Same-Sex Education in Florida: Hey, Make the Boys Do Jumping Jacks!
LatestAnother day, another same-sex education program allegedly based on broad, ridiculous gender stereotypes. The ACLU has filed a complaint against a Florida public school system, arguing its justification and training are based in no small part on pseudoscientific nonsense, and the result is vastly different learning environments for boys and girls.
Short version: Boys are rambunctious and must be ruled with a firm, authoritative hand and also jumping jacks before math lessons. Girls are little flowers who want to please the teacher but need math and science related to concrete, real world situations—oh, and “tend to use relationships as weapons.” Pretty sure that line of thinking right there is how you get Betty Draper.
Mother Jones reports that the ACLU filed the complaint against Hillsborough County, Florida, which launched the program in 2009, in at least one high school and 15 elementary schools (as well as a pair of single-sex middle schools). In the complaint, the ACLU refers to the school system’s Single Gender Education Legal and Educational Rationale Brief justifying the same-sex classes. Here’s a sample:
“Boys tend to prefer non-fiction over fiction. Boys like to read descriptions of real events or illustrated accounts of the way things work, like spaceships, bombs, or volcanoes.” (e) “Girls tend to prefer books where they can be analytical about a character’s motives and behaviors. Girls like stories about experiences that might happen over one summer and the emotional agonies that a character endures.”
Bet it’s a real barrel of laughs trying to teach those boys high school English a few years down the line, after their elementary school good as told them novels are for girls.