From: oneil@cwis.unomaha.edu (Sharon O'Neil)
Subject: Re: Segregation by sex, cont'd
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: 25 Jul 92 14:41:18 GMT

[Excess included text at end removed.  --CTM]

wrr3118@tamsun.tamu.EDU (Rick Russell) writes:

>My first post on soc.feminism!

Congratulations!  :-)

>Interesting that you should mention this. I spent all four years of
>high school (and 2 years of middle school) in a private single-sex
>institution,

I, myself, spent all four years of high schoool in a private
single-sex institution.  And although it was a Catholic school, run by
an order of nuns, it was extremely liberal in its philosophy.  (I
attended from 1981-85).

>Overall, I'd say the experience was positive. Since there were no
>girls, I was not prejudiced against them in any way. I didn't see or
>hear any male high school teachers denigrating women in class (or at
>all, really); I didn't ever see a teacher talk down to a "girl's
>level", I didn't ever see a teacher intentionally reduce the
>difficultly of the work (e.g. in science & mathematics) to supposedly
>make it easier for the girls; I never saw girls 'play dumb' to get a
>boy's attentions.

As far as I can remember, this *never* took place at the all-female
high school I attended.  Even the "easy" courses at Marian High School
were often very challenging.  There was no "dumbing down" of the
courses I took.  Of course, keep in mind that most of my teachers were
women, although not necessarily or even often, nuns.  A good number of
them were /also/ products of a single-sex education, often even
alumnae of Marian.  All of them were well-educated.  Many had their
MA.  The /expectation/ was that all students were being trained for
/college/ and for /careers/.  Of course, because it was a Catholic
school, it was also expected that we would grow up to be wives and
mothers, but the realistic expectation was that we would work.  We
were certainly not trained to be doormats.

>Several female friends, including my wife, have informed me that
>these were frequent practices in their own coed high schools. I
>really found *that* hard to believe.

This is absolutely and horribly TRUE.  I have student taught in two
public high schools and everything you describe I have witnessed.
Girls, more often than not, defer to the boys in their classes.  The
boys, who have been trained to be more assertive, will often cut girls
off in mid-sentence and dominate the class.

What frustrates me is that I was not always as equitable to the
/girls/ as I could have been.  One major difficulty for a student or
beginning teacher is that silence is very frustrating.  If you can get
ANYBODY to talk, you're relieved.  More often than not, it will be a
boy, because male students will often answer questions just to hear
themselves talk.  (Studies have shown that boys will answer questions
in a class, even if they are not right.  It's not necessarily wrong
for them to do that.  Young people should be exploring various answers
to questions.)

However, I did make a conscious effort, especially at mid-semester to
draw the girls out and I feel that I had wonderful results.  I don't
feel that I shortchanged the boys at all.  One questioning strategy
that I employed was asking a question, giving some wait time, then
calling on a student at random, and then giving some more wait time.
This way, everyone was forced to pay attention to what I was asking
and I was able to increase the number of girls speaking in class to
the point where they might be talking about 50 percent of the time.  I
gave wait time, so they had the chance to formulate an answer.  I
don't expect immediate answers to questions.  I believe that a
question is best answered if the student gives himself or herself a
chance to think about the question before answering it.

I will concur with you that men who attended all-male institutions are
often some of the best men to associate with -- they are very often
less sexist than their counterparts who attended coed institutions
during the formative teenage years.  My best friend during my teenage
years was a boy who attended the boy's school down the street (which
was not affiliated with the all-girl's school I attended.)  He and I
never dated, but we were great friends.  And we had some of the most
intellectual conversations.  He didn't act like I was stupid at all.
And in fact, I'm nearly responsible for his chosen career today.  When
we were freshman, I bought him a book on mathematical philosophy, just
because I thought he might like the book, for some reason.  He'd never
been interested in that sort of thing before, but all of a sudden, he
was totally intrigued by math and computers and science.

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