Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Against Gender-Divided Classroom Preliminary Argument

If schools were to become segregated and have classes for just boys and just girls, it would have a couple adverse effects. The social skills between the two sexes would drastically drop. Boys would no longer know how to act appropriately around girls, while girls would not know how to act around boys. The opposite sex would become foreign to them. When they would come in contact with each other, they may act completely shy towards them or take the opposite stance and be too open with them. Either result would be detrimental to society. Also a room full of boys or a room full of girls, just seems to have fight written all over it. Boys are known to be more rowdy and usually deal with their problems with each other through fights. In other words, they "duke it out", then forget about it. Girls on the other hand, are known for being talkers and tend to bicker and verbally fight when they have a problem.

            In either situation, it is unlikely that much will be accomplished when you have either a room full of wrestling boys or a room full of gossiping girls. As stated in an article in Child & Adolescent Mental Health “Children and adolescents exposed to violence may develop mental health problems, impacting their ability to develop appropriate social-emotional skills.  Limited development of social-emotional skills has been associated with poor performance in school,” (Aviles, 2006).  This shows that not only would putting students in such an environment that increases the likelihood of being around various forms of violence be detrimental to their social skills, but it would also affect their academic performance.  This would achieve the opposite of the effect that is desired from gender divided classes.  If separating boys and girls would result in poor social skills and lower academic levels, then why would you do it?

            If you were to keep the classes mixed, I believe a lot more would be accomplished because the boys and girls would equal each other out and they would grow up around each other, so they would know how to act towards the opposite sex.  Also, this would lower the amount of violent situations they would encounter compared to if they were in gender divided classes.  So by increasing the social interactions between the genders and lowering the chances of violent situations arising by keeping classes mixed, it will result in a better learning experience for all.
Aviles, A., Anderson, T., & Davila, E. (2006). Child and Adolescent Social-Emotional Development Within the Context of School. Child & Adolescent Mental Health, 11(1), 32-39. doi:10.1111/j.1475-3588.2005.00365.x.

1 comment:

  1. I definitely agree with everything you said on this post. The social development would certainly falter, and the class environment would suffer as well. But I would even understand going through this if the test scores and grades showed significant improvements, but studies show that they don't. So what's the point of causing all these problems with the children and the classrooms if good results aren't even being produced?

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