you not focused on the increases to the teacher license and BCI/FBI background check?. In some districts, including Dayton, this increase, over 200%, is more than the increase in wage.By Lea
March 11, 2008 10:48 AM | Link to this
Mary, please keep in mind that I am aware that medicating the children isn’t always the answer. I am giving him the medication because he is my STEPson and I do not have any legal right to withhold the medication, regardless of actual need. His father doesn’t like it either, but when he attempted to get a second opinion per the custody order, the courts changed their mind and ordered him to medicate the child. Exactly what are we supposed to do about that? Different learning styles for different people - and that includes genders too - don’t mean the child has a “disability” or ADHD. (Yes, some do, I’m not debating that; I’m questioning the labels and diagnoses.)By sherose
March 10, 2008 8:31 AM | Link to this
Boys are self separated from girls on the play ground. In addition: locker rooms, bathrooms and sometimes in the cafeteria as well as the block corner. Classroom teachers know and understand this early bonding and self segregation. I might want to call to task any teacher that does not understand the automatic response of little ones. However, complete separation will not do for most children. The remedial attempts of some black boys schools is just that remedial…. our long history of slavery has produced an upside down culture. I have not studied the results but I applaud the efforts. I would not disagree that there are girls who need a remedial approach; however, we are suffering the long, long history of separation that the private sector utilized before schools were mandatory. I would prefer that teachers came to the classroom better equipped to deal with the subtle issues. I wonder if the multiage grouping would be healthier since differences are celebrated in such an environment. I am glad that my mother didn’t ask me to wait until my four brothers finished dinner before I could eat. Boys clubs and girls clubs take advantage of varying interests…teachers in the classroom recognize it just as moms do. Can girls use some extra push in math—some but for heavens sake we are still at the threshold of reaping the benefits of coeducation.By Rick
March 8, 2008 2:31 PM | Link to this
I think there is a place in American education for single gender education. There is simply too much evidence that boys and girls, as a whole, are different in some ways. However, we don’t education “as a whole” but each individual student. Single gender education should not be universal but rather one tool in the tool box.By Mary
March 7, 2008 3:43 PM | Link to this
Dayton View Triangle Mom, your sense of disempowerment might have had something to do with inborn personality or experiences. I became an engineer when it was very rare for women, and never felt unempowered around boys even when I was many times the only woman in the class. I did notice some of them felt threatened because I might actually be smarter than they were, and the system and society wanted to label such women as freaks of nature. Some guys really can’t stand to be compared to or compete with a woman whether it is science, math, car racing or wrestling. I am not sure whether or not my other sisters were as “smart” or interested in math and science as I was, but I think personality wise they would not have coped the same way I did. I was stubborn as a mule and determined no one would get me to back down. Maybe some girls need the single gender approach, but I think I would have been more freaked out with a class of all girls and a female teacher. My biggest fear is separate is not equal math and science, and ultimately the sexes will have to work together and cope with office politics anyway as far as leadership in math, sciences, and engineering.By Dayton View Triangle mom
March 7, 2008 1:01 PM | Link to this
I’m interested in single gender education in part because of my own experiences feeling less than empowered around boys in some subject areas despite the fact that I was clearly intelligient enough to compete. I hope that for my daughter she can develop a true sense of self confidence about herself in her early years before she is in situations where boys are often pointed out to be superior. That’s part of the reason I’m strongly considering the all girls school in Dayton Public. Plus they have pretty good test scores and I think that gives me reason enough to at least hope it can give her an edge in the future. I believe we need a whole lot more Marie Curie type women in this world. Maybe the all girls schools will become a feeder for the new STEM schools that are proposed - wouldn’t that be wonderful?By Mary
March 7, 2008 11:07 AM | Link to this
Lea, you are the one who has to explain (to yourself) why you are medicating your son, but not your daughter. You are the ultimate authority - not the school or medical community - although they would have you believe otherwise, sometimes. I would be suspicious of any medications the medical community is suggesting you or your children injest. Many doctors have a conflict of interest (perks from the pharmeuceutical industry) and training that is heavily biased toward prescribing pharmaceutical remedies for everything. Follow the money.By Lea
March 6, 2008 3:21 PM | Link to this
Maybe if we started teaching genders the way they learn there would be a lot less kids on medications for ADHD. Maybe we’d find out that they’re not really hyperactive, but boys, and not really inattentive, but girls. I have one of each, and if I take the ADHD checklist both of them fit perfectly. But only one is on medication, though he has a lot less “issues” than his sister. Can anyone explain? Or it is just that he’s a boy and she’s a girl?By Mary
March 6, 2008 12:42 PM | Link to this
If educational theories and fads were as well researched, balanced and analyzed as Elizabeth Weil’s article, then maybe we would get somewhere. I agree with Giedd and Riordan mentioned in her article about too many variables, stereotypes and exceptions for single sex classrooms being the total answer. Every child is different and some girls could actually learn more like “stereotypical boys” and some “boys” could learn more like “stereotypical girls”. Single sex classrooms comes across as a pancea or fad solution to other issues in education - like an anti-academic and anti-intellectual culture. I think that is the root cause of most education problems. Administrators, board members, and teachers are part of that culture, as well.