Ga. School System to Go Single-Sex

[corranged]

I don't like the fact that the new initiative is a requirement instead of an option.

My immediate thought was for transgender or other genderqueer students who do not feel comfortable being identified as "male" or "female" or do not feel their gender agrees with their physical sex. I don't care if these students don't want to "come out" in high school; that's not the point. The point is that these kids would feel horrendously uncomfortable day after day in such a situation. I can see forced single-sex education having serious, long-term detrimental effects on transgender students. As is, the suicide rate for trans youth is said to exceed 50%; a middle school boy was murdered at school a couple of weeks ago by another middle schooler after he started to wear makeup and high heels to school (actually, in just the past 3 weeks, 3 young trans people were murdered). This is not just an issue of inconvenience or unpleasantness for affected children; this is about keeping students safe and comfortable while at school (LGBT students are 5 times more likely to report having skipped school in the past month due to safety concerns). You can't just expect a hurting, confused, harassed child (75.4% of students frequently hear terms like "faggot" while at school; 37.8% of students reported experiencing physical harassment because of sexual orientation) to keep their head down throughout elementary, middle, and high school until they can leave.

My statistics are al from GLSEN's latest study released on GLBT safety in schools.

[jessiehl]

i go to a single sex hs, and girls really do excel at science when they don't have to be "stupid at guy subjects".

Funny. In my district (where the public schools were all coed but most of the Catholic high schools were gender-segregated), the girls at girls' schools, based on my observations of students from both, received a vastly inferior math and science education to the boys at boys' schools and the students at coed schools.

I do think that school systems should provide a range of choices, and if some folks want to opt in to a single-gender school/program, I'm okay with that.

But I would have hated, hated, hated the idea of being in one of those schools myself. I would have hated it on principle. I would have hated it in practice (I tended not to get along well with groups of girls). I would have hated the notion that because I'm a girl I automatically learn in a different style than the boys.

Also, I second corranged's comment. LGBT youth have a hard enough time as it is.

[Kelowna]

The catholic school I am familiar with offers separate math classes to boys and girls in 7and 8 grade. The rationale was that girls are usually in the shadows of better perfoming males, not being able to extend their wings fully to their abilities.
I believe that the test scores for girls have improved.

[jessiehl]

The catholic school I am familiar with offers separate math classes to boys and girls in 7and 8 grade. The rationale was that girls are usually in the shadows of better perfoming males, not being able to extend their wings fully to their abilities.
I believe that the test scores for girls have improved.

I'm glad that it has led to an improvement. But why can't we, instead of segregating students (the phrase "separate but equal" comes to mind), socialize girls to speak up in class, to not be afraid of math, to not be intimidated by the boys, to assert themselves? That would address the same problem, and it would be helpful in so many areas other than math class.