Mixed Views on Single-Sex Classes

* I’m all for all-girl and all-boy public school classrooms, such as the Single Gender Academies in Fountain Valley (Dec. 7), and hope that the program is expanded to be available to all students, not just troubled students.

To be effective, students need to be in an environment that is conducive to concentrating on schoolwork rather than on members of the opposite sex. All-male and all-female classrooms should improve a student’s attention span, as there are less distractions.

In addition to fostering better education, such a classroom environment may also help build a spirit of camaraderie among male and female students, which would help develop self-esteem, self-confidence and teamwork.

KENNETH ZIMMERMAN

Huntington Beach

* I was utterly disappointed to read that the female is about to regress 44 years in the experiment to segregate classrooms according to sex (“Gender and Education,” Oct. 27 editorial).

With this program, not only does the Orange County Board of Education acknowledge female inferiority in a coed classroom, but the proposal would also waste valuable resources from an already deprived educational budget.

The entire concept of equality in the 1990s has finally reached some degree of success for females; however, this new measure would place underserved girls behind the eight ball from a biased, chauvinist viewpoint. If this experiment succeeds, should the Board of Education segregate classrooms by race even if one particular race consistently does better than another?

The measure also has faulty variables by experimenting with students most likely to drop out of school. How will segregating the sexes benefit the overall educational experience for both genders and encourage students to do better?

Isn’t the purpose of coed classes for students of both sexes to learn interactively and communicate ideas? If they have to earn a living, then a segregated learning environment will not necessarily induce them to improve.

ROBERT HONG

Irvine

* I fail to see the logic in the support of sex-segregated classrooms. Separating the genders will only hamper healthy intellectual interaction.

Being a female senior at Woodbridge High School, I reflect upon my coeducational classes as being extremely positive. The editorial suggests that girls will especially benefit in their math and science courses by being “freed from the issue of competing with boys.”

This is 1997, isn’t it? Studies have shown a steady increase in females specializing in those areas. In fact, I would even say my classes have fostered healthy competition, encouraging me to excel ever more.

The day that society takes a step back and segregates classrooms on the basis of gender is a sad day indeed. Boys and girls must learn to interact positively during their early development; otherwise, how will they ever perform in their adulthood and workplace effectively?

JENNIFER BRUCKLER

Irvine