Boys will be boys: A case for single-gender education

Boys simply don't learn the same way girls do, so why do we try to force them to?

BOYS ARE different from girls. How's that for insight? You're right, not very insightful at all, but our educational system, for the most part, doesn't recognize that.

Virtually all schools at all levels are coeducational, with a few single-gender schools sprinkled in, mostly in large urban areas. Why is this so? Proponents of coeducation usually reply that it's the natural thing, the fair way, and coeducation is better for developing social skills.

I beg to differ with each of those points. For starters, the natural thing for boys and girls is to be extremely different, including the ways in which they learn. Boys are much more aggressive, active, hands-on and with shorter attention spans. Girls color inside the lines while boys can't wait to go outside the lines.

When the choice is left to them, boys will play war while girls play house. Little boys take any toy and before long they've figured how to make it into a weapon. A stick becomes a sword.

Girls tend to use the toy as the designer intended. They're unlikely to turn the light bulb oven into a device to roast ants. But their brothers will be searching for alternate ways to use that oven, anything rather than follow the directions.

I don't believe I've made a great revelation here, but I hope I have opened a discussion on what is "natural." When we sit boys and girls in the same classroom, with the same learning materials, giving them the same assignments and expect them to learn at the same rate, we're flying in the face of what's truly "natural."

Research -- and common life experience -- tell us that boys are far more tactile learners than girls. Boys have to touch everything, and they never really outgrow that need. Boys seem to learn through their fingers, not their eyes and ears.

If boys and girls are so different, having different learning styles and attention spans, why do we put them together in the same classroom? My answer would be that coeducation is cheaper to deliver, is easier to administrate than single-gender education and fits well into the politically correct world.

Many believe classroom education as we recognize it today originated with John Baptist DeLaSalle, the founder of the French-based Christian Brothers. Prior to LaSalle, education was mostly tutorial in nature. One-on-one was expensive and the people he worked with didn't have much money, so he developed the classroom concept.

WHAT COULD be cheaper to operate than a coeducational, one-teacher, textbook-driven classroom? However, being cheaper doesn't necessarily make it the best choice.

As students move into high school they have major problems dealing with their adolescence. There is so much to adjust for in the teenage years. Twenty years ago it was common knowledge that girls could not compete with boys in science and math. That turned out to be common misconception rather than common knowledge. Research showed that girls in an all-girl school scored well ahead of girls in coeducational schools.

Today it's the boys who are lagging behind. Why would that be? I propose that it goes back to learning and teaching styles. Girls tend to be better listeners, have longer attention spans, are less apt to act out in class and follow directions more closely than boys. Boys are fidgety and less likely to stay on task than girls.

From a classroom management standpoint, girls are easier to teach. There are, of course, other considerations, but the energy level of boys can overwhelm a teacher who's already tired.

What's the answer to this situation? My thought is that much of the solution lies in single-gender education. The teacher can develop a teaching style that works best for that particular group of boys or girls. Learning materials would be different.

A recent study, conducted in New York City, clearly showed that high school boys are quickly falling behind girls in classroom excellence. What makes any comparison study reliable and dependable is the ability to control variables. In this case, the variables were mostly nonexistent because siblings could be included in the database.

Such variables as family social status, race, wealth, ethnicity and even geography were taken into account. Those variables could be eliminated entirely by comparing only the siblings. The study showed an across-the-board better academic performance by the girls.

It's time to address the idea that when babies are born their minds are "genderless" and their behavior and attitudes are learned from their parents' expectations. That theory would say that boys learn to do boy things and girls learn to do girl things. It's difficult to prove or disprove the theory, but I doubt many parents would agree with it.

Even if the theory were true it wouldn't change the fact that by the time the child starts school the boys and girls would not have the same learning style. Wherever the learning style originated, it will be present and will have to be recognized.

Let's look at the position that coeducation favors the development of social skills. Numerous studies have been done on this and I consider virtually all of them to be, from a statistical viewpoint, both undependable and unreliable. The studies are chock full of anecdotal material (talk story) and woefully short on hard data (how many and when).

WHAT I DO see on playgrounds and schoolyards across America is boys playing with boys and girls with girls, except when the teachers force them to play together. As for the high school years, that's a different story.

In the early years of high school, girls are far more socially mature than boys. We all know of the freshman boy who "just wasn't ready" but had to pretend he was girl crazy to avoid ridicule. On the other hand, many high school boys experience a daily civil war between their raging hormones and learning Newton's Laws of Motion.

What can we do? What about a coeducational campus with single-gender classrooms? Nah! That's too radical. Or maybe it's a good idea to talk about on another day.

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