Bush Admin. pushes sex-segregated education

Posted by Ann Friedman at 10:09 AM on October 26, 2006.

The Bush administration recently announced it's easing restrictions to encourage more sex-segregated public schools. I'm with most of the major civil liberties groups in saying I'm not happy with this smackdown of Title IX.

(And before everybody goes shouting that, "Hey! But feminists loooove women-only colleges!", let me say that sex-segregated education is a vastly different issue when we're talking about public K-12 schools. )

Sure, some studies have shown that both girls and boys can benefit from being in a sex-segregated learning environment. But the right-wingers who are pushing for more single-sex schools don't have these benefits in mind. This is more of a tool to reinforce traditional gender roles than it is to improve learning.

Brad Plumer illustrates this with a great quote from the ACLU's complaint (PDF) against sex-segregated schools in Louisiana:

Mr. Murphy briefly outlined the differences in instruction that would be given to girls and to boys.

For instance, girls would receive character education and be subject to high expectations both academically and socially. Girls would be taught math through "hands-on" approaches. Field trips, physical movement, and multisensory strategies would be incorporated into girls' classes. Girls would act as mentors for elementary school girls.

On the other hand, boys' teachers would teach and discuss "heroic" behavior and ideas "that show adolescents what it means to truly 'be a man.' Boys' classes would include consistently applied discipline systems and offer tension release strategies. Boys' classes would also feature more group assignments.

The National Women's Law Center points out that the Bush administration is pushing for segregation without proper safeguards against this type of gender stereotyping and discrimination. Without such protections, it's easy to be worried. One of the biggest backers of the new regulations is Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Sax wrote a key book about male and female brain differences that David Brooks has cribbed from to write his stereotype-laden columns. These are the same types of conservatives who are alarmed about the "boy crisis,"

Sure, some people are saying, but sex-segregated education is voluntary -- we're not forcing anyone to attend a sex-segregated school! That may be true. But in practice, as we know from watching the proliferation of abstinence-only sex ed, school districts go where the federal dollars are. So if the Department of Education is opening up additional funding streams for schools that separate the boys from the girls, and local conservatives are pushing for it, you can bet districts will line up to get in on the action.

I don't know about you, but "separate but substantially equal" doesn't sound good enough to me.

Cross-posted at Feministing.

Tagged as: gender, education, segregation

Ann Friedman is AlterNet's managing editor and an editor at Feministing.com.