Amerika

Young people are trying to fit into natural selection’s plan, too, so there’s a lot of tension between the sexes. Liberate it and things may — may — function more smoothly.

Mr. Cannon noticed that fifth graders’ results were largely stagnant, a slump common across the city. He heard about a school in North Carolina that had all-girls classes and was inspired.

So he decided to try it — under the Bloomberg administration’s philosophy of letting principals run their schools as they wish, it was as simple as that, with no special training or monitoring. A few parents expressed reservations at first, but it was popular enough that this year, the middle school around the corner followed suit with its sixth grade.

“Before it was all about showing the girls who was toughest, and roughing up and being cool,” said Samell Little, whose son Gavin is in his second school year surrounded only by boys. “Now I never hear a word from teachers about behavior problems, and when he talks about school, he is actually talking about work.”

NYT

Interesting hypothesis. Of course, the usual defensive and neurotic types are freaking out and saying really nasty things, showing that theirs is an agenda of revenge and not a positive, life-affirming dogma:

But Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said separate classrooms reinforce gender stereotypes. “A boy who has never been beaten by a girl on an algebra test could have some major problems having a female supervisor,” she said.