The New York Times ran an article on single sex education again recently in which the idea of educating boys and girls in separate classes was declared ineffective and even detrimental in the long run. I'll admit I used to be an advocate of this type of education. It made sense to me as I felt that boys and girls learned differently and that those learning styles ought to be taken into account when educating our nation's youth. But over the years, I would have sporadic arguments with friends on this topic and through these discussions, I have been made to see that my initial thoughts on the subject were ultimately baseless. I still favor segregated education, but no longer on the basis of sex, but on the basis of learning styles.
Through arguments with friends, it came to our collective attention that there existed a root difference in the styles of learning: competitive versus cooperative. It was merely sexism that asserted boys were competitive and girls, cooperative in their respective learning styles. Now while this assertion may have some factual basis in that perhaps more than 50% of all boys are competitive learners and more than 50% of all girls are cooperative learners, it fails to account for the rest and punishing their minds on the basis of a chromosome was deemed unfair.
I'm not sure how best to go about this, but since schools are divided traditionally into elementary, middle, and high, they might be sorted out in the middle of the educational years. I was thinking that everyone is taught together in elementary school and teachers would be additionally charged with noting which students showed strengths in each of the learning styles in each of their subjects. When they've graduated to middle school, they would be separated in accordance to their styles. These students would not be put in different buildings...I would never want that and no student would necessarily be in all of one type of learning style class either. I personally might have fared better in competitive environments for subjects I showed aptitude with (the sciences and history) and cooperative environments in those subjects which I was weaker (mathematics and literature). High school would also continue in this vein, but I was also thinking a mission of middle schools would be for teachers to identify subject strengths in their students so that their high school education would focus more heavily on those elements (while still providing for a decent liberal arts education).
If only 30% of all students go on to graduate from college then a high school education must be sufficient to prepare the remaining 70% of those students for the workforce (minus that percentage, whatever it is, that move on to vocational schools). But that is another topic. Let me avoid rambling for once :-)
One point of this segregated education is that I still want the students to co-mingle. I'm guessing lunchtime and recess (and maybe gym class too since both cooperation and competitiveness are necessary to succeed in sports) would be opportune times. It's bad enough that the social classes tend to no longer mix at any level, I would not want student bodies to suffer that fate as well.
I would think such a separation of learning styles would prove advantageous to both types allowing the competitive types not to feel suppressed by the system and for the cooperative types not to feel stressed or left behind. Both styles of learning are of benefit to society and I'm sure you can imagine times when competitiveness is best and other times when cooperation is the ideal skill set to possess. That is all...
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