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For once, South Carolina is a leader in education, though not in the traditional sense., South Carolina has been heralded as "pioneering" the single-sex education movement.
So far, 70 local public schools offer same sex education, with proponents steering toward the goal of these programs being available to every child in five years. Supporters of single-gender education claim these specialized learning environments capitalize on key differences between the sexes, ultimately leading to higher test scores and increased student confidence. For example, boys apparently don't hear as well as girls, so many teachers of all-male classes use microphones. I don't see anything wrong with that; I understand that male and female brains are wired differently, so using teaching strategies tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of students makes sense. But ultimately same-sex education falls into the territory of gender stereotypes.
One class described in a recent article that girls were given cosmetics to evaluate for their science projects, while boys used skateboard parts to practice pre-algebra. While such a unique twist on learning might seem worthy of praise, the strong use of stereotypes is appalling. There are other ways to make the classroom fun and interesting that don't involve trite clichés or separating the students by sex and making broad, baseless assumptions. These "educators" seem to be unaware of the most obvious flaw in their design: just because I possess two X chromosomes, that does not mean I'm programmed to like makeup, and I'm sure there are plenty of boys out there who wouldn't get much out of taking a skateboard apart.
Put simply, gender is largely a social construct, and same-sex education is merely another attempt to judge massive groups of people based on an arbitrary biological characteristic. My physical sex dictates my likes, dislikes and interests as much as my hair color does, and frankly, I resent the implication that I'd love nothing better than to bake cookies in class.
But aside from the rampant stereotypes, I find same-sex education worrisome simply due to the separation factor. These children are not in a situation representative of the "real" world, and thus such an environment could foster prejudice against the opposite gender and other sexist ideas. It could hamper social development in that regard, so when they finally enter middle or high school they won't know how to conduct themselves properly around the opposite sex.
South Carolina might be patting itself on the back for being forward thinking, but this idea of single-sex education is just backwards.
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