>          Boyschool = Bad
>
>
> John-
>
> I can't fathom this logic. The inevitable corrolary of all-girl schools,
> which are now being pushed with ferociousness by the fems, is all-bay
> schools, which are now the ultimate evil, also according to the fems.
>
> They used to call this crazy-making.
>
> -Bill
>
> *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Forwarded Message =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
>
> Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 12:01:47 -0400
> From: Alan Finger <finger@CYTEK.COM>
> Subject: fgj-l Same ol' myths
> To: "'fgi-l'" <fgj-l@igc.org>
>
> We truly live in a gynocentric society.
>
> From ClariNet
>
>  - Alan
>
> ==============================
> ClariNet story HIGH-HIGH from CSM / Jennifer Longley
> Copyright 1997 by Christian Science Monitor / Mon, 7 Jul 1997 6:21:57 PDT
>
>
> High School Students Say Single-Sex Schools Are an Academic Plus
>
>
>
> At Miss Porter's School, a 154-year-old prep school here, all the
> academic and athletic stars are girls, as are all the leads in the
> school plays and the most talented artists and musicians.
>
> As Caitlin Doyle, a freshman from East Hampton, N.Y., says, ``Here, we
> run the show.''
>
> Caitlin is a bubbly teen with a passion for learning and a dream of
> becoming a movie producer. She knows an all-girls school was right for
> her. ``I came from a school system where kids don't even care about
> learning,'' she says. ``Here, everyone's bright and intelligent and they
> want to learn.''
>
> Single-sex prep schools - particularly those for girls - are basking in
> a renaissance. Applications and enrollments are up. Advocates say more
> families are deciding that single-sex education is not a vestige of
> Victorianism but a valuable option with far-reaching social and academic
> advantages.
>
> Half a dozen single-sex schools have opened since 1995, and segregated
> classrooms in public schools, while legally questionable, are being
> trumpeted as a solution to high school girls lagging behind boys in math
> and science. In 1991 there were an estimated 29,000 students in
> all-girls schools in the United States; today, there are close to
> 36,000.
>
> These increases are occurring amid the rise in coed schools in recent
> decades. In the mid-1960s, only about 38 percent of private schools were
> coed, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.
> Today, 83 percent are coed. Of the remaining 17 percent, 9 percent are
> girls' schools and 8 percent are just for boys. (Figures do not include
> parochial schools.)
>
> Part of the mission of administrators of single-sex schools is to
> graduate girls with the self-esteem to ``make [the playing] field level
> later on,'' says M. Burch Tracy Ford, who heads Miss Porter's School.
>
> ``Schools are an extension of the larger culture, and when boys and
> girls come together life tends to be on the boys' terms,'' Ms. Ford
> says. ``Girls are socialized to be accommodating, and in a coed setting
> girls tend to defer to the boys and to accommodate rather than really
> focus on their development.''
>
> A 1992 report from the American Association of University Women, ``How
> Schools Shortchange Girls,'' makes the case that girls are inadvertently
> neglected in coed classes. ``This report presents the truth behind a
> myth: that girls and boys receive an equal education,'' it begins.
>
> The report claims teachers of both genders pay more attention to boys -
> in part because unruly boys demand it. Imani Brown, a freshman at Miss
> Porter's from San Jose, Calif., felt that was so in classrooms she used
> to sit in. ``[Before], classes seemed to go slower because the boys
> seemed to be very disruptive and rowdy. I didn't learn as much because
> the teachers were always concentrating on them and trying to get them to
> pay attention, and so a lot of the girls got kind of ignored,'' Imani
> says.
>
> Caitlin's father, Sean Doyle, doesn't need a study to know his daughter
> made the right choice ``She has blossomed in so many directions,'' he
> says.
>
> Supporters of single-sex schools point out that boys as well as girls
> benefit without the distractions of the opposite sex. Students say they
> are better able to concentrate on learning free of the posturing and
> primping that goes on in coed schools. ``It's easier because I don't
> have to worry about how I look in the morning. I can just go to class
> and I don't have to put on makeup or worry if my hair's messy,'' Imani
> says.
>
> Ross Johnson from Mendham, N.J., a senior at the all-boys Salisbury
> School in Salisbury, Conn., says he is more apt to ask questions in
> class because he doesn't have to worry what girls will think of him.
>
> ``The social pressure is kind of taken off here,'' Ross says.
>
> Educators seem to agree that there is more evidence supporting the
> benefits of girls' schools than those for boys, but advocates for boys'
> schools are nevertheless convinced that they are needed, too.
>
> Richard Hawley is the headmaster of University School in Cleveland and
> president of a three-year-old boys' schools coalition.
>
> ``We have never been more persuaded than now,'' he says of his belief in
> single-sex schools. ``There is absolutely no research to support
> academic or social reasons for coeducation.''
>
>
> Back to Front Page News | Back to Shore.Net
>
>