By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Phyllis Schlafly devoted a recent column to current demands from the radical feminists and the homosexual lobby and their allies in the education establishment. At first glance, the demands seem so beyond the pale that the temptation is to not take them seriously. That would be a mistake. Many of us reacted that way when the idea of same-sex marriage was first trotted out.
Schlafly reports that the “Obama administration is now trying to outlaw single-sex classrooms, a practice that has been growing as parents and teachers see its good results.” Schlafly sees this as part of the demand by feminists “who believe in the interchangeability of the genders and insist that schools forbid any deviation from their peculiar belief that there is no difference between male and female.”
The drive to separate the sexes in athletic competition is part of this scenario. The Minnesota State High School League, which, writes Schlafly, “controls policy for all extracurricular activities in all schools,” voted to “outlaw recognition of all sex differences in high school sports.” The policy was adopted December 4, so students will have the “choice to play on either boys’ or girls’ teams if they claim transgender status.” Writes Schlafly, “Under this new policy, there can be no recognition of sex differences in high school sports, on the field, or in locker rooms, or bathrooms, or hotel rooms.”
Not everyone in Minnesota is happy with the decision. A group of parents opposed to the change ran an ad in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, stating, “A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old daughter. Are you okay with that?” Minnesotans also, writes Schlafly, “sent more than 10,000 protest emails to the State High School League, but their protests were overruled.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations published a guide to help local school districts deal with parental complaints about these policies. It contends that “transgender girls (who were assigned a male gender at birth) are not boys.” And vice-versa. “Their consistent and affirmed gender identity as girls is as deep-seated as the gender identity of non-transgender girls.” In other words, anatomical differences do not matter. Children become boys or girls “only when they are old enough to decide which gender they choose to be.”
One can only wonder if those pushing for this change have thought things through: Will they, for example, permit a group of 16-year old boys to decide that they want to shower in the girl’s locker room because they are experiencing some “questions about their gender”? Or will someone in the school have to interview the boys in question to determine if their sexual confusion is genuinely “deep seated” or a schoolboy prank? Will a group of boys who did not make the school’s hockey team be permitted to play on the girls’ team, even if doing so results in a large number of girls being cut from the squad? In many schools, this would result in the girls’ team being transformed into a junior varsity boys’ team — unless some reverse discrimination is used to deny boys those positions.
And why wouldn’t the same logic extend to municipal swimming pools and tennis courts? Why should a group of 25-year-old men be denied the right to use the women’s showers and locker rooms if they insist that they are going through a period in their lives where their sexual identity is in flux? Will we need gender equity policemen outside the women’s showers to determine which men are being opportunistic wise guys?
The situation brings to mind the line spoken by Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Masque of Pandora: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
This unisex view of the world can be seen in the drive by the Obama administration to end experiments with single-sex classrooms. These experiments are by no means widespread. Indeed, for a variety of reasons, many Catholic high schools that were once all-male or all-female have now become co-ed. Feminists are determined to stop the experiments, nonetheless. Writes Schlafly, “The senior counsel of the National Women’s Law Center criticized single-sex classrooms because they supposedly rely on ‘sex stereotypes’ that assume boys and girls respond to different methods of teaching.”
Is there any truth to the proposition that boys and girls respond differently in the classroom? I am an agnostic on this one. I have taught in an all boys’ Catholic high school, as well as at a co-ed public high school. If you put a gun to my head, I could not recall a single student whom I taught who did well in one setting who would not also have done well at the other. On the other hand, I have heard from more than a few parents who assure me that their daughters flourished in an all-girls’ school after floundering in a co-ed public school.
Why then not permit the experiments with single-sex schools to proceed, especially in large school districts where a handful of schools can be set aside as single-sex for those students and parents who would like to use them? What would be the harm, for example, of one or two single-sex schools operating in New York City or Los Angeles? If they do well, there will be a lesson to be learned. If they do not, they can be eliminated.
Time magazine, writes Schlafly, “reported scientific studies which show that girls’ and boys’ brains are ‘hard-wired’ differently and support the view that separating the genders will improve learning.” The studies suggest that girls learn better “in emotionally supportive, collaborative groups and may not be as good at grasping abstract mathematical concepts, while boys thrive in competitive environments and tend to struggle with reading and art.” A Middle School in Woodbridge, Va., has found that using different teaching styles for boys and girls resulted in higher scores on standardized tests for both sexes.
Humbug? An old-fashioned idea? A self-fulfilling prophecy rooted in sexual stereotypes? All that can be argued. But why not permit the experiments to proceed to provide corroborative data? It is hard not to conclude that those who oppose such experiments with single-sex education are closed to debate on the topic; that they are motivated by a feminist orthodoxy that does not allow for disagreement.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
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