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Debate rages over single-sex classes

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Research shows an incomplete picture of benefits

But boys, girls do perceive color, sound differently
Apr. 6, 2006. 01:00 AM
LUISA D'AMATO
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE

Whether or not single-sex classes help students learn better is a subject that's being debated by educators around the world.

There's lots of research, and there have been plenty of experiments, but it is said to be forming an incomplete picture so far.

For example, a 1999 study by researchers at London University in England indicated that single-sex education improves the self-esteem of girls, but there's no evidence to show they learn better.

School boards are keeping an eye on the research, but there are no plans to institute single-sex classes.

"It's at the research and discovery stage more than anything else," said Kitchener public board superintendent Elaine Lewis.

Dr. Leonard Sax, author of Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, argues that boys' brains are hard-wired to see, hear and think completely differently from those of girls.

One example: girls hear better than boys — so a teacher's voice that sounds just right to girls may be too soft for boys, causing them to tune out. A boy tapping rhythmically on his desk will distract the girls, but not bother the boys.

A male teacher or coach may speak so loudly the girls think he's yelling at them, when he's really just using a male-appropriate tone of voice.

Sax, a physician and psychologist who is a leading advocate of single-sex education, also shows in his book, published last year, that the male retina is both thicker and differently composed than the female retina.

This means that boys are attracted to colors such as black, blue and silver, and they are more interested in movement. Girls' eyes prefer colors such as red, orange, green and beige.

So when a kindergarten teacher tells the students to draw what they like, in any colors they choose, a 5-year-old girl might use 10 or more colors to draw a family smiling out at the viewer. A boy might typically use only the black crayon to draw a rocket smashing into the Earth, with no people in sight.

The curriculum says children should be encouraged to draw people-centred pictures with plenty of colors.

So the teacher approves of the first picture more than the second — and the boy realizes that he isn't any good at art.

Here's a physical reason that girls often excel at English. Sax says negative emotions are centred in a part of the brain called the amygdala.

As they mature, brains of girls develop connections between this part of the brain and the cerebral cortex, which enables them to talk or write about feelings.

In boys, this link develops much later.

"Asking a teenage boy to talk about how he feels is a question guaranteed to make most boys uncomfortable. You're asking him to make connections between two parts of his brain that don't normally communicate," Sax says in his book.

"As one 13-year-old boy said, `My English teacher wants me to write about my feelings. I don't know what my feelings are, and I can't write about them. Anyway, my feelings are none of their business!'"

Perhaps, Sax suggests, this means teaching literature differently. Take the book Lord of the Flies. Most girls will respond best to the question: "How would you feel if you were Piggy?" (a character in the book). But most boys would prefer to use their analytical skills to produce a map of the island on which the story is set, using the verbal descriptions in the story.

Boys also take more risks than girls, interpret their failures differently than girls, and are less likely to ask for help from the teacher. (This last characteristic even extends into the animal kingdom, Sax said, with female chimps more often seeking guidance from their parents while learning daily tasks. )

Sax says this means that boys and girls should be raised, taught and disciplined differently — and argues that some of this can happen best in a single-sex setting.

By understanding the innate differences between the sexes, there's a better chance that more boys will become artists and more girls will excel at science. In other words, gender stereotyping could be reduced, he suggests.

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