Single-Sex Classes Not The Answer

The newest wrinkle in American public school education is actually an old one: single-sex classes. This idea is increasingly being promoted all across the country as a way to increase learning by boys and girls.

Some educators insist that boys and girls find difficulty in functioning in the presence of the opposite sex. It is better, the argument goes, for children to perform in the presence of a single gender.

Nonsense! This is nothing more than a lost idea, making the rounds again among educators who simply don’t know what else to try.

For decades, schools fought for sexual integration. The rationale was that boys and girls must learn to live in the real world that is made up of males and females. If boys and girls don’t interact in school, many will have difficulty relating in life.

The problem is not that girls and boys in the same classroom resulted in both groups failing, but that drugs, guns and chaos have become too prevalent in public schools. It’s permissiveness that leads to pregnancy, not merely the presence of boys and girls in the same buildings. The decline of standards also has led to the descent of family life and respect between the sexes.

School programs that attempt to bribe boys not to drop out of school and girls not to become pregnant are being tried throughout the country. They are anything but enlightening. Paying kids to do what’s right sends the wrong message. It’s better to show them the rewards of making proper decisions by increasing their opportunities.

The time to begin shaping children is closer to age 15 months than 15 years. It’s more difficult to get teenagers on the right track than to keep them there from the beginning.

There isn’t a chance in the world that I would send one of my children to a school that needs a metal detector at the door to increase safety. If it’s necessary to place armed police officers in a school building, it might be best to remove your children from the school.

Nor are school uniforms the answer. What’s missing in education is uniform behavior.

If there are no consequences for misbehavior, children are already doomed. It’s not latchkey kids who are driving down the system, but latchkey parents.

The system of public education is more than 100 years old and it’s painfully obvious it’s still not working well. One reason for this persistent problem has been that those in charge have been placing the blame on nearly everyone and everything except those who are at least partially responsible: the children themselves.

Children must be exposed to several fundamental courses beginning with Reality 101. They must be taught the relationship between learning and rewards and must not be seduced by monetary incentives alone, but by an appreciation that what they need most is altered lifestyles that will lead to improved values and new opportunities.

Skyrocketing school budgets have for generations paid for disappointing failure. Clearly, money alone will do little more than ensure that public education will remain the stepchild of big business, disingenuous politicians and bewildered social workers.

Children must learn that the real definition of genius is perspiration and that success is not garnered through gifts, but is the outcome of hard work. Students should be taught there are no guarantees for anyone and that there’s no enduring profit in self-pity.

They must begin learning, perhaps as early as in kindergarten, that making the right choices, instead of taking aimless chances, will determine their future more than anything.

Sharing classrooms with the opposite sex can be troublesome for teens who are sometimes controlled more by their hormones than their brains. But if sexually integrated classes are shared from the beginning of education, self-consciousness will not necessarily take over during the pubescent years.

Boys and girls should see one another as partners, not competitors. It is hardly the time to set back the cause of gender equality at the very moment girls are making inroads into all-male institutions.

Girls High in Philadelphia may be a rare and pleasant anachronism - a single-sex public high school - but it is not a model for schools across the nation.

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