{"id":2074,"date":"2010-06-26T07:08:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T11:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/?p=2074"},"modified":"2010-06-25T09:32:13","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T13:32:13","slug":"the-cootie-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/06\/the-cootie-factor.html","title":{"rendered":"The Cootie Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2010\/06\/22\/the-new-segregation-debate.html\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.weop.net\/ub_program\/ub_2009\/dorm_life\/girls-20vs-20boys-small1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Boy-Girl\" src=\"http:\/\/www.weop.net\/ub_program\/ub_2009\/dorm_life\/girls-20vs-20boys-small1.jpg\" alt=\"Boy-Girl\" width=\"216\" height=\"188\" \/><\/a>Newsweek reports<\/a> on the reopening of the debate surrounding gender segregated education. But maybe the larger question is, what&#8217;s magic about gender?<\/p>\n<p>The article gives a fairly balanced coverage of a lot of the arguments that have been going on for decades.\u00a0 Most boil down to the question, are learning styles truly different, or are they merely reinforcing gender stereotypes?\u00a0 One interesting point is that while mixed gender classrooms have historically been seen as a possible disadvantage to girls, there&#8217;s increasing thought they might really be detrimental to boys.<\/p>\n<p>The article reaches no particular conclusion, and I also can&#8217;t say I have a strong personal opinion one way or the other.\u00a0 But what troubles me is more that if we start thinking girls learn differently from boys, why would that be the only line to be drawn?\u00a0 Sure, it brings up the obvious notion of going back to racially segregated schools.\u00a0 But what about other delineations that are likely more pedagogically defensible?<\/p>\n<p>How about if we use the elementary level IQ tests they give all the kids anyway to assign kids to middle and high schools based on IQ?\u00a0 Could anyone reasonably argue that schools full of nothing but the best and brightest would have outstanding academic achievements?\u00a0 Still, the public backlash against any such proposal would be swift and loud.<\/p>\n<p>What if you could show that kids with musical ability learned differently than others?\u00a0 Kids from troubled homes?\u00a0 Fat kids?\u00a0 The key point seems to be that as a society, we likely wouldn&#8217;t entertain dividing our public school students based on most all criteria.\u00a0 Why would we reasonably entertain doing it for gender?<\/p>\n<p>I think until we can answer the question of why gender should be so much more important than any other dividing line, this notion of gender segregation in schools is a non-starter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Newsweek reports on the reopening of the debate surrounding gender segregated education. But maybe the larger question is, what&#8217;s magic<\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/06\/the-cootie-factor.html\" title=\"Read The Cootie Factor\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-madscience","category-politics","category-xx-xy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2077,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2074\/revisions\/2077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}