- Share This Post
- submit
- 7
-
Sparkle (0)
When I saw that the subject of the email my friend Julie sent me was, "How's this for an offensive 'I hate myself as a woman' article?", I thought I should delete it without opening it. Instead, I ignored my instinct and found myself reading an op-ed by Charlotte Allen in The Washington Post. The piece asserts that there is ample scientific evidence that women are dumber than men. It concludes by saying that we women should just accept our intellectual inferiority, and "enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home." (At this point, I nearly threw up.)
On Saturday afternoon, I noticed that the cover story for this week's New York Times Magazine explores single-sex education. Should Boys and Girls Be Taught Separately? the cover blares, above a nice picture of happy, racially diverse girls in navy and white school uniforms. (The actual article title, interestingly enough, is "Teaching to the Testosterone." Hmmm...)I swore I would not read this article, but Allen's assertion that women are inherently dumber than men and less likely to succeed in professions that require intellectual capacity made me wonder if some people believe that boys and girls should be taught separately so that those of us with vaginas don't slow down the naturally superior.
Yet, I couldn't do it. The idea that we can't learn to teach all children together is so anathema to me that I could not bring myself to read arguments that attempt to justify segregation as a way to achieve good. The reliance on gender stereotypes to promote these plans is repulsive. All girls learn one way, and all boys learn another. And for those kids who don't fall under a stereotypical rubric – those girls who love math and have bad memories; the boys who love reading and writing; the kids who have different gender identities - what about them? What about trying to find each individual's strength? What about the idea that we learn by being exposed to people who are different than we are?
I grew up in a solidly middle-class, striving Jewish household in a wealthy, WASP-y community outside of Chicago. The message I received at home and at school was the same: you can succeed. When I look back, I honestly believe that my teachers treated girls and boys equally. Girls sat in classes with boys every day, and everyone was expected to perform well and attend an Ivy League college when they graduated in the top 5% of our class in high school. Obviously, this is ridiculous, as not everyone has the same goals, strengths, and interests, but I believe that this benefitted me immensely.
The very concept of "separate but equal" level of education verifies the gender stereotypes that often get in the way of children developing to their highest potential. We live in a world in which men and women mingle every day. If we don't grow up in environments that show us that we can co-exist, learn together, collaborate, and celebrate our individual (not gender) contributions, how can we be expected to create a world where people pursue their lives not constrained by gender expectations?
Creating segregated classrooms, buses, workplaces, whatever means that we give up. It is a cop out because it is an easy "solution." Worse, it means that we as people have failed because we don't even want to try and find real solutions to thorny human problems. Or maybe because I'm a woman, I'm just too dumb to understand.
For other reactions to both these ideas, check out:
Suzanne also blogs at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants and is not particularly tender toward children and men and the weak, but especially not toward anyone she regards as an idiot. Also, she is a crappy homemaker.
