Re: Opening Statement-Ellen Wahl

jdespain (jdespain@efn.org)
Fri, 24 Apr 1998 05:01:34 -0700 (PDT)

I appreciate your question to Ellen, Deborah.
As a long time educator who has rambled with this issue, my experience
tells me that mixed classes are best for orignally educating developing
children with anti-bias education. With already developed youth, who
probably did not get anti-bias education, and who are demonstrating
ineffectual biased behaviors; to try to undue the damage, a single sex
enivronment may work better. This was my impression from working with
inner city drop outs...the mixed group were too volatile to
work on the issues together.
Early consistent anti-bias education is the key to avoiding dysfunction.

For the children.
Jean Marie DeSpain, M.S.
Educational Ideals
jdespain@efn.org

On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Deborah Brake wrote:

> Hi Ellen. I found your statement very thoughtful and interesting, and I
> think that AAUW's research adds a great deal to the discussion of this
> issue. I have one question. I am very interested in research that I
> have heard of (I believe by Valerie Lee, among others) showing that sex
> stereotyping and subtle sex biases actually increase in single-sex
> classrooms, and that this is true for both all-male and all-female
> environments. In fact, at least as I heard it, the stereotyping and bias
> is greatest in single-sex environments where the teacher is the same sex
> as the students. Is this true, and what are your thoughts on the effect
> of sex segregation on sex role stereotyping? Separating the sexes is
> often talked about as a panacea for curing sex bias and inequities in
> education, and if true, such research would shed new light on the
> subject.
>
> Deborah Brake
> <dbrake@nwlc.org>
>

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