The ACLU Kicks Up a Fuss About Sex-Segregated Middle School Classes
LatestThe ACLU has filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, alleging that a middle school in Wisconsin has divvied up its fifth graders into classrooms based on gender.
According to the Raw Story, the ACLU alleges that the program started in 2006, when the 451-student Somerset Middle School in St. Croix County began offering one homeroom for boys, one for girls, and two mixed — specifically in the fifth grade. By 2008, they’d bumped it up to two for girls, two for boys and one mixed. Separated students “appear to have been separated by sex
in all core subjects, as well as extracurricular activities and non-academic periods like
lunch and recess,” so we’re not just talking about health class, here.
The ACLU argues that the move wasn’t adequately justified, relying largely on “site visits to other schools with single-sex
classes, anecdotal reports, and the writings of proponents of single-sex education,
including the controversial work of Dr. Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian.” The ACLU’s FOIA request turned up info that sounds like it fell out of a teachers’ manual from the late 1950s:
Somerset Middle School presented materials outlining numerous purported
differences between boys and girls, including the following claims:
“Girls and guys notice different things (boys: motion; girls: bright colors and
people)”;
“Girls are more easily distracted than boys and prefer quiet and focus”;
“Girls hear better”;
“Boys are messy”;
“Teams work for boys as boys value team affiliation above friendship”22
“Adulthood in terms of brain development is age 22 for females and age 30 for
males”;23
“Girls draw nouns. Boys draw verbs.”
What’s more, the complaint alleges, the program isn’t just rooted in stereotypes but actively promotes them. For instance: