Single Sex

I ordinarily wouldn't have read Elizabeth Weil's New York Times Magazine article on single-sex education, but since she quotes "Sara Mead, an education expert at the New America Foundation" I checked it out.

The whole thing seems a bit dubious. I think there's a very sound policy argument that we should have more experimentation with pedagogical techniques and I have no problem with the idea that experimentation with single-sex education should be part of that. But this guy Leonard Sax just sounds like a quack. I mean, here's a guy who's not a neurologist and has no policy experience, but he's decided to draw sweeping policy conclusions based on controversial neurological research? I have my doubts.

At any rate, you find much more along these lines from Sara herself at her new blog. Bottom line:

As a result, boys and girls are, on average, at different levels of lanugage and motor development when they enter school. Sax and Gurian see this as one argument for separate sex, gender-based schooling. That might be reasonable if gender were the only source of variance in young children's learning. But it's not: Young children's development is highly variable. Some 5-year-old girls might lag many boys in language skills, and some boys' motor skills might lag those of their female peers. If one is really concerned about adjusting education to variations in children's development, increased customization and multi-age groupings in early elementary school, which allow teachers to group children who are developmentally similar, regardless of age, and chidlren to progress at their own paces, are a far better solution than simply separating children by sex.

In mild defense of the article, it seems to me that if you read it all the way through it becomes clear that Sax is a quack. On the other hand, the whole framing of the piece around Sax and his ideas seems to suggest that he's not a quack and we all need to be wrestling with his fake neurology.

Comments

Didn't Matt just do a posting yesterday strongly implying that any claim of an innate statistical difference in female/male mental/psychological behavior was "sexist"?

And didn't most of Matt's commenters cheer him on about this?

Matt may be a Harvard philosophy major, but I'm not sure he's being very smart in accusing his own girl-friend of being a "sexist"...

Posted by RKU | March 3, 2008 1:11 PM

"If one is really concerned about adjusting education to variations in children's development, increased customization and multi-age groupings in early elementary school, which allow teachers to group children who are developmentally similar, regardless of age, and chidlren to progress at their own paces, are a far better solution than simply separating children by sex."

The problem with multi-aged classrooms and development grouping is that these kinds of classrooms are very hard to teach. You have to modify the lessons and work in small groups (while the other kids are doing what?). It's a good thing to do that, but hard for a single teacher. Plus, it can be construed as tracking, which is a dirty word in most schools.

ps. Atlantic magazine, get some new servers or IT geniuses or something. My blog experience is being degraded.

Posted by cw | March 3, 2008 1:14 PM

Someone needs to ask Steve Sailer about this. Quick!

Posted by Sam L | March 3, 2008 1:21 PM

totally unrelated, but has everyone read this vanity fair piece yet?

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

"Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war."

obviously a must-read. especially on a day when jamie kirchick writes:

"Hillary couldn't find a better example of Obama's foreign policy naivete than his attempt to intervene in the domestic politics of our most important ally in the Middle East. Given that Likud will probably form the next Israeli government, why would Obama go out of his way to ridicule the party and declare that its sympathizers in America have a nefarious influence on our politics? Statements such as the one Obama made last week are highly unusual and ill-advised for a presidential contender, never mind a president."

it would be funnier if lots of people weren't dead.

Posted by Max B. | March 3, 2008 1:21 PM

The problem with multi-aged classrooms and development grouping is that these kinds of classrooms are very hard to teach. You have to modify the lessons and work in small groups (while the other kids are doing what?). It's a good thing to do that, but hard for a single teacher. Plus, it can be construed as tracking, which is a dirty word in most schools.

I would assume that this approach would involve splitting children by ability among a set of teachers in different classrooms, which is how we rolled in my public elementary school back in the early 1980s, when "tracking" was not yet a dirty word.

Which reminds me... can someone explain why "tracking" a dirty word in education circles nowadays? I've never understood the opposition.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | March 3, 2008 1:27 PM

RKU-- Short answer, no Matt is not implying that a claim of an innate statistical difference in female/male behavior was "sexist".

Long answer:
He was implying that calling all women stupid is sexist, which I agree with.

The "big brain" quote that Matt highlighted has been a "neo-phrenology" claim that has been used to claim for example that black people are stoooopider than white people. The fact that such results would also imply stuff like certain American Indian tribes (I think Iriqois would be one) would be super-duper geniuses gets less press.

Basically, Matt is just ridiculing those who push crap psuedo-science. But if you would rather jump to conclusions, RKU, feel free.

Posted by Dean Chung | March 3, 2008 1:28 PM

So Matt are you going to marry this broad or what?

Posted by Random Dude | March 3, 2008 1:33 PM

"As a result, boys and girls are, on average, at different levels of lanugage and motor development when they enter school."

Matt,

Is your tendency to make typos contagious?

Posted by Fred | March 3, 2008 1:34 PM

It is also interesting how little well-known the definition of a 'crank' is. It's not just about being crazy. It's about not being integrated into the academic discipline. Now the crank would complain that he's being excluded unfairly. But on the other hand, the academia's regard for and engagement with someone's work is a far more reliable indicator of it's quality than your first-hand impression of the crank's intelligence.

Thus, this guy is clearly a crank, but the article is totally unable to recognize it.

Posted by mpowell | March 3, 2008 1:37 PM

Among the idiocies of the NYT Magazine piece was creating a trend out of approximately 46 single sex public schools in the U.S. That is such a tiny drop in the bucket - maybe, what, .01 percent of public schools in the U.S. - that it was easy to see the piece was going to be a tendentious piece of crap. And so it proved to be.

Posted by roger | March 3, 2008 1:39 PM

LFP,
The short answer to why we got rid of "tracking" by ability: the argument was that it damaged children's self-esteem if they weren't in the top track. And that this was more important than whether they were in a situation where they could actually learn something effectively. Honest! That was the argument.

By now, it's part of the received wisdom in the education schools, and hence the education establishment, across the country.

Of course, it doesn't help that there are lots of parents who are just certain that their little darling must be above average in every way. As if being academically gifted was the only thing that matters in life. But getting them to accept reality will be almost as challenging as getting the education establishment turned around.

Posted by wj | March 3, 2008 1:42 PM

Matt,

You come off as an MD-neurology worshipper. I am suspicious of Sax, but lack of Neurology certification is not a factor. I skimmed the article, but I'm more impressed with and MD and a PhD in psychology for U Penn than a certification in Neurology.

Posted by jk | March 3, 2008 1:47 PM

can someone explain why "tracking" [is] a dirty word in education circles nowadays?

I think a combination of two things: first, tracks ended up categorizing a child for his entire academic career, based on his/her performance around the age of 11 or 12, and this was considered to be stifling, especially for late bloomers.

Next, there has arisen a trend among educators that the best thing is "integrated" classes where the smart students "help" the slower students catch up.

I think the first issue is a valid one and the second issue is stupid and counter-productive, but that's just my non-expert opinion.

Posted by Tyro | March 3, 2008 1:47 PM

I have to assume that the tracking programs must have just been implemented really poorly, or the way they worked ineffectively communicated.

Theoretically, if your kid is in the lowest reading group and he gets moved up (w/o merit) into the 'regular' reading group, does this imply he will be learning at a slower rate? If it doesn't, then I can see that as a serious argument against tracking. But if it actually hinders his learning, then educators just need to do a better job of communicating this to parents. And possibly also work to make sure that these designations aren't sticky so that if some students actually do improve relative to their peers they can move up.

Regardless, we are probably stuck with the way things are for at least another 10 years I would imagine. I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of educating at home when I'm a parent.

Posted by mpowell | March 3, 2008 1:50 PM

I should have been careful to avoid committing a typo while commenting on the subject of language ability.

Tyro, I fully understand the opposition to extremely rigid tracking systems that use test scores to dictate a child's entire educational career. It just seems to me that the pendulum has swung much too far in the opposite direction. We currently track children exclusively by age, which (as Sara Mead noted) is an extremely imperfect method due to the tremendous variability in child development.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | March 3, 2008 2:05 PM

Well, LaFollette, as someone who was tracked low and had to claw my way up to the top, I have a certain amount of skepticism for most tracking that's done on-the-cheap.

At the same time, I dislike educational initiatives that ask themselves, "how can we most effectively exploit our best students?" rather than, "how can we best nuture and challenge our best students?"

Hearing how the high school in a city I grew up in decided to completely dismantled a system that offered high-level classes for its most ambitious students, I'm willing to believe that the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, but I also have to accept that I would have been academically ruined if my school had based all of my future opportunities based on my performance in 7th and 8th grade.

Posted by Tyro | March 3, 2008 2:14 PM

Matt,

BTW, what's Sara's take on Sandra Tsing Loh's "Tales out of School" in the current Atlantic?

Posted by Fred | March 3, 2008 2:15 PM

Matt, there have been a lot of good posts at language log in the past about the bizarre reporting concerning the science of sex differences. For a start, try David Brooks, Neuroendocrinologist. Sax appears in that article, as well as Louann Brizedine, the grand poobah of bullshit.

Posted by Justin | March 3, 2008 2:53 PM

Matt, there have been a lot of good posts at language log in the past about the bizarre reporting concerning the science of sex differences. For a start, try David Brooks, Neuroendocrinologist. Sax appears in that article, as well as Louann Brizedine, the grand poobah of bullshit.

Posted by Justin | March 3, 2008 2:54 PM

Matt-- there's an even more relevant post in Language Log which addresses the Times article directly. Check out "Scrupulously Avoiding Sigma."

Posted by Malayer | March 3, 2008 4:07 PM

Having just gone through education school, I know that what they teach in good education schools are called "best practices," which are teaching methods that have been researched and proven effective. Education is one of the most thoroughly researched fields of knowledge that there is and if every school competently adopted the best practices, then our children's education would improve (politics, teacher quality, money, the "experts" in the public, teachers unions, ect... get in the way of this). The kind of tracking that they sometimes practiced in the past--especially in elementary school--where you were basically assigned to a track in kindergarten and then stayed there was pretty harmful. A small child is a learning machine and if you teach them that they are in the low group and keep reinforcing it every year then, that's what they learn.

For some reason education is one of those fields where everyone feels like they are an expert, no matter what experience they actually have.

Posted by cw | March 3, 2008 4:40 PM

Tracking tends to sort children by race and class.

Posted by Bloix | March 3, 2008 8:07 PM

"Education is one of the most thoroughly researched fields of knowledge that there is and if every school competently adopted the best practices, then our children's education would improve"

Pardon me...

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

Sorry...

The very nature of "school" inhibits and prevents "education" (whatever that non-concept is supposed to mean.) Development of human intelligence and social survival training is utterly unrelated to either.

The human species did quite well for scores of thousands of years without a "school" system other than the necessary training provided by the tribal system. Currently, the ability of technology to substitute for the tribal system and the current "educational system" has not even been remotely significantly tested.

Abolishing the entire educational establishment - and following it up with the abolishment of the "nuclear family" - would be the best thing that ever happened to this country.

What we do know is that the current system has produced generations of morons who can't even find Italy on a map, balance their checkbook, or comprehend simple logic.

There are reasons this country is going into the toilet, and the "educational system" is a major one.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 3, 2008 11:23 PM

Matt,

You come off as an MD-neurology worshipper.

Umm, don't think Sara went to medical school.

As for our recent Education school grad, I appreciate your honesty. I know you're just out of school, but don't let RSH's enthusiasm fool you. He's telling you straight what every doctor, engineer, lawyer or other professional you will ever meet is thinking--- Education school is not worthy of more respect than any other form of adult day care.

When every elementary school in America is teaching by Direct Instruction, maybe Ed schools can turn that image around. Oh, and I'm delighted to hear that the 'good' Ed schools use "best practices". It's only been corporate cliche for last quarter century. You now have me afraid the 'bad' Ed schools are all about "paradigm shifts".

Posted by beowulf | March 4, 2008 4:33 AM