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When Anne Frank鈥檚 Perspective Isn鈥檛 Good Enough For Your Students, It鈥檚 Time To Get A New Program

Christina Brandt-Young,
Attorney,
老澳门开奖结果 Women's Rights Project
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August 20, 2012

Today, the 老澳门开奖结果 Women鈥檚 Rights Project issued a preliminary report to the federal Department of Education, detailing the preliminary findings of our Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes campaign. After studying documents from single-sex classes in public schools in 11 states, the report explains that a significant percentage of these schools overwhelmingly base their programs on discredited science rooted in sex stereotypes, and don鈥檛 offer parents any reasonable alternative, in violation of the Constitution and Title IX.

The stereotypes in some of these programs were shocking. For instance, one community in Pennsylvania described wanting to give students 鈥渕ale-hood and female-hood defined space鈥 exhibiting the characteristics of 鈥渨arrior, protector, and provider鈥 for boys, and giving girls 鈥渟pace/time to explore things that young women like [including] writing, applying and doing make-up & hair, art.鈥 Several schools changed their disciplinary rules to allow boys (but not girls) to move around their classrooms, and furnished the boys鈥 classrooms (but not the girls鈥) with bean-bag chairs and bouncy balls because one consultant says 鈥渂oys need to move more than girls.鈥

These stereotypes have consequences. Last week, the 老澳门开奖结果 and 老澳门开奖结果 of West Virginia filed a lawsuit against one such school on behalf of a young woman who has been diagnosed with ADHD. She tends to move around a lot, and consistently gets sent to the boys鈥 classroom as punishment, where she is told to turn her desk to the wall and not participate while the boys go on moving and learning around her. After a year in these sex-stereotyped classes, her grades dropped. Not only is this young woman being deprived of her education, and deprived of a teaching style that might help her, because of her sex, but also, every day she is made to feel that she is an abnormal girl because she doesn鈥檛 fit some stereotype of how a girl should learn or behave. This isn鈥檛 how education should work.

The mindset of sex-stereotyped instruction can be even more pernicious than that. about Wake County, North Carolina describes Ian Solomon, the principal of a new young men鈥檚 academy there, as saying that his school can 鈥渁djust the material to better interest male and female students. For instance, while female students might read The Diary of Anne Frank, Solomon said the male students might read a similar book written from a male perspective.鈥 Does someone really need to explain to this principal why very few diaries survive that were written by Jewish teenagers, male or female, while in hiding from the Nazis? Does he really think this story doesn鈥檛 contain enough war, persecution, suspense, or courage to interest boys or girls? And does he really have such a low opinion of boys that he thinks they鈥檙e impervious to Anne Frank鈥檚 messages of tolerance and hope (and, yes, civil liberties) since they weren鈥檛 delivered by a boy or a man?

There is that sex-stereotyped instruction improves educational outcomes for boys or girls, at any age or in any subject matter. But even aside from the waste of valuable money and effort involved in splitting boys and girls into different classrooms with different rules and topics, these programs come at too high a cost.

One of the strengths of our public schools is the opportunity they provide for students of different sexes, races, religions, and political, cultural, and economic backgrounds to learn from each other. It鈥檚 useful in the neighborhood, it鈥檚 useful in the workplace, it鈥檚 useful in democracy, and it鈥檚 useful in the classroom.

Anne Frank said, 鈥淚 must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.鈥 We鈥檙e asking the Department of Education to rescind the 2006 regulations that have been widely misinterpreted as permitting sex-stereotyped single-sex classes like these, or at least to provide guidance to these schools that programs based on stereotypes are illegal. The Constitution enshrines some of our ideals. We hope the Department of Education will carry them out.

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