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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to step Mom Never told you?
Speaker 1: From house Stop works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. This is Kristen and this is Molly.
Speaker 1: And guys, we have got some exciting homeschool anecdotes coming up.
Speaker 1: All right, Molly, I don't know that they're that exciting,
Speaker 1: but I think I think I've told you before on
Speaker 1: the podcast, Molly, that that I am a product of
Speaker 1: home school. Yes, if you knew me, listeners, it's probably
Speaker 1: not that surprising because thanks to homeschool, I'm a little
Speaker 1: socially awkward sometimes. But I gotta say um. I was
Speaker 1: on school through elementary and middle school, and the best
Speaker 1: part about home school was that my school day didn't
Speaker 1: really last that long because I would come in in
Speaker 1: the morning and I come in, I mean walk walking
Speaker 1: our living room. Yeah, you get my books, and I
Speaker 1: would just sit down and do my work. There weren't
Speaker 1: that many distractions around me. In middle school, I was
Speaker 1: the only one my mom was homeschooling because my older
Speaker 1: siblings had graduated by that time, so it was just
Speaker 1: me sitting there doing my work, and I was able
Speaker 1: to get through pretty quickly. And it makes me wonder
Speaker 1: whether or not I would have been able to do
Speaker 1: the same amount of work in the same amount of
Speaker 1: time if I had been in a traditional public school,
Speaker 1: because especially in middle school, you know, boys would have
Speaker 1: been around distracting me other girls. That's when girls start
Speaker 1: getting kind of, for lack of a better word, caddie.
Speaker 1: And there's just a lot more going on in those classrooms.
Speaker 1: But you know, I made it through. Okay, Yeah it
Speaker 1: wasn't the ring doorsman. I was hoping for Kristen. But
Speaker 1: you know, we do have to make do with these distractions.
Speaker 1: But there is this new school of thought that UM holds.
Speaker 1: I mean, we shouldn't have so many distractions in these
Speaker 1: formative years. Right. There's one newer trend that's coming up
Speaker 1: in public education, uh separating boys and girls into single
Speaker 1: sex classrooms and in private schools. This isn't a very
Speaker 1: new thing. I mean, there are plenty of all girls schools,
Speaker 1: all boys schools, but for public schools, this is a
Speaker 1: pretty major shift because thanks to Title nine, UH, sex
Speaker 1: discrimination in text when it education was banned, which basically
Speaker 1: made it illegal for boys and girls to be separated
Speaker 1: um in classrooms based on their gender. Right in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, there was this federal change that you could
Speaker 1: separate the genders into different segreated classrooms as long as
Speaker 1: there were options. It was a voluntary thing. Um, you
Speaker 1: weren't forcing them to be in one or the other.
Speaker 1: And you know, as long as the program was reviewed,
Speaker 1: had a reason and all that. So what might be
Speaker 1: some of the reasons besides girls being catty and boys
Speaker 1: being weird and having cooties, that we'd want to separate
Speaker 1: the genders. Well, according to a pretty extensive article on
Speaker 1: single sex education in New York Times magazine, there are
Speaker 1: two basic schools of thought when it comes to single
Speaker 1: sex classrooms. There are some people who favor separating boys
Speaker 1: from girls because they think that we're just two different,
Speaker 1: completely different beings, apples and oranges, who need to be
Speaker 1: taught in different ways because of our just basic biology.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, there's a group who
Speaker 1: thinks that since boys and girls have different social needs,
Speaker 1: they need to be taught differently as well. Right, So
Speaker 1: let's do the biology reasons first. And this is something
Speaker 1: that Kristen and I have talked about before. Um, You
Speaker 1: may remember the podcast about whether men and women have
Speaker 1: different brains, and we came to the conclusion that, you know,
Speaker 1: the brains do develop at different points. There might need
Speaker 1: to be you know, tweaks and education so that you
Speaker 1: learn things when your brain is ready to process them.
Speaker 1: But people are taking this a step further and looking
Speaker 1: at a bunch of other things in a person's biology
Speaker 1: that might make them need a different classroom. But one
Speaker 1: thing I was surprised about Kristen was that boys and
Speaker 1: girls here differently, right. I think the the statistic is
Speaker 1: that girls have four times is finally tuned hearing as
Speaker 1: boys do. So the argument then goes that teachers who
Speaker 1: are talking at a certain level will sound like they're
Speaker 1: yelling in front of a girl, whereas in front of
Speaker 1: a boy it might just sound normal, like the way
Speaker 1: you and I are talking right now. So they're thinking
Speaker 1: that boys and girls needs to have different different teachers
Speaker 1: to facilitate that learning style differently. And there's also a
Speaker 1: question about whether or not boys and girls actually see differently.
Speaker 1: They think that the male eyes drawn to cooler colors
Speaker 1: like silver blues, blacks and grays and browns, which sort
Speaker 1: of reflected I guess if you look at, you know,
Speaker 1: crayon drawings of any five or six year old boy
Speaker 1: and the female I, on the other hand, is drawn
Speaker 1: to more textures and colors, and they think that we
Speaker 1: are attracted to more warmer colors like reds, yellows, and oranges.
Speaker 1: Which speaking of speaking of colors, that also reflects back
Speaker 1: to the podcast, whether or not girls actually like pink,
Speaker 1: which kind of interesting. Um. But in my experience, I
Speaker 1: was kind of surprised about this, this idea of girls
Speaker 1: eyes being drawn to more reds, because I remember in
Speaker 1: high school we would ask our teachers not to write
Speaker 1: with um on dry raised boards with red markers because
Speaker 1: it was really hard for a lot of the girls
Speaker 1: in my class. I remember to see red on a
Speaker 1: white board. But maybe that's a whole different Maybe we're
Speaker 1: just too sensitive to the criticism that read sometimes portend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I felt like I was just being that visually exactly.
Speaker 1: But another interesting thing about the I Kristen is they're
Speaker 1: saying that boys need a teacher who's constantly moving because
Speaker 1: their eyes are attracted to movement. So if you've got
Speaker 1: a teacher up who's just constantly ring at the board,
Speaker 1: they're saying that this is not going to stimulate boys
Speaker 1: to learn. They're going to get bore, They're gonna be disinterested.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's when they start getting distracted. And one more
Speaker 1: interesting thing about this biology, Uh, our immune systems might
Speaker 1: be fundamentally different, so that boys learn better in rooms
Speaker 1: that um our sixty nine degrees. They've figured this out
Speaker 1: to the degree of best learning for boys and girls
Speaker 1: need a warmer environment. Um that's less stressful. I guess
Speaker 1: somehow on your immune system that's like seventy five degrees, right, Molly,
Speaker 1: And and going back to uh, needing a teacher who's
Speaker 1: more active for boys. On the flip side of that,
Speaker 1: they think that girls, you know, in this warmer environment, uh,
Speaker 1: learn better with a teacher who is sitting. We're still
Speaker 1: and learning in in group situations with face to face communication. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently girls need to just sit in a circle and share,
Speaker 1: just just chit chat. So let's get into some of
Speaker 1: the social differences, Kristen, because sometimes these are a little
Speaker 1: harder to wrap your heads around. They seem more like stereotypes.
Speaker 1: But you were talking earlier about the drawings that kids make,
Speaker 1: and I was reading in one of the New York
Speaker 1: Times articles that you know, if a boy does this
Speaker 1: very dark drawing of like a spaceship with lots of
Speaker 1: you know, dark blacks and you know silvers and grays
Speaker 1: and all these very cold colors, and the girl draws
Speaker 1: is very you know, pretty picture, stereotypically pretty, with you know,
Speaker 1: nice pink hows flowers that teachers sort of subconsciously praise
Speaker 1: that pretty drawing and say to a boy, well, why
Speaker 1: isn't yours more you know, pretty? And it would be
Speaker 1: the equivalent of going up to a girl and saying,
Speaker 1: why don't you draw a dog kicking another dog? Once
Speaker 1: you had some more action to that, to that family portrait. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we often think about ways. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the most obvious example people think of is that
Speaker 1: girls fall behind in math and science because you know,
Speaker 1: boys start to excel at it and they feel bad.
Speaker 1: But there are subconscious ways that this is reflecting on
Speaker 1: the boys too. And then there's a question of whether
Speaker 1: or not separating boys and girls in classrooms can actually
Speaker 1: boost their self esteems. I mean, just thinking about in
Speaker 1: middle school, I mean, you have all these pressures of
Speaker 1: raging hormones, and you know, all the friendships that are forming,
Speaker 1: and your first crushes and things like that, and if
Speaker 1: you sort of eliminate those distractions, maybe maybe children will
Speaker 1: be more able to just excel and focus just on
Speaker 1: learning and not on all those kind of complicated social aspects. Right.
Speaker 1: And even if you're not going through that drama yourself,
Speaker 1: you're affected by other people's drama. So they're saying that
Speaker 1: if a girl's in a class with boys who want
Speaker 1: to prove their macho um, you know they're having to
Speaker 1: deal with the boys jeering and making snide comments, whereas
Speaker 1: in a gender separated classroom, you might be more able
Speaker 1: to discuss like a love poem and get into the
Speaker 1: nuance of it without a boy going that's stupid, right, Right.
Speaker 1: So the question is we've got all these factors at work.
Speaker 1: The question is whether or not single sex classrooms are effective.
Speaker 1: Is there anything to these biological and social differences that
Speaker 1: could that could promote better learning? And so far on
Speaker 1: the learning question, studies aren't really holding this up. There's
Speaker 1: really no difference in test scores that any major studies
Speaker 1: been able to pick up, as I understand it, right,
Speaker 1: Kristen right Um. On the one hand, there are more
Speaker 1: they're more schools than ever who are trying out uh
Speaker 1: single sex classrooms, but there are also a number of
Speaker 1: schools who have tried this and the amount of resources
Speaker 1: that they've had to pour into separating boys and girls
Speaker 1: um into different classrooms hasn't really paid off in the
Speaker 1: in in terms of UH improving test scores. Overall. The
Speaker 1: Department of Education did a pretty extensive study, i think
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six on whether or not single
Speaker 1: sex schooling is effective, and it really didn't find any
Speaker 1: significant difference in UH test scores, college graduation rates, or
Speaker 1: graduate school attendance rates. And the fact the matter is
Speaker 1: it might just be for lack of well developed research
Speaker 1: and also the fact that we haven't had long enough
Speaker 1: to really evaluate whether or not these have long term
Speaker 1: effectiveness right. And teachers are saying that they see differences
Speaker 1: in ways that aren't measurable. You know, behavior may tend
Speaker 1: to be better. They do feel that they can more
Speaker 1: uh mold students so that they are served better on
Speaker 1: the example in the New York Times article was that
Speaker 1: you know, a kid said he was learning how be
Speaker 1: a man, and they asked him, well, what do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? And he's like, well, I mean, the
Speaker 1: teacher talked about putting on deodorant yesterday. So is there
Speaker 1: a question of when it's better to do life skills
Speaker 1: and when it's better to do you know, strict math
Speaker 1: and science skills. Right, And then um, down the road,
Speaker 1: there might be a benefit as well to single sex education. Um.
Speaker 1: There's an article and inside Higher Education that said that
Speaker 1: students at women's colleges reported having more engaging and challenging
Speaker 1: academic experiences. That might relate back to like you were
Speaker 1: talking about, with the example of, you know, girls might
Speaker 1: be more prone to be open about discussing you know,
Speaker 1: literature and deeper meanings and things like that in in
Speaker 1: maybe safer what feels like a safer environment where they
Speaker 1: can be more open. Right. But one of the major
Speaker 1: criticisms about this is that if you don't learn how
Speaker 1: to express opinions in that mixed environment, how are you
Speaker 1: doing when you go out into the big bad world exactly?
Speaker 1: I think. Um. One point that was brought up in
Speaker 1: the research that we were looking at was what's going
Speaker 1: to happen if if boys have grown up in in
Speaker 1: single sex classrooms, what's going to happen when they have
Speaker 1: a female boss, for instance, will they be able to
Speaker 1: kind of cope with that new sort of female force
Speaker 1: in their life? Right? And you know it's not just
Speaker 1: you know, parents and students who might be an easy
Speaker 1: about putting these in putting different genders in different classrooms.
Speaker 1: There's some major phoes of this plan. Right. The a
Speaker 1: c l U is wholeheartedly against single sex classrooms in
Speaker 1: public school specifically, and it all relates back to Title
Speaker 1: nine that I explained earlier that banns sex scrimination in
Speaker 1: tax funded education. And they think that this is sort
Speaker 1: of a slippery slope. As soon as you start segregating
Speaker 1: the classes, that are you going to fall back to
Speaker 1: even even deeper segregations. Right, And the National Organization of
Speaker 1: Women has come out and said that this just reinforces
Speaker 1: our worst gender stereotypes. You know, what does it due
Speaker 1: to a young girl to go into school and be told,
Speaker 1: you know, you're different in these ways, since you're going
Speaker 1: to separate you because of it. Right, Because these neurological
Speaker 1: differences that we were talking about have been been generalized
Speaker 1: to the entire sexes. But that's not to say that
Speaker 1: individual boys and girls will experience things differently. Girls won't
Speaker 1: necessarily walk into seventy five degree classroom and feel more
Speaker 1: comfortable than they do in a sixty nine degree classroom.
Speaker 1: Things like that. So I think to answer our question
Speaker 1: which is more effective, we just don't know yet. I
Speaker 1: think that it's very uh individualized, and parents have to
Speaker 1: make that choice for themselves. They do say that when
Speaker 1: parents are more involved in this decision, the kids seem
Speaker 1: to have greater success. But I think that's probably true
Speaker 1: if any educational environment, if you've got your parents support,
Speaker 1: you'll do better. Right, And and that's one of the
Speaker 1: main questions about whether whether or not uh these statistics
Speaker 1: saying that single sex education is more it's more effective
Speaker 1: and kids are learning more because since these programs are elective,
Speaker 1: you're going to have more active parents who are selecting
Speaker 1: to put their kids into these single sex classrooms. So
Speaker 1: that might be indicative of simply a more active and
Speaker 1: involved parent. Well, it's a tough topic, um, but I
Speaker 1: will say, Kristen, you know, I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people probably have this question. That's the first question I
Speaker 1: think of when I think about, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: stereotypical all girls private schools is can you get a
Speaker 1: date and the studies hold up that girls who are
Speaker 1: in uh single sex classrooms don't have any trouble getting
Speaker 1: a date, but they do show lower statistics of teenage
Speaker 1: pregnancy than those who are in co ed environments. So
Speaker 1: kind of a weird statistic to end on, but there
Speaker 1: you go. Well, I'm sure that was that right. There
Speaker 1: will be uh be a motivator for a number of
Speaker 1: parents to to try out single sex classrooms. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, we still have a lot of questions
Speaker 1: about whether or not in the end it's really healthy
Speaker 1: for kids, so we'll keep an eye on that. Time
Speaker 1: will definitely tell with this one. But if you'd like
Speaker 1: to learn more about education, gender differences, and all of
Speaker 1: the above, please check out our articles on how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, and if you have a question or
Speaker 1: comment for me or Molly, feel free to send us
Speaker 1: an email at mom stuff at how stuff works dot com.
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