A Look at Single Sex Classrooms

Single-sex classrooms are appearing in public schools all over the country. We get to the bottom of why single-gender education is becoming more and more popular.

By Carol Kaufmann

From Reader's Digest

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A group of boys studies at one table while a group of girls studies at the other at their school library.

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A group of boys studies at one table while a group of girls studies at the other at their school library.

The boys in veteran teacher Aba Wallace’s first grade class at South Kilbourne Elementary in Columbia, South Carolina, are learning to spell the word ‘air.’

“Let me hear you say it,” she says. Wallace speaks in an authoritative, loud voice, a marked contrast to her delicate frame, as she walks among the desks in the chilly room on a clear day last December. Though some limbs flail about for no obvious reason, every six-year-old’s eyes are glued to her.

“I didn’t hear you.” Her voice rises. “Use those books!”

All fifteen boys pick up their textbooks and thump their diminutive desks as they yell out each letter in unison.

“A!”

“ I!”

“ R!”

The volume is startling.

“Get up and stand behind those chairs,” she commands, finger pointed upward. “Now, stomp it!” The boys stamp their feet, one time for each letter.

“Now, clap it!” They comply.

“Run it!” She demonstrates by jogging in place. The boys jog and spell at the same time.

“Gentlemen, take your seats. Well done.” They scramble to their seats. Saxophone music from a computer in the classroom, drowned out a moment ago by this call-and-response, suddenly seems loud.

Down the hall, the girls in Carol Anderson’s second grade classroom are sitting in groups of three and four. The lights are lower, the thermostat toasty. Only quiet whispers permeate the calm. Anderson perches in a chair at the head of the class, writing sentences on an LCD projector with a blank in the middle for the girls to fill in from a list of vocabulary words. Her students push their colorful pencils topped with thick, spongy erasers across their tablets.

“Raise your hands when you have the answer,” she says, nearly monotone. All students thrust their hands in the air at once.

“Give me a sentence using the word ‘source’.” Hands wave, eager for recognition.

“Where did you get your source for your project,” says a pigtailed girl, quietly confident.

“Very good.” Calmly, almost melodically, Anderson announces that it’s time to leave for extra help with reading. A small group of girls stand and shuffle from the room. Aside from the scrapping of the chairs, they make little noise filing out into the hall. The others resume the vocabulary lesson without missing a beat. Anderson’s voice never fluctuates more than a few decibels. The sound of pages turning in a reporter’s notebook seems a violation of the serenity.

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Cntnd. 2:As such it is quite important that we cater to our youth's most efficient learning styles. Care would need to be taken to ensure that the segregation would be strictly limited to that which the learning process most efficiently necessitates. It would hardly be beneficial to raise an entire generation of intelligent youths with skewed social performance. Our goal is not just to make our kids smart, but to give them the experience, intelligence and skills vital to well adjusted adult life

By n33kos, on 10/17/2008

continued: Being a male in this sort of condition i was quickly acclimated to the concept that "learning is boring". It took me many years to realize on my own the true excitement and eminence in the pursuit of intellectualism. I had created a dualistic boundary between the the fun "real world" and the dull inconsequential world of confined persona. Attention and interest are completely integral to the retention of information and subsequently our youth's perception of education.

By n33kos, on 10/17/2008

I remember vividly the crippling effects of substandard teaching techniques from my elementary education. Even in the "gifted" programs the instructors lacked something; personal strength and enthusiasm. Not only was I brain numbingly bored by the fact that I had an incredibly able and energetic body which was forced to stay immobile but had a considerable amount of difficulty learning from a human whom I, for reasons I did not understand at the time, viewed as "weak" or unworthy of respect.

By n33kos, on 10/17/2008

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A Look at Single Sex Classrooms

Single-sex classrooms are appearing in public schools all over the country. We get to the bottom of why single-gender education is becoming more and more popular.

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