Talking Points 7

"Teaching Boys and Girls Separately"
Elizabeth Weil

1) "Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys don't hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys' visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture."
         -I thought this was a pretty interesting and cool fact because I never knew that boys didn't hear as well as girls and that boys and girls visual systems were different as well.  I guess these differences would have an impact on learning, but really how big, and how hard is it to appease both genders? I don't think schools need to completely separate gender in their classes because of hearing and seeing differences, just have the teachers speak up all together and try to use visual aids and exercises that reach out to both boys and girls.
2) "Yet Denckla doesn't see any need for single sex public education; she thinks mixed grade K-1, 1-2, and 2-3 classrooms are a better way to deal with the developmental differences among school-age kids."
       -I kind of agree with this statement because both boys and girls struggle with different, but also sometimes similar things so teaching them separately really is not necessary since not every kid will fall under this biological stereotype.  I think schools need to concentrate on what the students are struggling with specifically because every kid is different and special, no matter their gender differences.  There are plenty of times that gender differences do not even effect or enhance students' learning.
3) "...Giedd says, is that when it comes to education, gender is a pretty crude tool for sorting minds...There are just too many exceptions to the rule."
       -This goes along with the previous quote and I mainly agree because there are too many cases where these gender segregated classes actually did not do much better since it was separated.  It is just too broad of a separation to apply to all children  and their learning abilities.  Every child learns differently because of who they are, not necessarily their gender.  I'm not saying that gender has nothing to do with it, but I don't think it is an important enough aspect to split up classes over.  The specific challenges that children are facing in the classrooms are what need to be narrowed in on in order to help them increase their learning abilities.