Tapsearch Com EditorFlawed Single-sex education study flawed
This is an excellent article by Tom Palaima about a single-sex education study being flawed.
Tom Palaima confronts a study about single-sex education
Based on my experience, I went to John Carroll University when all students were males. I came from a co-ed public high school. Many of my friends came from all boys Catholic high school. There were some different traits but essentially, there were no differences between the two classifications.
I found a great sense of freedom in an all male university and wished my children and grand children had the same freedom of choice.
On the spiritual and social side of life, there were no differences between the friends who came from an all boys high school and the ones that came from co-ed public high schools. Besides having a better setting for studying without distractions, during the years when a boy becomes a man the social and spiritual life is enhanced more easily too. A great Jesuit taught a wonderful Marriage and Family course. He showed how to be a good husband and father. One of the best professor in philosophy vividly showed the body functions of women in a top ethics class where we were able to absorb the full content of the subject matter with out woman there to limit the discussions or questions. By the way, I have been married for more than fifty years..... Most of my friends have too. Maybe our current problems are a generational thing rather than fixed problem relating to single-sex or co-ed education. Ray Tapajna
Find the Science article 23 Sept 2011, vol 333, issue 6050, pp. 1706-1707 at:
Science Magazine
Single-sex education study flawed
Tom Palaima, Regular Contributor
Austin American-Statesman
Published: 6:59 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011
PRINT EDITION Friday October 14, 2011
In the late 1960s, I learned how to read and think and talk and write at St. Ignatius High School, an all-boys school in Cleveland. Many of my teachers were Jesuit priests. They had doctor of theology degrees and doctorates in other fields. They had done serious community service, like work among the urban poor in the United States or in foreign countries.
Our teachers at St. Ignatius were devoted to the life of the mind and to our minds. But they never forgot our souls and spirits and hearts. They taught us how to think. They even taught theology skeptically. My high school education prepared me to question my Catholic faith, but it instilled positive moral and social values that enrich my life to this day.
I looked forward to school every day, although I had to travel 20 miles for 75 minutes on a public bus each way. I left home at 6:30 a.m. and got back in rush hour, about 6 p.m.
The buses were packed with working-class men and women and with teenage boys and girls going to Catholic high schools in the city. I felt lucky to be getting an education. I sensed how poor life could be without acultivated mind and caring spirit. The worldly wise Jesuits reinforced this idea.
The controversy surrounding "single-sex schooling" and the Ann Richards School raised by a two-page article, "The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling," in the journal Science struck a deep chord in me and in others. I read the article as if it were assigned reading in a second-year English class at St. Ignatius. Here is my homework.
We might expect a priori that an article co-authored by eight active founders and board members of a national organization championing coeducational schooling would show some bias. It does.
Its authors, including a psychology professor at the University of Texas, accuse educators who support single-sex schooling of pseudo-science. For a psychology professor to join in doing this is "a pot calling kettles black." Psychology itself is not an exact science.
The eight authors criticize proponents of single-sex schooling for cherry-picking their arguments. But they cherry-pick a straw man, a random "teacher in a single-sex public school classroom," whose opinion they quote from a local newspaper, the Gaston Gazette.
Conforming to recent politically driven data mania within higher education, the Science article equates school success solely with standardized test scores. It declares that a sample single-sex school achieves the same high results as a sample magnet program. Instead of praising and supporting both kinds of schools, it proposes getting rid of single-sex schools. It then argues that the high scores of students in both types of schools are linked to their admissions policies, as if this is somehow bad. Should we then eliminate both magnet and single-sex schools?
The Science article does briefly consider a larger social issue. But it has nothing to do with the wide range of reasons that make parents want to send their children to single-sex schools.
The eight authors cherry-pick a United Kingdom study that argues that men who have had single-sex schooling are more likely to get divorced than those with co-educational educations, yet "no parallel differences were found for women." We can make four points about this inept logical gambit:
Citing a U.K. study that isolates education as a factor in divorce is of dubious relevance to our American experience. British manners, customs, social attitudes and cultural values are very different from ours.
Does this mean that the authors think single-sex schooling is OK for women since they do not become more divorce-prone because of it?
If this were relevant and valid, why should we not isolate the factors in single-sex schooling that produce such results and adjust them to make men less divorce-prone?
My brother and I both went to coeducational grade schools. Unlike me, he went to coed high schools. He has been divorced twice. I have been divorced three times.
The factors leading to our divorces are many: family dynamics, religion, growing up in the 1950s, our individual personalities, our ex-spouses, bad luck.
I have seen therapists for more than 20 years now. Not one has said to me, "Tom, you should have gone to a coed high school."
Palaima is professor of classics at the University of Texas:
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net
Tom Palaima confronts a study about single-sex education
Based on my experience, I went to John Carroll University when all students were males. I came from a co-ed public high school. Many of my friends came from all boys Catholic high school. There were some different traits but essentially, there were no differences between the two classifications.
I found a great sense of freedom in an all male university and wished my children and grand children had the same freedom of choice.
On the spiritual and social side of life, there were no differences between the friends who came from an all boys high school and the ones that came from co-ed public high schools. Besides having a better setting for studying without distractions, during the years when a boy becomes a man the social and spiritual life is enhanced more easily too. A great Jesuit taught a wonderful Marriage and Family course. He showed how to be a good husband and father. One of the best professor in philosophy vividly showed the body functions of women in a top ethics class where we were able to absorb the full content of the subject matter with out woman there to limit the discussions or questions. By the way, I have been married for more than fifty years..... Most of my friends have too. Maybe our current problems are a generational thing rather than fixed problem relating to single-sex or co-ed education. Ray Tapajna
Find the Science article 23 Sept 2011, vol 333, issue 6050, pp. 1706-1707 at:
Science Magazine
Single-sex education study flawed
Tom Palaima, Regular Contributor
Austin American-Statesman
Published: 6:59 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011
PRINT EDITION Friday October 14, 2011
In the late 1960s, I learned how to read and think and talk and write at St. Ignatius High School, an all-boys school in Cleveland. Many of my teachers were Jesuit priests. They had doctor of theology degrees and doctorates in other fields. They had done serious community service, like work among the urban poor in the United States or in foreign countries.
Our teachers at St. Ignatius were devoted to the life of the mind and to our minds. But they never forgot our souls and spirits and hearts. They taught us how to think. They even taught theology skeptically. My high school education prepared me to question my Catholic faith, but it instilled positive moral and social values that enrich my life to this day.
I looked forward to school every day, although I had to travel 20 miles for 75 minutes on a public bus each way. I left home at 6:30 a.m. and got back in rush hour, about 6 p.m.
The buses were packed with working-class men and women and with teenage boys and girls going to Catholic high schools in the city. I felt lucky to be getting an education. I sensed how poor life could be without acultivated mind and caring spirit. The worldly wise Jesuits reinforced this idea.
The controversy surrounding "single-sex schooling" and the Ann Richards School raised by a two-page article, "The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling," in the journal Science struck a deep chord in me and in others. I read the article as if it were assigned reading in a second-year English class at St. Ignatius. Here is my homework.
We might expect a priori that an article co-authored by eight active founders and board members of a national organization championing coeducational schooling would show some bias. It does.
Its authors, including a psychology professor at the University of Texas, accuse educators who support single-sex schooling of pseudo-science. For a psychology professor to join in doing this is "a pot calling kettles black." Psychology itself is not an exact science.
The eight authors criticize proponents of single-sex schooling for cherry-picking their arguments. But they cherry-pick a straw man, a random "teacher in a single-sex public school classroom," whose opinion they quote from a local newspaper, the Gaston Gazette.
Conforming to recent politically driven data mania within higher education, the Science article equates school success solely with standardized test scores. It declares that a sample single-sex school achieves the same high results as a sample magnet program. Instead of praising and supporting both kinds of schools, it proposes getting rid of single-sex schools. It then argues that the high scores of students in both types of schools are linked to their admissions policies, as if this is somehow bad. Should we then eliminate both magnet and single-sex schools?
The Science article does briefly consider a larger social issue. But it has nothing to do with the wide range of reasons that make parents want to send their children to single-sex schools.
The eight authors cherry-pick a United Kingdom study that argues that men who have had single-sex schooling are more likely to get divorced than those with co-educational educations, yet "no parallel differences were found for women." We can make four points about this inept logical gambit:
Citing a U.K. study that isolates education as a factor in divorce is of dubious relevance to our American experience. British manners, customs, social attitudes and cultural values are very different from ours.
Does this mean that the authors think single-sex schooling is OK for women since they do not become more divorce-prone because of it?
If this were relevant and valid, why should we not isolate the factors in single-sex schooling that produce such results and adjust them to make men less divorce-prone?
My brother and I both went to coeducational grade schools. Unlike me, he went to coed high schools. He has been divorced twice. I have been divorced three times.
The factors leading to our divorces are many: family dynamics, religion, growing up in the 1950s, our individual personalities, our ex-spouses, bad luck.
I have seen therapists for more than 20 years now. Not one has said to me, "Tom, you should have gone to a coed high school."
Palaima is professor of classics at the University of Texas:
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net
