Immokalee Community School has been following this model for 2 years with their sixth graders. It has worked wonders in enhancing student focus and allows teachers to teach to teache to the sexes. The majority of the girls prefer visual, creative experiences, where the boys like to build and dissect. Of course, any style is welcomed, regardless of the gender. At any rate, much success has come as result of this separation. The groups see each other for lunch and related arts, so they are nto totally segregated. It in no way infract upon equal rights!

This is probably a good idea, boys tend to be disruptive and misbehave, no reason to let them hold the girls back or deprive them of an education.

Apparently you've never been around a pack of giggling girls in school.

single gender classes is a great idea for both sexes. More learning and less BS.

I'm surprised, but I guess people are too young to remember single-sex classes. I'm not. And while I believe Superintendent Browder thinks he remembers, I believe that he's just as wrong about this issue as he is about "nap" of the neck. Superintendent James Browder remembers being a fifth grader and said this sort of program would have been beneficial.

“We were squirrely then, you know? Run, hit, jump, play, run, hit, smack, and, you know, be stupid,” Browder said. “It would have probably of been good for me to be in a fifth grade class with all boys, because the show-off factor goes away. Cus, ‘Oh. She’s cute, maybe if I’m acting stupid she’ll pay attention to me.’ My mother got me by the nap of the neck a couple of times." You want "nape," Mr. Browder.

People get these ideas based on thin air and are often not willing to listen to others with real experience and a good memory. Such a grade-schooly approach to education as Mr. Browder has is both stupid and silly.

I grew up in single-gender schools and remember well the aberrant sexual attitudes developed and verbalized among my peers. I've taught in single-gender high schools and know well the leaven that mixed gender classes bring to the academic focus.

As a good Catholic boy, I didn't use "bad language," although many others did every time they could get away with it. At the Air Force Academy I learned to swear like a sailor; it was all-male then, too. So was Notre Dame where I learned that I could unwittingly become part of a male mob and stupidly stampeded with the thousands to the all-girls school two miles away and stormed the girls' dorm in panty raids that resulted in the lucky guys' spending several frolicsome hours bedded with the tantalizingly pantyless ladies, albeit fearful of the prowling nun-police in the hallways.

American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist Larry Spalding is correct when he said the bill could be dangerous and may be unconstitutional. His words are as true as apartheid is wrong: “Segregation is bad whether it’s race, ethnicity or gender.”

This is a terrible experiment embodying all that's wrong with the perversions of the puritan ethic. Academic focus in a classroom is in no way enhanced with single-sex segregation. Our fantasies leap between the mind and the page and block attentive close reading.

This guy was in the service? Oh, the Air Force.

Nekayah,

I too have experience with single sex education, and I have taught in co-ed classrooms. I wonder if your concern about aberrant sexual attitudes has more to do with the repressive attitudes toward sex that have flourished in the Catholic Church than it does single-sex education. I grew up Catholic -- with sixteen years of Catholic education. Single-sex high school classrooms allowed me to learn to speak up without worrying about whether I would have a date on Saturday night if I said the wrong thing. The nuns and priests who taught me had the weird ideas about sex. The kids in this elementary school see each other in related arts and at lunch. They have plenty of interaction.

I find it interesting that you are concerned about the "aberrant sexual attitudes" that these kids might get, although they have plenty of mixed gender time the rest of the day. Worry about the poor priests and nuns who spend their lives in the single sex life style. Maybe you have stumbled on the reason for so many "aberrant sexual attitudes" among the priests.

Great idea!!! More learning and less messing around. They're not talking about same sex schools, just same sex classes. How can that not be better for both sexes???

There is an excellent article in the New York Times today about this same subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/mag...

Good, maybe this will help decrease the rampant drugging of little boys. If they would let little Johnie take more shots at the basketball hoop, then they won't have to put so many shots in his arm.

Little tiny steps at a time.

First single classess that have single sexes.

Then single schools that have single sexes.

Next single subjects taught to single sexes.

To date, as far as I know, no institute of learning has ever been single sex. There have always been opposite sex present in the schools. Maybe not among the students but definitely among the staff.

How can Hana Ahmad make a reasonalbe argument that segregatiting sexes improved the males scores? She was present. Or is she not female for those classess? Does she have any proof that her teaching methods were EXACTLY the same in the single sex (amongst students) classess?

Perhaps she was more of a disciplanarian in the all male classess. But that would prove an entirely different point wouldn't it?

Perhaps she was equal in her discipline but APPLIED it in different ways in the two same sex classess.

That would only show that she is not able to apply equal but different methods to the two sexes at the same time.

Already, in some few cases, we see parents arguing that their child's sexual identity is established as young as 10 years.

So to be fair we will have to establish all male (homosexual) classess, all female (homosexual) classess, all male (bisexual) classess, all female (bisexual) classess, in addition to all male classess, and all female classess.

Don't think it will happen? Any of you old enough to remember when simple "sex education" was first mentioned and at what age students were required to take it? My parents, who are only 16 years older than I, can remember the flack from illustrations of male and female internal reproductive organs in their school books.

Look where we are today.

All this "study" shows is that children require discipline to learn. But we knew that didn't we?

Go ahead though. Give some parents one more reason to scream why their child is such a problem learner. "Little Billy/ Betty needs to have all his classess with only students of the same sex."

Part of learning is how to deal with distractions. Part of teaching is to teach a student to focus.

Its easy to be a Saint if you completely remove yourself from all human contact.

Its easy to teach if you remove all the students to a controlled enviroment.

Why do you think so many schools today have so few windows?

As a male I once disagreed with this approach but today I see it can have benefits. I saw firsthand the classes in Immokalee and the girls didn't quiet down around the alpha male. They set their own hierarchy free of the boys. It won't hurt young men to focus themselves. Later in life after the girls become women, they won't be afraid to speak their mind. I disagree with the aclu on this one because I was a boy once too. I remember chasing girls long before I knew I was acting out roles I was unknowingly imitating. Allowing the girls time to use their head before the tv images of bare midriff girls changes them waaay before they are ready is a headstart they deserve. There's time for Britney Spears roleplay later.

Back to the Dark Ages!!!! I'm still wondering how much "sweeter" my life would've been had I not been "CAST ASIDE" by this so-called "same gender" classes. I attended a private Catholic school for girls. Both my brothers attended a private Catholic school for boys. And being the youngest didn't help. Set apart from an early beginning we drifted away more as years went by. I had spent very little "quality" time with my siblings. Once married all 3 of my children attended regular public schools here in this country. What a difference. How fortunate they were. Now their own children also attend regular public schools. It was horrible then, and to this day it still quite discriminatory, separatory, and not conducive to the well-being of the child.

Maybe the "willingness to please" will carry over to adulthood and put a stop to all these demands for things like equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity for promotions, etc., etc. We certainly don't want girls growing up thinking they can compete with the guys when they get to the office/factory/mill/mine etc.

Segregation rather than integration has worked for centuries, oh wait, I forgot no it hasn't, so let's avoid the hard parts of teaching children to be part of a society and cloister them into separate areas so that we can deal with them....

Sounds really great, but will we have to keep them separated in college and then in the workplace and then in retirement homes, when will they actually be ready to behave like true members of a society, or do we just change society instead.

I was in an all girl's HS. I hated it then, but what a great education I received. I KNOW if I had to deal with a co-ed school (and all the drama) I would not have done as well. I would not have cared about academics but more about whether or not "John" is talking to "Alice".

LOL....I think some boys and girls would benefit from single gender classrooms.

I, too, taught in single gendered classrooms up north and co-ed. I preferred single more because I think the girls felt more empowered and the boys didn't try to out do one another for a girl's attention.

It sure sounds like segragation to me.Which has been outlawed. Maybe we should seperate the girls into ugly and pretty clases.Then into their ethnic backgrounds.This is ridiculous. Wake up people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the talking heads will do everything they can to stop us from thinking on our own. People need to pay attention to what they are agreeing to. How can we possibly function as a society if we are all sequestered into specialty groups. This is just a start keep us from communicating to each other. Think of what the kids have lost already.Forbidden to peacefully protest,everyone must wear the same clothes,(uniforms), now start them on not being able to socialize.Before you know it there will be a law saying this is how it is,with harsh penalties for those who oppose it.We need to stand tall and question authority.Ask why,tell what we want and don't want,become the people our fore fathers fought for. Not paranoid,just fed up with so many rules and controling ways of the noisy minority. If wrong bash me,but at least think it over.

Separating the sexes for education, especially at puberty, when hormones speak louder than anything else, is a an old, old tradition. Some of the best schools in the world still follow this idea. Ancient tribes and upper-class systems in Europe often separate the genders. It's true that sometimes the purpose is to teach them their assigned roles in society, but it does not have to be that way. Single sex classrooms allow kids to concentrate on the material at hand, instead of concentrating on the cute girl in the third row. If the teacher is at all astute, he or she allows the students to follow their own lights when it comes to setting the tone of the class. Girls' classes are not always prissy group hugs. The girls feel more free to argue, to take a strong position with less fear of appearing unfeminine. They bring that experience with them when they go on to higher education. Boys are freed of the constant pressure to try to get the attention of the girls with so-called manly posing. They too are able to say what they think. No single system is the answer to all the problems all the time, but why are we so afraid of another idea? We have become so politicall correct that we are afraid of everything.

It's not a conspiracy. It's just a way to capture the kids attention. Try to teach the repercussions of the Treaty of Versailles to a fifteen year old boy on hormone overload who is sitting next to a fifteen year old voluptuous girl. He is more concerned about using his history book as a shield than he is opening the book and reading it.

People need to realize the kids today are bombarded with oversexualized images of losers like Britney Spears and her bare midriff. Boys heroes don't comb their hair and wear pants which expose their rear end. This is no atmosphere for learning. This stuff stops when there are single sex classes and the kids can learn. Adults can mingle as they please but we as adults need to make sure they can learn and not just leer.