TOILET! TOILET!

If it works, I'm not sure why that's asinine...

FTA:"Those boys do things for her that they might not do for anyone else," Childress said.

I'll bet they do...

And now that the boys are separated from the girls, they don't have any problems to discuss. Everyone wins!

As long as this doesn't result in women-only colleges, that's fine.

/oh wait.

Scary thing is, it works. They did this at my daughter's middle school for English & Math. Both classes did much better in grades, testing, etc. They have already rolled it out to the other middle school grades.

Wish they would do this in elementary school....

this only happened in my middle school when they talked to the girls about their periods. i forget what us boys talked about, must not have been very interesting. i think we all knew about boners and nocturnal emissions anyway by then (and of course the girls knew about their periods already as well)

Where's the 'sit quietly and work alone' section? I wanna sit there.

/don't copy me

Why do girls keep punching me?

To my knowledge this helps a great deal. However, I would say having good social interaction with members of the opposite sex is in many ways more productive throughout your life than the better test scores.

What's next? Separating kids by race? Are we heading back to Segregation?

Boys learn and think very differently from girls, especially in the developing years. Giving teachers the chance to adapt their styles to better serve one group without ignoring the second sounds like a brilliant idea to me.

Mongo cut wood: What's next? Separating kids by race religion? Are we heading back to Segregation already and still doing that in all developed countries?

Sorry, I thought that was more poignant than a rather absurd slippery slope argument back towards Segregation.

I laughed subby. Nice one.

bwohlgemuth: Scary thing is, it works. They did this at my daughter's middle school for English & Math. Both classes did much better in grades, testing, etc. They have already rolled it out to the other middle school grades.

But at what cost? Grades aren't all that matter in life. You can't turn out normally if you are kept segregated from the opposite sex during your formative years. It's impossible.

What's asinine is subby's assumption that it's a bad idea right off the bat.

There's a wealth of studies making the point that gender segregated classes reduce distractions and increase learning effectiveness.

Any guy who's had a boner when asked to present to the class (because of Candy McHottington in the front row), or any girl who's been worried about looking dorky or nerdish in front of the boy she's trying to impress... this is the kind of dynamic that this kind of program addresses.

What else is asinine is that subby can't spell.

/sepArate, not sepErate

rawkus: this only happened in my middle school when they talked to the girls about their periods. i forget what us boys talked about, must not have been very interesting.

They should us the video of the guy doing a testicular self-exam, and we all laughed.

Can'tLetYouDoThatStarFox: bwohlgemuth: Scary thing is, it works. They did this at my daughter's middle school for English & Math. Both classes did much better in grades, testing, etc. They have already rolled it out to the other middle school grades.

But at what cost? Grades aren't all that matter in life. You can't turn out normally if you are kept segregated from the opposite sex during your formative years. It's impossible.

Grades show how one develops in class. Generally those with good grades are learning more.

Subby's headline = asinine

cosmiquemuffin: What's asinine is subby's assumption that it's a bad idea right off the bat.

There's a wealth of studies making the point that gender segregated classes reduce distractions and increase learning effectiveness.

Any guy who's had a boner when asked to present to the class (because of Candy McHottington in the front row), or any girl who's been worried about looking dorky or nerdish in front of the boy she's trying to impress... this is the kind of dynamic that this kind of program addresses.

Then maybe they should get over it? Part of public speaking is not to get flustered up and embarrassed while giving a presentation. Heck, most of my HS and college teachers graded us partly on how composed we were, even if the class was biology, chemistry, math, economics, etc.

bigforearms: rawkus: this only happened in my middle school when they talked to the girls about their periods. i forget what us boys talked about, must not have been very interesting.

They should us the video of the guy doing a testicular self-exam, and we all laughed.

We were done so we watched the girl's video too. One was about a boy who was trying to find a book his older brother owned, I suppose on sexual health, about nocturnal emissions, and the other was about a girl who had to get her older sister to take her to the store for tampons.

All I learned from those was that it apparently kind of hurts to stick those sport tampons in, or something.

My little brother and sister are in gender-split classes. It works wonders. My bro was sitting at about C grades, the first semester in boys-only he shot straight up to a solid A student. The boys and girls get the same exams, so they didn't alter the material. His behavior problems are greatly diminished as well.

Sis is still an A+ student.

BTW the gender split doesn't really impact the whole "learning about the other gender" thing. My 7th grade brother introduced my mom to his two girlfriends the other day. Simultaneously.

Drakin020: Grades show how one develops in class. Generally those with good grades are learning more.

Just expand my point a bit. Book smarts aren't all that matter either. School is more than just a series of lectures and examinations, it's where you practice for participation in the real world. Not knowing how to compete with and simultaneously get along with the very different opposite gender will stunt children socially.

Subby could have used separate classes in school to learn how to spell separate.

Vangor: To my knowledge this helps a great deal. However, I would say having good social interaction with members of the opposite sex is in many ways more productive throughout your life than the better test scores.

Perhaps they should do both -- separate by gender for some subjects, integrate for others. By middle school, kids are already dividing their days by periods, so a mixed approach could work.

Maybe the integrated classes could be ones that encourage more personal participation, like reading and writing, so that the students still benefit from more perspectives, but classes like math could be separated.

/Just a thought.

It's been fixed. Spell check is your friend.

Yeah, American education is so successful, let's ignore a proven way to improve it. Because during class is the time that boys and girls need to be learning to interact.

pudding7: As long as this doesn't result in women-only colleges, that's fine.

/oh wait.

Women only colleges are a relic of the past and need to be dismantled.

Can'tLetYouDoThatStarFoxBut at what cost? Grades aren't all that matter in life. You can't turn out normally if you are kept segregated from the opposite sex during your formative years. It's impossible.

It's only for English and Math. Besides, they get enough social interaction in the hallway. :-)

Schools use apple computers. U know who else does?

Ceph: My little brother and sister are in gender-split classes. It works wonders. My bro was sitting at about C grades, the first semester in boys-only he shot straight up to a solid A student. The boys and girls get the same exams, so they didn't alter the material. His behavior problems are greatly diminished as well.

Sis is still an A+ student.

BTW the gender split doesn't really impact the whole "learning about the other gender" thing. My 7th grade brother introduced my mom to his two girlfriends the other day. Simultaneously.

That is terrible anecdotal evidence for a number of reasons (7th grade is far too young to mean anything), but let's just look at the obvious problems on the other side of the equation. A girl who never practices competing with boys in discussion/debate will get shouted over and stomped on the second they are integrated into a college or workplace environment, no matter how hot shiat they were in their all female class. If they learn how to get around the loudmouth testosterone-fueled know-it-alls from across the aisle early they will be able to compete effectively and without overcompensating or becoming entirely passive. You can't let them walk out of 8th grade unprepared for it though, that's sadistic.

Ceph BTW the gender split doesn't really impact the whole "learning about the other gender" thing.

I'm glad you have an anecdote to counter that, but you really do not interact with the other gender if you're not in class with them while at school, especially as not all students have afterschool activities, and in terms of sports those leagues are normally divided by gender. The interaction is gone.

Forty-Two: Perhaps they should do both -- separate by gender for some subjects, integrate for others. By middle school, kids are already dividing their days by periods, so a mixed approach could work.

Maybe the integrated classes could be ones that encourage more personal participation, like reading and writing, so that the students still benefit from more perspectives, but classes like math could be separated.

/Just a thought.

I am sure there are workarounds, and that is probably a useful one, though I would say I benefited greatly from having interaction through all of my classes. Even in math courses we divided into groups.

Dubai Vol: Yeah, American education is so successful, let's ignore a proven way to improve it. Because during class is the time that boys and girls need to be learning to interact.

Worked for us to do labs together, to do reading and writing assignments, etc.. If school is listening to a teacher read from a book and rote memorization tests, you may as well just homeschool your children.

The Simpsons did it.

At least they're addressing the problem instead of saying "woe is me, this sucks, I need to be paid more," (for the record my dad is a teacher, and yea, he should be paid more, and teachers should be more appreciated, and more well educated... and... and...)

Maybe the split classes could have recess, art, music, lunch and gym together? That way the classroom issues get addressed with the special classes, and they still get to socialize and hopefully learn to talk to girls.

AND on another subject, if women are generally better educated than men, why are we paid less? Fark that.

Dubai Vol: Yeah, American education is so successful, let's ignore a proven way to improve it. Because during class is the time that boys and girls need to be learning to interact.

The solution is tracking, but it's illegal/unpopular for the moment. Somehow my public middle school got around it and segregated us into 1-10's based on academic performance and behavior. The 1's got honors classes without disruption and the 10's got locked in the basement to throw shiat at each other and not learn until the bell rang. It made all of the students happy by giving them what they wanted, but I'm sure the parents of the 10's weren't thrilled. Wait, what am I saying, they didn't have parents.

sounds like a conspiracy to make more homosexuals.

Rats are filthy animals. They were the vehicle for the fleas that caused the faking bubonic farking plague, ferfarksakes.

bajonista AND on another subject, if women are generally better educated than men, why are we paid less? Fark that.

To help pay for that glass ceiling you all shattered.

Ceph:

BTW the gender split doesn't really impact the whole "learning about the other gender" thing. My 7th grade brother introduced my mom to his two girlfriends the other day. Simultaneously.

Well, I'm sure no one would argue that that's strange or desirable....

bajonista: Maybe the split classes could have recess, art, music, lunch and gym together? That way the classroom issues get addressed with the special classes, and they still get to socialize and hopefully learn to talk to girls.

AND on another subject, if women are generally better educated than men, why are we paid less? Fark that.

It's not just learning to socialize with the opposite sex though, it's learning how to effectively compete with them.

As for getting paid less, that has to do with the fields women choose to pursue in higher education and the jobs they are willing to take e.g. engineering and many trade skills are well-paid, and are mostly performed by men.

Monoxide: Rats are filthy animals. They were the vehicle for the fleas that caused the faking bubonic farking plague, ferfarksakes.

Are you saying all women carry disease like your common crackwhore? That's a rather spiteful thing to say.

/realizes your comment is misplaced

Undesirable, I mean.

/dammit

Not like your common crackwhore; just the one that will give a dip/ship/slip in exchange for the burned out aluminum can that some other cracker has discarded.

Can'tLetYouDoThatStarFox: That is terrible anecdotal evidence for a number of reasons (7th grade is far too young to mean anything), but let's just look at the obvious problems on the other side of the equation. A girl who never practices competing with boys in discussion/debate will get shouted over and stomped on the second they are integrated into a college or workplace environment, no matter how hot shiat they were in their all female class. If they learn how to get around the loudmouth testosterone-fueled know-it-alls from across the aisle early they will be able to compete effectively and without overcompensating or becoming entirely passive. You can't let them walk out of 8th grade unprepared for it though, that's sadistic.

Why do you see this as black and white? You can segregate some classes and not others. Maybe the fuzzy subjects could be taught to both genders together, while the technical subjects are taught apart.

Can'tLetYouDoThatStarFox: But at what cost? Grades aren't all that matter in life. You can't turn out normally if you are kept segregated from the opposite sex during your formative years. It's impossible.

You're right.

They'll all turn out to gay social retards. The centuries of boys learning with men and girls learning from women was finally fixed in the last hundred years. Fumbling, awkward social interaction between adolescents will now become the norm.

We must think of the children.

LeftCoast_eh: Why do you see this as black and white? You can segregate some classes and not others. Maybe the fuzzy subjects could be taught to both genders together, while the technical subjects are taught apart.

It's better than nothing, but it still suffers from the same problem. For example, how is a woman going to compete with an "alpha" man in an engineering workplace if she's only used to discussing math and science related problem solving with other women? Even I, as a fairly assertive male, had trouble keeping up with some of the raging, arrogant asshole men our society has produced when I first entered the workplace, just because I didn't realize how prevalent it was even in professional settings. I certainly wouldn't have known how to deal with women professionally if I had been segregated from them during all of my schooling. Dealing with women and dealing with men are two different skill sets with some overlap.

If I have the chance to have my kids learn separately I will do it in a heartbeat. There have been a lot of studies done that show it's much better for each gender, although not at the same time. It works a little like this:

At the Elementary Levels (K-6) the girls get the better education and the boys more or less get hosed. This is because boys have a different learning style at that age than boys- one which isn't condusive to classroom learning as it's currently being done. The other factor is because the girls sit there and learn while the boys are hyper and teachers tend to naturally focus on the girls (I'm a teacher myself, so I know I'm guilty of this and have seen it in action.) because the girls seem to WANT to learn while the boys want to be elsewhere. Each needs a different teaching style at that age, but the girls are the ones who fit into the current setup so they're the ones getting the better education.

However, at the Middle School level (7-9) this completely reverses itself. The girls suddenly become unsure, awkward and withdrawn at the very same time the boys get a hit of hormones that make them competitive little learning machines. Suddenly school is the world of boys and the girls tend to get left behind while they're figuring themselves out. The teachers respond to the aggressive boys better and the boys tend to get the better education.

By High School however, the only case for separating them becomes one of "distractions" and that's where it tends to break down into opinion as opposed to provable fact.

I agree with those who say they should be mixed for some classes and not others- I think that would help a lot to relieve the social questions of not mixing them while letting them get a better education in the core subjects.

Rob

Maybe this will help the gay kids to realize they're gay quicker and the lesbian kids to come to the same realization so they can get well-adjusted with it when they're young and not go emo and commit suicide so much later on as teenagers? Because I'm all for that.

samiam4200: sounds like a conspiracy to make more homosexuals.

Do you think being gay is a learned behavior?