(no subject)
My housemate's new (public, non-charter) school is doing an experiment this year. All the 9th graders who aren't in their magnet program are in single-gender classes with opposite-gender teachers. The whole program is being pushed top-down; as far as he knows, all or most of the students and their families had no clue this was happening until the beginning of this year, and there's been little explanation of the reasons behind the change, other than "it means the kids will be less distracted."
Whenever I hear the distraction argument though, I always wonder...distracted by/from what? Are we talking academic distractions, or social/sexual ones, or are those two inextricably tied together? And if we are in fact talking about the latter, isn't that assuming that everybody's straight? Because, as all the Mawrtyrs reading this know, *nobody* in all women's environments is *ever* attracted to folks of the same gender, oh no never.
Since I'm absolutely sure that my housemates and I aren't the only people who've thought of the "but everybody isn't straight" point, I ask you all--does anyone know if there's literature out there in any field (education, psych, sociology, etc.) about the experience of queer students in single-gender educational environments? (I'd be especially curious about literature on all-male environments of any kind (since most of the arguments I've read center around "girls do better at math and science in all-female environments" sorts of arguments), or on literature about the differences between all-female high schools and women's colleges.
Whenever I hear the distraction argument though, I always wonder...distracted by/from what? Are we talking academic distractions, or social/sexual ones, or are those two inextricably tied together? And if we are in fact talking about the latter, isn't that assuming that everybody's straight? Because, as all the Mawrtyrs reading this know, *nobody* in all women's environments is *ever* attracted to folks of the same gender, oh no never.
Since I'm absolutely sure that my housemates and I aren't the only people who've thought of the "but everybody isn't straight" point, I ask you all--does anyone know if there's literature out there in any field (education, psych, sociology, etc.) about the experience of queer students in single-gender educational environments? (I'd be especially curious about literature on all-male environments of any kind (since most of the arguments I've read center around "girls do better at math and science in all-female environments" sorts of arguments), or on literature about the differences between all-female high schools and women's colleges.