Platform / Youth Opinion : Same-Sex Public Schools: ‘Boys and Girls Learn Differently’

Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed same-sex public schools to shape up delinquent boys and give low-achieving girls a chance to focus on academics. JIM BLAIR asked high-school students who have attended both same-sex and coed classes about the differences and their preferences. He also spoke with teachers about benefits and drawbacks.

*

EMILIO GARZA

18, senior, St. John Bosco Technical Institute, Rosemead

At first, I was a little bit scared because it was an all-guys school. You know--there goes my social life. It took a while to get used to, but in a way it’s better because you don’t have to really worry about impressing anybody. You don’t have to worry how you look in the morning. You can be yourself. When you have girls in the class you’re more worried about whether she thinks something’s cool.

The only negative is that you don’t really get to meet too many girls. It does take a toll on your manners going to an all-guys school. When I go out with my friends or with girls, I would never act the way I do in class.

*

KEILA TRIMBLE

17, senior, St. Mary’s Academy, Inglewood

Attending an all-girls school gives me a better opportunity to be a leader. Because we’re all girls we have to step up and take the intiative. We can’t just sit back and let the boys run everything. We have to do things for ourselves in order to get things done.

When I was at a coed school, the boys always seemed to take charge in outside activities. In student government they would take the initiative and the girls would sometimes sit back and just let the boys take control. But St. Marys girls have much more of a desire to take the intiative and to get things done.

[A social life] isn’t really that much of a problem because [of] our extracurricular activities--we have dances with the guys. The only problem that I see is that sometimes, because it’s all girls, we kind of get on each other’s nerves. But there are more benefits than problems.

There’s a lot of support here for career goals. I want to go college, probably USC or Stanford, and eventually I want to become an obstetrician.

*

ARIKA ROMAN

18, senior, Ramona Opportunity School, the only all-girls public high school in Los Angeles

I came to Ramona because I moved to East Los Angeles. I’ve been here a year. The school was near my house and I chose to come here.

I was never in an all-girls school before. It keeps me more motivated toward graduation. I’m a single mother and they have a day-care [center] here and they take care of my son.

In other schools, most girls don’t focus on school[work] because of boys or something, but here all we focus on is getting good grades and trying to graduate from high school. I’m planning to attend East L.A. College and go to a four-year college and major in business management or accounting.

*

MATT SCANLON

Social studies teacher, Jordan High School, Los Angeles

My problem with it, if any, [is that] I don’t particularly like any form of segregation. I’m unaware of any national studies that can show either way that a certain group within high school, whether gender- or culture-based, can benefit. I’m not so sure that it is necessarily emotionally healthy to separate students in junior high or high school when social development is important.

I’m a product of Catholic private schools and I would say the teaching is better in public schools. I’ve seen better teaching at Jordan High School by the teachers that I deal with daily than I experienced in a private high school in a middle-class community. We’re far better trained in lesson planning and discipline as well as getting to know the students.

I would throw this out to the governor and apathetic citizens of California: If you want to see more achievement in our classrooms, you need to make the public school class size much smaller. If you want to change education, you need to put money where the children are. You need to put more money into education. I have five classes with no books. This is not the California that I was raised in and was proud of. The chickens will come home to roost.

*

ALBERTO VALDIVIA

General studies teacher for Central High School, which is for students with serious legal or family problems, located at All Saints Church in Highland Park; part of L.A. public schools Options program

To tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I’m sure you’ll find teachers who would be very comfortable in that type of environment. And I could see how certain students may need a single-gender environment. In my particular situation, [many of] the students have already been exposed to single-sex education, because when they’re locked up they attend all-boys schools.

In our school district, we have an all-girls school, Ramona High, a very orderly, very well-managed school. That shows us that it can work. So if this is one more way to [increase] student achievement, I think it’s great.

I think that if it’s going to be successful it must be voluntary on the students’ part.

*

CYNTHIA NWAGBARA

Los Angeles special education teacher, also leads three Girl Scout troops

I do believe that children need to learn how to deal with the opposite sex to communicate with each other, to live with each other. But they also need to learn about themselves.

I started Scouting in elementary school as a Brownie. It was an opportunity to get involved in sports and activities. There was more competition in the school. If you weren’t good at something, you might be hesitant to participate because there were boys involved. [With the Scouts] it was just girls and all the girls were encouraged to participate. When I had my own daughter, I knew that I wanted her to have that positive experience, too. It was something that would be fun and help her bond with other girls.

Some people may not like this, but I believe that boys and girls learn differently, have different needs, different ways of understanding things. And I think one of the problems that we have in schools where we have mixed genders is that boys and girls are ready for different skills at different times and learn in different ways. So girls need an environment that will tap into their way of learning and pull out all the potential they have.

*

BROTHER RICHARD MORRILL

Guidance counselor, history and religion teacher, Verbum Dei High School, Watts

I have been in an all-boys setting for 12 years and I’ve taught in a coed setting for eight years, so I know the distinction.

The main advantage I see for students, especially for males, is that there is less distraction. Especially when you’re talking about inner-city youth, there are so many distractions in their lives. The classroom is one of the last places they need to be distracted, and one major distraction would be females. I believe the federal government came out with a study a couple of years ago that said that, especially in inner cities, single-sex settings are a lot better. I know they’ve already experimented with it at the grade-school level in Milwaukee, and they were public schools.

One of the weaknesses of the [one-sex] system, especially when you’re dealing with males, is the refinement of manners, shall we say. Males tend to be a little cruder than they would be otherwise. It’s really a matter of being aware of sexist attitudes and correcting things when you hear students say them.