Did any of the girls at the high school have problems adjusting to a co-ed college or work environment afterwards? Because that's the only thing I'd worry about, that the girls would become used to being assertive in a certain atmosphere and get blindsided by the cock swinging.
You know, I don't think that's a problem (and Becks, you totally pwned me -- I wanted to write something about this). The agression deficit or whatever we want to call it that women have that keeps them from dealing with men in agonistic circumstances isn't about a lack of aggression, it's (I think) about learned deference to men and a corresponding expectation of deference from women on behalf of men. If you aren't exposed to men to defer to when you're learning how to argue, you aren't going to learn to defer to them, and when you're eventually exposed to them, you'll treat them like people.
Fair enough. I'd also have secondary worries about funding equality & curricula equality, but those can be addressed by smacking around school boards when they think the girls' school needs a home ec department but not a computer lab.
1 - I went directly from an all-girls high school to an engineering program that was 90% guys. I don't think I'd have been able to hold my own as well in that macho environment without having spent four years developing the expectation that my opinions should be heard and I had the right to be acknowledged as a good student if I was doing the work well.
Does one really learn to argue at school? Not in my experience.
Not meaning to be a bitch here, but one other thing: do boys learn to respect girls' opinions without them around? And if not, is it okay legally to have all-girls' schools without all-boys' schools?
Did any of the girls at the high school have problems adjusting to a co-ed college or work environment afterwards?
I went to an all-girls high school and neither I nor anyone I knew had difficulty adjusting to co-ed environments later.
One of the ironies about my all-girls school was that when you wanted to take a course that didn't fit into your timetable, you could take it at the boys' school across the street. So there was only me and one other girl in my grade thirteen economics class.
My mother, arch-feminist, was adamant about sending her daughters to an all-girls school, and my sisters did really well there. Heck, one of them went to college at Mt. Holyoke and did well there, too.
do boys learn to respect girls' opinions without them around?
Some of us do.
Some of us do.
Mmm, sounds like you had girls around though.
I went to an all-girls school and my experience pretty much contradicts Becks'. I found that people was so focused on making certain that 'everyone's voice was heard' that intellectual aggression was stomped down. I remember a fantastic discussion that occurred in a Shakespeare class followed by the next class being devoted to reminding the loud people to be respectful of the quiet people.
Basically we were taught to be smart, articulate LADIES. Yech.
Does one really learn to argue at school? Not in my experience.
It's not that they're learning how, it's that girls often feel they can't or shouldn't.
My mom's taught high school English for 15 years or so now. She's pretty belligerent, and likes to get the class to argue stuff with her. She has a hell of a time getting the girls to engage in these kind of noisy arguments, whereas the boys are much easier to get going in this fashion. And it becomes self reinforcing. The boys are going to get called on more, and participate more because of it, where the girls are going to participate less unless either they or the teacher makes a huge effort to overcome the visceral reaction to arguments.
6 - They guys I knew who went to single-sex schools definitely benefited, but I can't say if it was to the same degree. I think they had similar experiences about having their eyes opened by seeing men in all of the traditional high school roles and were allowed to take more risks (in activities, classroom discussions, etc.) because they didn't need to be worried about embarrassing themselves in front of girls.
As far as respect towards women, the guys from one school were heads and shoulders above most guys that age while the ones at the other schools were pretty sexist. So I guess it depends on the dynamic the school fosters.
Comments 10 may evidence a North/South divide.
seeing all of the roles in the traditional high school filled by people of your gender
One question -- does an all-girls high school necessarily employ only women? My unreflective notion was that the teachers and other employees might still be men, it was just the students that would all be girls. Or did you mean "all the roles (filled by students) in the traditional high school"?
5: I learned the shit out of how to argue at school. Of course, I was on the debate team.
6: We gain totally different advantages from not having girls around. For instance, at my all-boys high school none of us felt the need or desire to shower after gym class, so we skipped that whole awkward experience.
In all seriousness, my girls-free high school was also something of a class-free high school, where very few people went out of their ways to be macho. Yeah, there were jocks and the chess club and the super involved student government types and the disaffected kids and all those types, but nobody went out of his way to make life harder on anyone else. We were all pretty cooperative. (12 sort of hits this point.)
I had an ex-girlfriend tell me this was bad because it's not how the real world works, but I think this is absurd, and I think the more people learn to exist like that, the more the world will be like that (cf. women learning to speak up). It's why even bother to teach people when they're young, no?
You're right, I didn't necessarily learn a greater respect for women's voices, but I'm not sure that's the only advantage single-sex schools can provide. In my experience, it made for a far better learning environment for all involved.
It's probably worth noting for those who may be unaware that there is a significant body of research (none of which I will now link) on the suprisingly robust benefits of single-sex education, particularly for adolescents. For both boys and girls. Divoring learning in school from learning how to react to the feelings in your pants seems to bring a whole host of benefits, both for educational and social development.
Of course, this is only true if the schools themselves are good. Separate but equal yadda yadda.
14 - I was thinking the different roles in high school in the Breakfast Club sense: the jock, the nerd, the basket case, etc.
my girls-free high school was also something of a class-free high school
No geography?! No maths?!
I take it all back -- integrated education for everybody!
So I guess it depends on the dynamic the school fosters.
This, absolutely.
My all-boys school and my sisters' all-girls school actually ended up merging my senior year, but even before that, we had a few upper-level science classes that were joint (half at our school, half at theirs), and they went very well. Of course, the comportment of the nerdiest kids at each school might not be the best sample.
17 -- but where will we find a female Robin Williams? And would we really want to?
Wait, I think I am mixing "Breakfast Club" up with the "Gesellschaft der Toten Dichter". never mind.
18: "maths"? Where are you from?
One question -- does an all-girls high school necessarily employ only women?
No, nor does an all-boys high school necessarily employ only men.
Part of my basis for 2 comes from my own only exposure to single-sex education. When I was in high school, some of the calculus teachers attempted to do a study on single-sex math education (the study was terminated because one of the teachers had health problems part of the way through it.)
The BC Calculus classes were divided into three classes, all male, all female, and a co-ed class, and research assistants were placed in the back of each class tallying who participated by gender. I was in the girls' class, and an assistant who tallyed participation in the co-ed class. In the co-ed class, participation was 10-1 male to female, and the freaky thing was that it looked entirely normal -- if I'd been just watching the class, rather than making tally marks whenever anyone said anything, I would have said that girls participated as much as boys.
In the girls class, it was a graveyard for the first month or so -- I participated, but no one else did. After about a month, everyone perked up, and suddenly it was a normal class again, with as much student participation as the coed class. Then, in February, the boys' teacher got sick, and the male and female classes had to be recombined.
It was a zoo for about three weeks. Students shouting, talking over each other; it was a completely disfunctional environment. It was hard to describe what was going on, but it was loud and weird and unruly. After about three weeks of that, all the girls (except me) shut up again, and it was a normal class again.
The whole experience was very strange.
I once heard the headmaster of Roxbury Latin talk about why he thought that single-sex education was so valuable. Now, RL is a very old (oldest in the country--1645--that's in continuous operation; I think that Boston Latin was founded earlier) school and very rich, but they use that money to make the education affordable for any bright boy. (At one point they were running a temporary deficit, because they're so committed to being need-blind.)
The then head has talked a lot about how they love their boys at RL. (No pedophilic jokes, please.) I can't find the exact sentence, but he thought that, at least at RL, they were able to nurture mroe caring, loving me, because the boys weren't afraid to show their emotions at school.
He also pointed out that Roxbury Latin was a day school, and these boys weren't apart from girls and women in their family and social lives. School plays were always done with Winsor.
It's also important to note that different children benefit from different kinds of experiences. My sister had a horrendous experience at Emma Willard. The incompetent and unlicensed school psychologist was sure that her depression was anorexia and handled it incompetently, insisting that she was a danger, because she was failing to control her anorexia. In fact, she was euthymic on antidepressants and had gained weight. She just liked to run and roller blade.
She attributes some of this to its being an all-girls school, and, unlike Winsor, it's not an extremely rigorous school academically, though it does try to sell itself as a girls' school. She also thinks that girls on their own can be catty.
I think it's just that Emma Willard is a shitty school.
I got the Happy Fun page when I posted, and the new dolphin kind of freaked me out. I've always loved dolphins, and that one is cute, but after our discussion of the guy who likes to have sex with them...
Re Brock in no. 13: I'm curious, on which side of the divide am I? (Also bear in mind that this was not a religious institution, if that makes any difference to people.)
re Brock in no. 16: I'm also aware of the great body of evidence that girls do better in math and science in a single-sex environment. I think we're discussing different effects. I'm focussed on the lessons learned in 'acceptable' communication skills and not on the subject matter.
I should say that I'm torn on the subject of single-sex education, because I do think that separate but equal is a very hard trick to pull off, and that the sort of girls school described by Omphale is a real possibility. I've got a lot of thoughts on this, but they haven't coalesced into strong policy preferences.
They guys I knew who went to single-sex schools definitely benefited, but I can't say if it was to the same degree.
One of the very few things of which I am absolutely certain is that I will never, ever send a son to an all-male school. I have seen real benefits in all-women's schools. But most of the women I know who are aggressive went to co-ed schools. (NB: I'm not sure aggressive is the right word.)
Well, most people go to co-ed schools, so that doesn't say all that much. I know what you mean about 'aggressive,' though -- how about "Doesn't have trouble making space for themselves in discussion?"
One of the very few things of which I am absolutely certain is that I will never, ever send a son to an all-male school.
Why? I'm genuinely curious.
Bostoniangirl in 25:
Citing the Rev. Tony may not be the way to go. He drove the son of the head of BU's Judaic Studies department out with aggressive prosyletizing. And I've heard him speak on women's opportunities beyond motherhood without ever mentioning that one option was to CHOOSE not to have children. (Our choices apparently involved being a nun, being married and infertile, or being single.)
I'm sorry to hear about your sister's experience at Emma Willard. Was she boarding?
To be fair, I agree with Rev. Tony about the necessity of one's home life being integrated for socialization. On the other hand, I found at my school, that contrary to popular belief about girls schools, not only we were not a hotbed of lesbian activity, but the heterosexism raged to a degree that was pretty disturbing (I'm thinking of the eighth grade "Wall of Men")
Omphale--I didn't know that about the Jewish thing, and Jarvis certainly is flawed. He has certain school values that often seem simplistics. I used to go to church with him, and he was very helpful to me at one point, but it's certainly true that proselytizing wasn't an issue in that context. It is a bit weird to have a priest as head of school, and it may be that the new guy is better.
Yes, my sister was boarding. She then chose to repeat a year and go to a school in England which had been co-ed since its inception in the 20's.
29 and 30: I think the word you're looking for is "assertive."
Yes, my sister was boarding.
(I'm thinking of the eighth grade "Wall of Men")
Can you describe this ritual for the benefit of those of us who did not attend rabidly heteronormative all-girls middle schools? Thanks.
31: Based on reports from people who have attended all-male schools (including, but not limited to, those from British authors from the '40s and '50s), Lord of the Flies seems like a pretty accurate description of a society composed of only adolescent males. Not bad for most, but absolute hell if you're Piggy or Best-Replacement-For-Piggy. My own (v. limited) experience with fraternity guys tends to confirm the descriptions of which I know. Including women makes a difference, somehow.
36 - Again, I think it depends on the school. One of the boys schools in my hometown was somewhat LOTF/obnoxious and the other was much less testosteroney than the coed schools.
I wanted to echo the point made in 15 that indoctrinating children into bad things about the world when they're young is a bad idea. The argument that "kids need to go to a school like X because otherwise they'll not learn how bad the world is" are bad arguments, and surprisingly common. See any argument about homeschooling (say the recent thread on B's site).
On the single gender school issue, I question the motives of the people who actually came up with this policy. Their goal is not to have public all-girls schools like Becks's, their goal is to have public all-girls schools like the one described in 10.
36: My all-boys school was decidedly not Lord of the Flies, and I was there from 6th grade through 12th. If you were a weaker or nerdier kid there was some teasing, but I can't imagine it was worse than it would have been in a co-ed school. (Some of the most memorable mocking/teasing episodes for me were centered on a relatively popular kid.)
39: Yeah, it's hard not to think that. (I know I shouldn't bitch about people's pseudonyms, but is there any shorthand mode of address that appeals to you? Can I call you Pause?)
41: Well, you could always figure out the answer to the clue.
But yeah, it was clearly poorly chosen. But you make a bad choice one week and then you have to stick with it. Pause is great, (9) also works.
39- is there a particular reason in this case you feel comfortable stating this so boldly? (I don't know who came up with this particular policy, so know nothing of their motives.) Or are you just voicing generic distrust of the motives of single-sex advocates generally? (And if the latter, certainly you can recognize that this motive isn't universal?)
I wrote a longer post about this stuff expanding on my comment, if anyone's interested, at my blog-thing.
I'm the stupidest person on the planet. I've been looking at your blasted pseudonym for months, and didn't read it as a cryptic crossword clue; just as weirdness. Great. Watch me try to get anything done for the rest of the day.
Your name is a riddle?! That's awesome. I always thought it was just weird. I'm stumped on the answer, though.
I've been owned by the stupidest person on the planet. What does that make me?
Well, you could always figure out the answer to the clue.
Oooooh, duh!
Wow. No idea on the crossword clue thing. D'oh.
Why is it that solving cryptic clues, in particular, is so very satisfying?
... it is a 9 letter word meaning "unfogged", whose final 5 letters are "enter"?
34
Memories of Rev. Jarvis might make me see red, but that doesn't mean he didn't have good points. However, his tenure was not really marked by, shall we say, liberalizing gender expectations for his students?
This actually gets to a point that I'd like to make. I just see single-sex education as a bandaid. And like everything in child-rearing, different kids react differently to the same situation. My sister and I went to the same school, and she did beautifully. I had a great education and wished that I were in public school the whole time.
Also, LB, single-sex schools tend to be REALLY small and socially conservative (even in the blue-ness of New England). There's not a lot of play for alternative identities.
50- if you solved the puzzle you are morally obligated to share.
Okay, I feel better now. It's still going to kill me until I figure it out. I think of myself as the sort of person who should be good at cryptics but I'm just not -- I get two or three clues in the one in the back of the Nation, and I don't think I've ever made any significant progress on the Harpers puzzle.
Is the word "Unfoggedtarian" part of the clue, or is the clue just the bit in quotes?
Think about what "pause endlessly" could signify.
The answer wouldn't be "commenter", would it?
Well, you don't really want me to spoil it for everyone, do you? Here: if you want the answer and explanation, follow the link in my name for this comment.
58 -- yes: "comm" is "pause endlessly", i.e. "comma" minus its end, "enter" is "go in". "Unfoggedtarian" is "commenter".
Aw dang. Me and MAE screwed up.
I haven't read the full thread, but I will say this:
My experience at an all boys school was very Lord of the Flies. I was there from 3rd through 9th grade, when I finally got the nerve to drop out. I blame it for a substantial of my psychological problems.
It was also a profoundly influence on my political outlook, although in an entirely negative way. My first political thought, was really to reject the macho, chest thumping, war mongering, football and testosterone culture I was immersed in. Everything else has been an attempt to find a workable outlook that is as far a way from that as possible.
I was right? Oh. Sorry if I spoiled the fun for anyone.
My experience at an all girls school (elementary school) had a certain Lord of the Flies in petticoats aspect to it, itself.
O Mighty Ones, feel free to redact 58.
Huh. Is it because I've never done crossword puzzles that I would have never guessed that "(9)" signified number of letters? (Or is it just that I'm stoopid?) I honestly always thought the name somehow signified that he had lurked here for a long time before commenting (pause endlessly, then go in), plus some other general weirdness.
So I'm still not sure what to call you. "Pause", or "commenter"?
It's a cryptic, rather than a straight crossword, convention, and don't feel bad -- I make vague attempts at doing cryptics every so often, and I didn't get it either. Nor did anyone else, including people actually capable of solving the dratted thing.
I say we call clue person Cryptic. It's a better name than Pause.
70 -- specifically cryptic crosswords have some funny rules for their clues. Here is an explanation.
It's specifically a cryptic crossword clue. Ordinary American-style crosswords don't have the number of letters appended to the clue. (I completely didn't notice the number, because at another online place I frequent everyone's pseudonym has something in parentheses after it; long story.)
I had a funny tickling feeling at the back of my mind that 'Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in"' felt like an example of some familiar something, but completely failed to place it.
But then I'd have to type out the "Ned" every time I was referring to "Cryptic Ned", and that's a lot of work.
If we call Commenter "Cryptic", will Ned feel slighted?
And what the fuck is a "cryptic" anyway? That's some type of puzzle?
Ah, the sweet waters of pwnage, how they wash over me!
74 and 76 to 71, and better read as if both came before 72 (which they did, in my mind).
Part of the reason I'm reluctant to celebrate single-sex public schools on the basis of success with private school's single-sex policies is that I expect one of the reasons that private schools succeed in any case is better funding, selectivity, and committed (even if hovering) and educated parents. You could require the students to stand on their heads in dance leotards and they'd pretty much all get into the Ivies.
This thread is sort of turning into a circle-pwn.
I submit to the wisdom of the mineshaft in determining what to actually call me, as punishment for my overly-long pseudonymn. However, I would like to point out that calling me Commenter would surely confuse the hell out of new readers, which does seem to be half the fun of Unfogged.
80: Yeah. There's a particular problem in gender relations that I think gets misinterpreted: what looks like weakness or lack of aggression from women is in fact a much more specific behavior, of deference toward men, which is coupled with an unconscious expectation from many men that women will defer to them. And single sex education highlights, and can address that problem specifically. But that doesn't mean it's the best, or only way to address it.
It's hard stuff to highlight, though, because it's so difficult to really see people acting normally. If you look back at my 23, the freakiest, most upsetting thing about the whole experience was sitting in the back of the coed classroom, watching a perfectly normal class in which girls were participating a perfectly normal amount, not being marginalized at all, and then looking at the columns I was putting marks in for each person who spoke and realizing that ten boys were speaking for every girl. And I went into that experience a feminist; this wasn't an epiphany. I was shocked at myself for not being able to see what was in front of my eyes untill I quantified it, and that it still wasn't really apparent after I did.
82: CC Writer? (C what U have done . . . )
82 has convinced me that Commenter is the way to go.
Also, LB, if you want to learn to solve cryptics it's better to start on easy ones. Sadly easy cryptics are hard to find. However, there is a book of old New Yorker cryptics that's quite fun. Once you get the hang of them they take 20 minutes instead of hours for stuff like the Atlantic (or weeks for anything from England).
I vote for The Commenter Formerly Known as Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in." (9)
Commenter: I've always been sort of under the impression that your handle was an accurate description of your Unfogged posting -- don't you generally come into threads at or near the bottom? So you have been pausing (not endlessly but long enough), and then go in.
88: I'll be looking that up -- doing Sudoku on my commute has palled.
Knowledge of the existance of cryptics is sorely distressing to me, as they represent yet another highly appealing way to spend hours of time "unproductively."
My elder daughter's (private, boarding) high school is actualy two schools that are co-located. Classes are single sex, except for electives. I have been pleased so far, and she thinks its great. Many of the down sides of single sex education are eliminated, while preserving the benefits.
Oh, I recently thought of a dirty cryptic clue which I have nowhere to use. And, well, dirty cryptic clues and unfogged seem a perfect match.
Result of orgasm after endless fellatio: Bobby's first surrender (7)
Have any of you puzzle fans tried the puzzle called "Paint by Numbers"? I find it more fun than any other game involving pencil, paper and grid. It is difficult to find them though, so far the only place I know that publishes them is Games magazine and that is only a couple per month.
95: succumb? (total guess)
(Oh yeah! That's correct and now I see why.)
90: The fact that "Pause endlessly, then go in" could be seen as a reasonable handle in and of itself just makes it all the better a clue. The more the clue could actually be an english sentence the better. The more it actually describes me, the better.
In fact, I don't think it's so much that I pause before commenting, as that I generally don't read a thread until there's been a hundred comments. West coast combined with grad student != deskjob or something.
I've got the answer, but I can't work 'Bobby' into it. That is, my answer works just as well for "Result of orgasm after endless fellatio: surrender".
Arrgh! Crossed with Clown, but that's what I got. Why 'Bobby's first'?
LB -- it's "bobby's first".
LB, where are you getting the B in succumb from?
Aieee. I was thinking that the clue was poorly crafted, in that it really needed a 'sounds like' signal in the first half to account for the 'b'. But I suppose it could come from the B in 'Bobby'. Got it.
93: My sister went to Scripps for college even though she vowed that she would never attend a single-sex school again. Scripps is part of the Claremont colleges, so her cross-country team was a joint Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd team. (Pomona and Pitzer played together too.) She got a lot of the benefits of a single-sex education without being far away from boys. The Scripps dorms had stricter rules about accompanying men in teh halls, but she could always visit here friends at CMc or Mudd.
Omphale: Did you got to Winsor? I went from Class I-IV and really loved it in a lot of ways. I was an awkward kid and had some difficulty making friends, but public school was worse for me.
I wound up going away to boarding school in the 9th grade because of my mother's illness. My school had only gone co-ed about 6 or 7 years earlier and was still extremely sexist. I credit my years at Winsor with allowing me to keep my head steady through high school.
I'm thick, but could someone please explain the meaning of the number (9) and (7) in Pause's handle and 95.
I've only just been getting the hang of cryptics recently myself. I found that letting myself cheat a lot on the easier cryptics in Games Magazine and the NY Times offerings for online crossword subscribers was a nice way to make some progress.
The New Yorker cryptic book is indeed good for getting started -- it helps that their puzzles have the words crossing on every letter, too. There's also a Mensa (blurg!) collection that I find not overly taxing. I have two books of cryptics from the Atlantic, including a bunch of novelty cryptics, that are just completely out of my read at the moment.
BG: It's the number of letters in the answer. Answers with more than one word get something like this: (3, 4).
107 -- (9) is the number of letters in the answer to the clue.
107: It's the number of letters in the answer to the clue. The answer to the clue in 95 is 'succumb', a 7 letter word.
81 gets it exactly right, as does 103.
Which ones are the "Paint by Numbers" puzzles? I'm sure I've seen them, given the nerdly pile of Games mags on my nightstand, but don't remember them.
113 -- They are grids of squares with a series of numbers at the end of each row and each column -- the numbers denote the length of blocks within the row or column which are to be colored in. Based on the numbers you work back and forth between rows and columns to reconstruct the pixellated picture from which the puzzle was built.
105: Bobby's first is "b" - the first letter in Bobby. Standard technique. A clue which talked about "the end of LizardBreath before blah blah blah" would start with "h".
106. Well, my daughter is at Webb, which is also in Claremont. And in the interest of full disclosure, I went to CMC and lived in Claremont for many years.
Yup, I got it now (and was familiar with the technique, I just have a hell of a time seeing things that are right in front of my face.)
116- In the interest of full disclosure, I think you should send a picture of your cock to ben w-lfs-n.
118. Wouldn't that be TMI?
74/75: Don't worry, I made the proper arrangements.
Could be TLC. We won't know till he sends in the photo.
But TLL is right: 'TMC or TLC' is TMI.
But TLL is right: 'TMC or TLC' is TMI.
Not ATM, it's not.
No time to read thread, but when I saw the headlines I, too, initially thought "this isn't a bad idea."
However, if you look into the details, the schools are not required to set up *equal* single-sex classes. They can set up a class for, say, boys, as long as there's a co-ed class that's more or less equivalent for girls. The problems therein are pretty obvious. I seriously doubt that many school districts are going to set up feminist classes for girls--there'd be all sorts of squawking about how "unfair" that would be to boys. What's going to happen is there will be boy's classes that are more math- and science-centered, and the co-ed classes will be "roughly equivalent" in a less rigorous sort of way. I bet you anything.
Yeah, if there are non-parallel high-prestige single sex options, that's clearly going to go wrong.
(Don't worry about skipping the thread, the bulk of it is puzzles.)
Here is a article about the benefits of single sex schools:
In coed schools, boys avoid "girl things" and girls avoid "boy things".
The above discussion suggests that a good way for a low talent male student to get the skills to be pundant is to attend a predominantly female college.
106: I did go to Winsor, was a lifer in fact (all 8 years). I'm not certain you'd have felt that way if you'd gone all the way through high school there. Lots of very smart, driven young women, still being trained to be rich men's wives.
And of course, this goes back to two earlier points: 1) Most of the evidence we have is for a stratum of society that correlates very highly with achievement no matter what the gender makeup is, so the issue at hand has more to do with what society at large expects of women (my earlier bandaid point); and 2) Many of the people who want to enforce single-sex education in public schools aren't working from the same playbook. They're not interested in the 'equal' part, and largely want to codify gender roles so that it's even harder for women to compete with men in mixed-gender environments. They aren't talking about how single-sex ed helps adolescent girls retain an interest in math and science, they want to minimize how much math and science they do!
So, single-sex doesn't fix the larger social problem with which the Ogged community is concerned (women's voices aren't valued), and there are vastly different outcomes that people hope to get from it (women are given the skills to play the game; women aren't even given the rules.)
I wonder what TAPPED readers will make of this comment thread.
I'm curious about the people who had LOTF experiences at single-sex schools. Were you boarding, or only attending classes and then going home afterwards?
I lived at home, but then it was not actually like the real LOTF. Instead, I was the weak member of the pack by virtue of being boisterous, talkative, grubby, nerdy, awkward, and less affluent. The other girls sniffed out my wrongness immediately and made my life hell in all the classic horrible girl ways. The school also laid a weird amount of emphasis on daintiness. There was an actual flower-arranging competition, for example.
37: Mmmm. Testosteroni is best with a little bit of marinara.
127: Suggestive anecdote which proves nothing:
The teachers at PK's upper-middle-class, high-performing school have a rule that kids must invite to parties: (1) the entire class; (2) all the girls, if the party-haver is a girl; (3) all the boys, if the party-haver is a boy. The mother of PK's girl party guest, who teaches at same school, told us she bought PK Hot Wheels cars because "most of the boys like those" and was very sympathetic about the fact that the only guest who could come (of the four we invited) was a girl. "But she's really active and likes to play with the boys, because she has an older brother," was offered by way of comforting us for this tragedy.
My observation, however, was that said little girl is in fact PK's best friend at this school, just as another little girl was his best friend at his old school. He didn't know what Hot Wheels cars are, and while he likes them okay, wasn't especially excited at the time. Also, he chose a Hello Kitty bath mat and waste basket for his bathroom.
Suggested hypothesis: perhaps one important reason boys don't like "girly" subjects and girls don't like "boyish" subjects in co-ed schools is because some of the teachers are fucking idiots.
Oh, and corrolary: instituting single-sex classes in public schools is only going to make things worse.
So did you brazenly flout the invitation rule, or are there only five kids in PK's class?
I flouted because I was not going to invite nineteen six year olds. And also because I didn't realize it was a rule. PK, having been raised by anti-sexist parents, made the perfectly logical decision to invite the other kids who sit at his table, some of whom are boys and some of whom are girls, rather than internalizing the assumption that his friends must also have penises.
perhaps one important reason boys don't like "girly" subjects and girls don't like "boyish" subjects in co-ed schools is because some of the teachers are fucking idiots.
One important reason is that.
This is a blog, Ben. We understand colloquial speech here.
Also, I just spent all day in the e.r. and all evening driving through Arizona at night with my father. Break me a fucking give.
instituting single-sex classes in public schools is only going to make things worse.
Do you mean in elementary school, or high school, or both? After I got out of all-boys HS and into college, I'd say a majority of my friends were girls.
I'm not going to refuse to engage you in argument or pedantry just because you're a girl, b.
Girl, shmirl.
Oh wait, yeah, it probably is b/c I'm a girl that I have to do the family management crap. Goddamn it.
man, my 141 is totally being ignored. i feel like such a girl.
138: The gender division is annoying. But the rule is motivated so you don't have 19 little girls or boys getting invited to a party and two little girls or boys having to watch everyone else getting invitations.
They do this on Valentine's Day, too. Everyone has to get a valentine. I'm not quite sure why children are told to give valentines, come to think of it, but again, same problem.
131: I was not at a boarding school, but in some ways I may as well have been, because the school had a mandatory after school sports program that lasted until 5 (and which included putting 3rd grades in helmets and pads for [American] football.) Add an hour commute each way to get to this elite school like none other, and the day is pretty much shot.
I don't know if I would call my experience total LOTF, because the bullying largely tapered off in middle school. It was replaced by loneliness and isolation, and the sense that at least with bullying you received attention.
(Is this sounding too pathetic?)
(Is this sounding too pathetic?)
pathos is a feature, not a bug, of remembering on's primary education. (Hey BTW did everybody dig this awesome line in a recent Jim Henley post: "This is pathos and irony smashed together in a supercollider of obtuseness to make some entirely new element with the properties of both.")
Yeah, there's a heck of a lot of assumptions and pressure from grownups on the 'girls and boys just naturally don't want to play together' front. Luckilly, once you do that for a couple of years, the kids internalize it and you can convince yourself it's innate.
I think Bitch and Omphale are on to a important factor here: in current society, with current teachers, an all girl classroom is going to look more like finishing school than feminist empowerment camp.
My (second hand) experience with Women's Colleges indicates that there is always a weird mix of the old finishing school model and the new feminist empowerment camp model. Schools that were founded as finishing schools try to market themselves as feminist empowerment camp. Young women who really just want to go to finishing school wind up enrolling at feminist empowerment camp. All very strange.
caveat: i was weird in HS.
That's news.
What, the venerable, "In other news, Sun rises in east" joke is too good for you?
Hey, let's start a feminist girls' high school. That would be so rad. Where shall we put it?
And who would direct the mockumentary, "Feminist High School Girls in Trouble"?
150
"I think Bitch and Omphale are on to a important factor here: in current society, with current teachers, an all girl classroom is going to look more like finishing school than feminist empowerment camp. "
In defense of my institution, the administration had made a real effort to increase the strength of the science and math departments, but THAT effort kept getting sandbagged by the English department. Too, we had all these wonderful teachers that *wanted* it to be a feminist institution, but they couldn't get past the parents.
My point being that you can lead a horse to feminism, but you can't make the horse take the ribbons out of its hair.
Or something.
Wait, I thought third wave feminism let you guys wear ribbons in your hair.
Only if you wear them after full and somber reflection.
When considering high schools many parents in my SFbayarea town choose the all-girl Catholic high school because they fear the "violence" at the public high school. By which I presume they mean exposure to kids bussed in from the barrio. Sadly, the math department at the "better" all-girls school teaches "historical" math. The public high school is run by male and female math teachers, many of whom are coaches, and they inspire the kids by giving big hulking trophies at the end of the year to the best math students in EVERY class (including the business math and Algebra 1/2 classes.) Kids do well in math at this school. Naturally, we were happy about this since nothing could have persuaded us to send our daughters to Catholic school even if it was a bargain. So I mistrust the "girls will do better in math at all girl schools" argument. On the other hand, one of my feminist daughters picked Barnard and loves it there.
128 and 156: Omphale, I do remember them calling us "ladies."
I went to Br/ooks for highschool. (It was a last-minute late-application decision.) So much worse. You can not imagine.
I've noticed from the alumnae communications that they now have lots of career mentoring stuff which I think is good.
I like your point about schools teaching girls and women the skills without teaching them the rules. I think that this is really true.
Hmmm,
I went to an all-girls high school and the maths/science departments were growing in strength more while I was there. My year was the first to have more students going onto engineering school than to teachers' college. This was being driven by us student's choices, not particularly by the teaching staff - though we did have several strong physics, biology and maths teachers too at the time.
It was far more academic than my primary and secondary schools, and that of most of my friends at university, and socially much much easier for me than intermediate school and primary school.
A school is academically rigorous if that's what the students and teachers want, and that doesn't have much to do with the male/female thing.
"I think a lot of girls could benefit from an all-girls environment"
I realize almost no one will read this, at this late date, but I feel compelled to point out that this is 100% besides the point; Constitutional issues aren't decided on the merits of their outcomes; at least they shouldn't be; they're completely irrelevant.
The issue before SCOTUS is simply whether something is Constitutional or not; not on what the effects of the outcome, good, bad, or indifferent, are.
In this case, either such discrimination is compatible with the Constitution (and precedent), or it isn't. How one feels about the effects of the outcome is as relevant as what God has to say about it. Or how anyone feels about the effects of the outcome.
Similarly, for example, someone could assert that Creches on government property during Christmas should be allowed by SCOTUS because it pleases Christians. Or we could argue that simply endless various decisions should be argued on the virtues and merits, or lack thereof, of the results of the decision.
Of course, why bother to have a Supreme Court, at all, in that case?
(I've only skimmed the comments, but did I miss someone making this incredibly basic point? Probably.)