Gender

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine featured a very long article that's purportedly about single-sex public schooling, but is really about a narrower--and much more problematic--concept of gender-based education. Gender-based education is the notion that "Boys and Girls Learn Differently"--that's even the title of a book by Michael Gurian, one of the leaders of a cottage industry that's grown up to promote the idea. Specifically, it's the idea that recent neuroscience research shows significant difference in male a female brains and that as a result educators must employ different approaches in teaching male and female students. Unfortunately, many of the arguments for gender based education are bunk--and often have more to do with outdated gender stereotypes than the cutting edge research proponents claim they're based on.