Re: single-sex schools

From: Linda Purrington (lpurring@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Dec 14 1999 - 16:15:02 EST


The problem of single-sex schools is not with your individual education,
but with the notion that we can afford, as a society, to refuse to
correct the problems that sexism brings into coed schools. That is what
the clamor for girls' single-sex schools represents: it says that girls
learn best in single-sex environments--for very specific reasons, such
as the violence, intimidation, and sexual harassment of girls as
girls--and that therefore we can afford to let go of the ideal of
defeating that kind of sexism. We cannot afford to let go of that ideal;
and in a social environment where funding goes to the dominant,
reintroducing educational apartheid can only have one outcome--the
gradual slide down the funding ladder of the girls' schools, as happened
for African-American students when segregation spoit the publicschools.
I do not wish that on my child, my grandchild, or my
great-grandchild--or their millions of peers in the coming millennium.
It is shortsighted in the extreme--and selfish--to claim a short-term
benefit for oneself that does not build a social policy for everyone's
education.
        Linda Purrington
        Title IX Advocates
        lpurring@earthlink.net



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