News (in)Digest: Jim-Crow classrooms
Bush supports Jim Crow in classrooms.
(other links:
http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5581199
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2602156)
I'm just going to lay it out there: single-sex classrooms for anything but sex-ed and mentally deficient/emotionally scarred children is stupid and wrong. Period. Disagree with me if you like, but I'm not budging on this one. This is a rant and I'm not interested in arguing here in my LJ. (Don't worry, this is going up in cf_debate and I'm going to do my damndest to stay neutral)
If a private school wants to do that, we can't stop them. If a home-school or charter school wants to teach Bobby in the living room and Sally in the family room, we can't stop it.
But don't fuck with our public schools.
Once you decide that girls need to be protected from boys so their fragile egos don't get hurt, or so they don't feel incompetent at math, or cloister boys from girls so they don't ogle their budding breasts, you've just accepted that the two sexes cannot interact maturely and that parents have no responsibility to raise their children to treat sex in a mature fashion.
I've talked to people who grew up going to single-sex schools; guess what their primary hobby was? Yup, finding the Other Sex, whether at the school across the way (because, y'know, kids can't cross a street) or across town (because kids can't walk, bike, or drive).
What about college? Sure, send your boy to Deep Springs (homoerotic soybean farming!)or the Citadel (he'll only have to deal with one or two freaks with XX) and send your girl to one of the many YaYa Sisterhood institutions.
But then what about Real Life? One day, they are going to be crushed by the grim reality that there are different people out there, with different ways of doing things (not just the Other Sex, but people who didn't grow up sheltered in Jim Crow education systems).
And what about the teachers? Better not let any cute males teach the impressionable virgin maidens because they would be distracted from their Pythagorean Theorem thinking of his "acute angle". So now we have male teachers for the guys, and female teachers for the girls, and the sauce for the goose is cherry while sauce for the gander is apple and everyone's just dandy with that since what this society needs is MORE segregation and limitation, not more integration.
Relax, Dubya, boys aren't going to catch "Teh GURRRL" by sitting next to a girl in class, and girls aren't going to turn into butch lesbians by having to compete with boys.
Edit:
In retrospect, let's go for segregated classrooms.
I would have learned a lot more in school if I didn't have to deal with the Stupid Kids and the Brats and the Bimbos. And the kids who wanted to copy from me, and the ones who slacked on group projects; they were definitely detracting from my learning experience. Lock them all up together so they don't have to feel inadequate around geniuses like me.
(and for NaNo estimations - someone recommended I do so - I banged this out in less than ten minutes, 430 words.)
(other links:
http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5581199
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2602156)
I'm just going to lay it out there: single-sex classrooms for anything but sex-ed and mentally deficient/emotionally scarred children is stupid and wrong. Period. Disagree with me if you like, but I'm not budging on this one. This is a rant and I'm not interested in arguing here in my LJ. (Don't worry, this is going up in cf_debate and I'm going to do my damndest to stay neutral)
If a private school wants to do that, we can't stop them. If a home-school or charter school wants to teach Bobby in the living room and Sally in the family room, we can't stop it.
But don't fuck with our public schools.
Once you decide that girls need to be protected from boys so their fragile egos don't get hurt, or so they don't feel incompetent at math, or cloister boys from girls so they don't ogle their budding breasts, you've just accepted that the two sexes cannot interact maturely and that parents have no responsibility to raise their children to treat sex in a mature fashion.
I've talked to people who grew up going to single-sex schools; guess what their primary hobby was? Yup, finding the Other Sex, whether at the school across the way (because, y'know, kids can't cross a street) or across town (because kids can't walk, bike, or drive).
What about college? Sure, send your boy to Deep Springs (homoerotic soybean farming!)or the Citadel (he'll only have to deal with one or two freaks with XX) and send your girl to one of the many YaYa Sisterhood institutions.
But then what about Real Life? One day, they are going to be crushed by the grim reality that there are different people out there, with different ways of doing things (not just the Other Sex, but people who didn't grow up sheltered in Jim Crow education systems).
And what about the teachers? Better not let any cute males teach the impressionable virgin maidens because they would be distracted from their Pythagorean Theorem thinking of his "acute angle". So now we have male teachers for the guys, and female teachers for the girls, and the sauce for the goose is cherry while sauce for the gander is apple and everyone's just dandy with that since what this society needs is MORE segregation and limitation, not more integration.
Relax, Dubya, boys aren't going to catch "Teh GURRRL" by sitting next to a girl in class, and girls aren't going to turn into butch lesbians by having to compete with boys.
Edit:
In retrospect, let's go for segregated classrooms.
I would have learned a lot more in school if I didn't have to deal with the Stupid Kids and the Brats and the Bimbos. And the kids who wanted to copy from me, and the ones who slacked on group projects; they were definitely detracting from my learning experience. Lock them all up together so they don't have to feel inadequate around geniuses like me.
(and for NaNo estimations - someone recommended I do so - I banged this out in less than ten minutes, 430 words.)