Sex-segregated schools
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs
An odd coalition of women's rights advocates and anti-feminists are marketing a new kind of sexism. It was first sighted at the Virginia Military Institute and Citadel cases, in which...
...and the data reflected practices at least ten and often twenty years old...
...Against charges that the school discriminates against males, school administrators say that boys could apply, but of course, none have...
...The East Harlem school puts girls in the front of the bus, but segregation, however it is sugar-coated, is against the law and morally wrong...
...In New York City, this sexist thinking was embodied first in plans for an all-male public school in Harlem that never got off the drawing board and transmuted to a new institution, the East Harlem Young Women's Leadership School...
...110 • DISSENT...
...What's wrong with all this...
...They asserted that women need to have their self-esteem built up, while men need to have theirs knocked down...
...Many representatives of the Harlem community—Africanand Hispanic-Americans—are happy to have this bright spot in their midst, an alternative to old ramshackle buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and unruly students...
...Yes, studies show that teachers favor boys...
...It won't help girls (or boys) make their way in an integrated world...
...One oft-cited study, based on listings in Who's Who of American Women, a publication with much lower standards than Who's Who in America, did not control for the selectivity of schools or for the class position of the women who attended...
...There are many applicants for the school's fifty-five slots, and poor parents have SUMMER • 1997.109 Notebook been more than willing to sacrifice to find funds for the school uniform...
...True, the words sound good and the place looks good—a school in which girls from a mixture of class and race backgrounds can learn in a positive environment, free from the undisciplined outbursts of arrogant and aggressive young men...
...But instead of altering the structure of coed schools, introducing effective discipline, personal attention, and small classes, and building community support, young women are given a new purdah...
...Better to learn together and work together from an early age, with the support of sympathetic teachers, than to reinforce the notions all too prevalent in society today that men are from Mars and women are from Venus and never their orbits shall meet...
...There is much more wrong as well—above all, the incorrect reading of research that claims that women educated in single-sex institutions are more successful than those educated in coed settings...
...It was first sighted at the Virginia Military Institute and Citadel cases, in which some feminists and Old South traditionalists claimed that girls and young women have a different way of learning than do boys and men...
...However, it is the same-sex angle that has captured media attention, leading many commentators to call for sex-segregated classrooms as a solution to the problems that young girls encounter in achieving leadership (however it is defined) and excellence in math and the sciences...
...This public school, which has benefited from private money—much of it raised by philanthropist Ann Rubenstein Tisch—and the backing of the conservative educational think tank the Manhattan Institute for Educational Innovation, boasts small classes held in an environment complete with oriental carpets on the floors, tea, croissants, and photos of every girl supplied by Donald Trump's personal photographer...
...The school's supporters fail to see that boys are not the problem...
...This elegant sheep's clothing surrounds a not so beneficent wolf...
...Once they move into the workplace, these stereotypes continue to justify subtle forms of discrimination, inadequate child care provision, and inflexible work schedules...
...The major obstacles that women confront these days don't come from diminished self-esteem but from continuing stereotypes suggesting that they have different learning and performance styles...
...The school is clearly better than the norm and in fact offers the small class size and nurturing environment that progressive educators believe are of benefit to all children...
...It's hard to be against something that looks so good, and accounts of the school, in the New York Times and the New York Observer, for example, have been glowing...
Vol. 44 • July 1997 • No. 3
