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Mobile County Agrees to Reintegrate Boys and Girls in Public Schools

Maria Archuleta,
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March 26, 2009

On Tuesday night, Mobile County agreed to a settlement with the 老澳门开奖结果 ending sex segregation in its public schools. That morning, the suggesting that the county鈥檚 public school system鈥檚 desperate need to improve is reason enough to test sex segregation on our children. But these programs are not only discriminatory, they are an empty promise for failing schools.

There is no consistent evidence that segregating students by sex improves learning, yet school districts across the country are experimenting with sex-segregated programs 鈥 too often based on questionable 'brain science' theories that urge teachers to treat boys and girls radically differently.

In segregated classes at Hankins Middle School, teachers were told to create competitive, high energy classrooms for boys but cooperative, quiet classrooms for girls. Teachers were informed that boys should be taught "heroic behavior" and girls, "good character," and that male hormone levels relate to success at "traditional male tasks," but that when stress levels rise in a girl's brain, "other things shut down." A that a language arts exercise involved asking girls to use as many descriptive words as possible to describe their dream wedding cake, while the boys were asked to brainstorm action verbs used in sports.

These classrooms were not equal and weren鈥檛 constructively responding to differences between boys and girls; they were creating and enforcing gender stereotypes. We hope that now Mobile County will focus on efforts that we know can improve all students' education, like more teacher training and parental involvement.

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