A roster of suggested improvements, for the American early-secondary school.

Between a rock and a hard place...

Jonnie Comet


Having spent what sometimes feels like an aeon in and out of comprehensive schools in America in one capacity or another, I have discerned several distinct problems with the way they are run– especially in what is known as middle school, that for ages 11 to 14.   This most precious age has been subjected to some of the most short-sighted and illogical educational notions ever to come along in the whole time of man; and in my humble estimation very little of it has been any good.   What children of this age need most is consistency; and yet in the myriad of changes that face them, not only in their own society which is constantly and inevitably mutating, but in the realm of their educational environment which they ought to be able to trust as reliable, it’s no surprise that their lives should appear as topsy-turvy as they do to the rest of us.

And then too many educators and parents blame this all on ‘hormones’, or ‘the way it is’, without ever speculating that their own contributions to the lives of these poor innocents could be improved dramatically and to the children’s infinite betterment.  It doesn’t take an idiot to see that however goes the life of the young shall go the quality of the future.   So why do we continue to treat our children like guinea pigs labouring under our own foolish and selfish schemes?

The following suggestions are offered in the interests of remedying what has become the norm for comprehensive middle school.  An openminded educator truly interested in restoring quality education to the masses will recognise that any one of these suggestions, if implemented alone, would be a vast improvement on the average school of the American Northeast.  All of them together could become an educational Utopia.  The ideas have basis in psychology and scientific study, but are influenced by objective observation and reason just as much.   They are not concerned with existing legal or financial issues.   They do not come from long years in the ‘trenches’ of comprehensive-school education, and they pay no attention to needs or perceptions of teachers’ organisations or school administrations.  Rather, in the spirit of Absolutism, they are intended to represent what ought to be– the ideal.

 

1. Stop making up cute names for everything.

When a class of people in public service tend to name every policy and process with cute acronyms or nicknames not understandable to the public (their employers) they appear as an elite group distancing themselves from the very people they are supposed to be enlightening.   It is only the sincere, student-minded educator communicating in the common language of the people he serves who can ever be truly successful.  In all my pædagogical studies I never really learned what all that terminology used by professional educators really meant.  I still don’t know and now I care even less.   There will be no reliance on esoteric ‘educator-speak’ jargon in this article.

 

2. Require parents to be responsible for their children’s education in a consistent and meaningful way.

School is not a day-care centre for busy adults to simply drop off children and leave all the educating stuff to ‘the professionals’.  A family needs to expect that homework will be important, and optimistic standards of achievement need to be clearly understood.  In all cases the blame for any child’s failure will rest primarily on his parents’ shoulders.  If a student’s home environment is not conducive to his adequate achievement and behaviour in school, that family is jeopardising the child’s welfare.

In fact a very good legal case might be made that a lack of appropriate involvement in a child’s success in school should be considered child abandonment or neglect.

 

3. Homogenise classes by ability.

This was always the way of schools in the past; yet for political reasons over the last 35 years the reverse policy has been applied, and the record shows it has failed.  It is immeasurably more efficient for the teacher to reach all students in the class when the learning level of the students is essentially homogeneous– whether of high or low ability is immaterial.  When the class is of mixed learning abilities teachers and students become frustrated and far less learning actually takes place at both ends of the scale.

A policy of homogeneous grouping might also serve to deter schools and parents, and ultimately students, from seeking serendipitous ‘classification’ of students based on symptoms and behaviour.

 

4. Stop using ‘ADD’ as an educational or behavioural classification.

Far too many students of all ability levels have been classified as ‘Attention Deficit Disorder’ when probably most of them are just rude or undisciplined.  Classifying as ‘ADD’ does nothing to actually help the child in the long run; it only adds negative stigma to his self-esteem.  What can be expected of an adult whose formative years were spent under the perception that he cannot control his own behaviour without drugs or special treatment?

Career teachers will agree that such demonstrated learning troubles are far more likely the effect of a detrimental home environment than of an actual clinical condition.  Firmer, more attentive parenting will render much of this issue inconsequential.

 

5. Sponsor more upper-level lesson plans, learning activities, enrichment programmes and even whole classes of students.

It is glaringly obvious that there’s been a void at the upper strata of academic ability for too long.   Comprehensive schools spend far more of their time, effort and budget on modifying even the most basic lessons to keep the lowest-level achievers out of the failure ranks than they do promoting achievement among those with the most potential for success.

Not only do bona-fide enrichment programmes for the bona-fide high achievers benefit the learners, they also benefit the schools themselves since the academic reputation of these students will ultimately become that of the whole school.

 

6. Segregate classes by gender through the middle-school years.

Only the naïve and the narrowminded deny the plain scientific fact that girls and boys of this age learn different things at different rates.   More often than not ‘high-technology’ and ‘real-world-relevant’ subjects are taught enthusiastically at the boys’ level, thus perpetuating the idea of girls being a lesser caste.   In reality, girls outperform boys in other areas in which the boys’ ability has not yet reached that of the girls.  From a human-rights view it is only fair to educate each sex on its own terms, giving them identical material but at appropriate rates and in appropriate sequence.   With the distraction of the opposite sex set aside for a few years, attention to wardrobe, fashion, and flirting is decreased whilst gender identity and healthy self-esteem are enhanced.   Both sexes gain more respect for the other when they come together only in structured, mixed functions.  And there need be no major adjustment to budget or scheduling.

Remember that the scope of the US Constitution does not enforce coeducational comprehensive schooling– it only requires that education be conducted responsibly and without discrimination.   So, in light of the facts, it is very likely we are being discriminatory by indiscriminately subjecting all students to an inflexible curriculum without regard to the immutable characteristic of sex.  (See additional article.)

 

7. Refrain from considering ‘block scheduling’ (the doubling of class period time) in the middle school.

You are facing an age group whose short attention span and susceptibility to distractions are legendary.  These students will do far better in shorter, discrete class times for specific subjects, so that the student is aware before the bell rings just what the objectives of the class and his responsibilities for meeting them will be.   The goal must be to wean them from the all-in-one-class environment of primary school towards the more open scheduling of upper school and university; and concretely delineating lessons and meeting times reinforces this.

 

8. Quash the dated and failed notion of ‘whole-language’ in lieu of discrete grammar and literature classes.

Students of this age may never again have the opportunity to fully learn the basic principles of grammar, conjugation of verbs, parts of speech, and rules and terms of rhetoric.   Too many schools intermingle grammar and reading in the interests of providing class time for computers or Spanish when the students are still functionally illiterate in English.  They will not get more of this in most high schools; so however they are at the end of 8th year will be their highest level of proficiency– and in most cases it’s not good enough.

Further, reading needs to be emphasised as the most crucial of all subjects, fundamental to all the student’s future studies anywhere, no matter what the genre.  Yet middle schools are often content to have elementary-certified teachers in maths and science ‘take over’ reading instruction as their fifth class assignment, rather than using bona-fide reading educators who are capable of appropriate techniques and more likely to teach more thoroughly and impose higher standards.

 

9. Abolish ‘teaming’ (the forming of exclusive subsets of a large student body based on arbitrary or random criteria).

Ironically it is the big, impersonal regional school districts which tout the sacred goals of American comprehensive schools, ‘inclusion’ and ‘globalism’, who have promoted teaming as a way to establish smaller, more intimate ‘neighbourhoods’.   Teaming is nothing more than the arbitrary structuring of student cliques.  It perpetuates the provincial immaturity of primary school, babying students too often babied by everyone else.  Ultimately the awakening will be rude indeed if they’ve never had the experience of finding themselves in a class full of strangers, as in high school, which usually assigns students only according to time, subject, learning level and space criteria.  And teaming is hardly analogous to the real world in which many occupations assign associates to many different groups in different areas.

The unmentionable real reason for teaming is to permit teachers of the same core 100 students to meet regularly– an issue solved by simply providing them more time to meet with colleagues about curriculum.  Benefits to teachers should never be balanced against detriments to student learning environments.

 

10. Do not rely on money to solve fundamental problems. 

It always seems that the worst-performing schools are the ones most loudly clamouring for more money and complaining when they don’t get enough.  Does no-one else recognise the reverse correlation here?  Any school administration with such a focus on raising funds from the outside are obviously not focussed on education.   American public education began with one woman in one room teaching twelve children with no money.   Projects were cut out of paper and books were cherished as the priceless opportunity for enlightenment they really were.   Lunch was a bowl of soup off the fire and science objectives were achieved with walks through the garden.   There were no computers or security systems.   School status was determined by students’ performance.  The basic underlying principle was that of care for children.

This is still valid today.  Poorer schools doing things like the above can and do work, through the commitment of teachers and with the support of concerned parents.   Air-conditioning, carpeting, and computers in every classroom are not guarantees of success in the important areas of a school’s mission.  Though a school may not be at the height of fashion for the given time, if its purpose is clear and those involved are dedicated to it, they may achieve far and above what those posh schools with their so-called ‘amenities’ are doing.

 

11. Bring back ‘industrial arts’.

Only the out-of-touch will insist that every middle-school student has an equal chance at a lucrative liberal-arts university education.  And all benefit from even basic knowledge of engine repair, electrical circuitry, woodworking, metallurgy, sewing, cooking, and health service.  Draughtsmanship, starting with pencil and paper, is invaluable in teaching the principles of proportion and perspective, concepts inextricably tied to maths and physics (not to mention fine art) yet too often alien to designers who have never designed anything without a computer mouse.

Instead of blithely skipping over ‘trades’ training which many claim is ‘beneath’ them or their children, we ought to be fostering education in all fields of study, handiworks included.  Otherwise the hot-shot ‘dot-com’ entrepreneur has no right to argue that TV repairmen and carpenters are overcharging him for work he does not understand and making such a good living at it too.

 

12. Don’t put so much emphasis on computer education in the curriculum.

It is a plain waste of time to devote a full class period every day (or even every week) to computer training when these students are going to get that information on their own, one way or the other, sooner or later.  If industry requires a computer education, let industry provide it; but this is not the job of the publicly-sponsored school.

Besides, computing has got so easy that any idiot can master nearly any widely-used business programme within two weeks on the job; and best of all he will have learnt it the way the business wants him to and not on the waning equipment of a comprehensive school scrambling to upgrade their systems on the backs of the taxpayers (including those industry owners).

 

13. Reinforce standards in penmanship and require handwritten papers.

This will never be a completely paperless society and the writing abilities of many so-called educated Americans are bad enough as it is.   It might be beneficial to use copies of handwritten memos by haughty industry executives and ‘dot-com’ entrepreneurs in the classroom as pertinent (and entertaining) examples of functional illiteracy. 

If a purpose of comprehensive schools is to make each succeeding generation more knowledgeable and better skilled than the last, this is one area which if applied, even alone, cannot help but be successful in that goal.

 

14. Teach and enforce standard English grammar and rhetoric more assertively.

Testing standards in literacy need to be progressively raised year by year, ad infinitum.  In this growing world clear, concise communication is increasingly crucial.   The differences between casual expression, including slang, idiom, and jargon, and formal speech and writing appropriate for larger audiences must be emphasised and consistently demonstrated.  This is particularly important in those ‘other’ realms of language arts, listening and speaking.   Many media materials preferred by teachers, such as popular films on video, serve only as negative illustrations.

Verbal instructions with no written back-up on the chalkboard need to be given more frequently and for increasingly important assignments.  Students’ speech needs to be more closely monitored, both in the span of class time and elsewhere in the school domain, as their independent application of standard English is analogous to their proficiency in it.  Both these examples are directly pertinent to the real world, in which verbal directions may be given only once and one’s oral adequacy may be instrumental in being preferred for a job or promotion.

 

15. Resurrect abstinence as a principal theme in all ‘health’ or ‘sex education’ curricula.

Both the simplest and the wisest of us know that the only way to completely avoid sexually-transmitted disease, unwanted pregnancy, and loss of adults’ respect is to not risk it in the first place.   It may be only because today’s young teenagers are being raised by the sexually-liberated children of the ’60s and ’70s; but somewhere the whole notion of safety and decency in relations with the opposite sex went out the window.  Modern schools are more likely to pass out condoms, thus encouraging children to enjoy themselves in ignorance and with a false sense of security, than they are to promote a healthy self-image and the idea of a good reputation.

So long as man is an animal there will be hormones; but the part that makes us human is our ability to make rational decisions; and surely even the arrogant and the puerile will agree that for the 11- to 14-year-old, the correct choice is to say no.

 

16. Teach, demonstrate, require and enforce etiquette and respect, especially amongst students and towards staff.

Throughout the last 200 years American educators and politicians have been so committed to removing class barriers and on endowing everyone with equal rights that the politically-incorrect idea of ‘social superiors’ has become an alien concept.   It is simply reasonable that just by virtue of his position a schoolteacher ought to expect some degree of respect from his students, especially within the classroom or school walls.  There can be no tolerance for a student who will not comply with that.  A student does not have the inalienable right to address the teacher in the casual disdainful manner he would use with a teenaged peer, over trivial points of only personal relevance, and in the open classroom.   Defiance and disrespect are taught by conditioning, both by school policies and the greater social sphere; and the only response to that must be counter-conditioning, including, if necessary, the consistent application of negative consequences.

The school which teaches and enforces manners and respect, even to the point of invoking disciplinary sanctions against those out of line, will always be efficient at conveying meaningful education from elders to children.  And any body of students who treat each other and their superiors with insufficient respect will always appear as a failure, to the students, the faculty, the public and especially to the taxpayers’ purses.


However archaic some of these ideas may seem, they address the intrinsic problems manifest in American middle schools for over three decades.  Of course points like these are raised whenever the issue of ‘reform’ comes up; but in the end politics, emotion, and perceptions about money cause them to be swept under the carpet.  The worst factor is that of fear on the part of educators– fear that some arrogant dissenter somewhere is going to call foul, fear that some sensibility of some amoral atheist is going to be offended, fear that a lawyer may show someone’s civil liberties are being compromised.  In reality none of the improvements here proposed should appear anything but sound to the most responsible members of a community.  Yet American comprehensive education often seems incongruously devoid of a policy of effort towards expectations, behaviour with consequences, and responsibility to something greater than self and comfort. Only when this most fundamental oversight is corrected can the true reform begin.

As an Absolutist, and parent, I can only hope, and pray, that no further damage is done to the children’s generation whilst the educators and parents and communities continue to bicker over their own concerns.


- August 2001


* * *

All the young tarts.

There but for the Grace of God...

Jonnie Comet

17 July 2000

  So you’ve got yourself to middle school now, and you’re unlucky enough to go to a coeducational school, where the guys are.  And you’d hoped to find that they all really like you, because it’d make your life easier, since you’d love to know that at least one of them likes you in particular, because after all that’s what we’re all supposed to want, right?  But so far here’s how they’ve been treating you:

  Your shoe’s untied and you stop and bend over to tie it and some guys walk by and one of them says something about your tush or the angle you’re on or how the level of your head is ‘just right’.  Or you’re reaching up to shove the books into your locker and one of the guys says something about how high your top rides up or what size you must be now or what a ‘nice handful’ one or two things might make.  Or maybe you hit the jackpot and get an actual one-to-one with one of them, and after a few minor words he says something about ‘getting together’ and starts asking you about your dating experience, and what you’ve done and what you haven’t, and whether you’d try this or that if only you had the right guy– indicating himself of course– and you feel profoundly embarrassed because you haven’t the faintest clue about what he’s saying except that you know other people are talking about it too and, after all, you’re smart enough to figure it out, but you’re not sure you need to know about it like he’s suggesting you should, and you feel like an idiot until he really starts driving at you with the questions and you get the urge to just run away like a scared rabbit, punch him or at least hurl one good solid verbal insult back at him, and all those other guys too, something with a wonderfully nasty-looking wince on your face and one or two choice obscenities thrown in to let him know you don’t indulge in his kind of slime, the miserable scumball that he is, but you know that when you do he’ll just seem to like it more and keep at it and, worse, he’ll tell everyone else too, so you can get known like that.

  Have I got any of this right so far?

  This seems to happen all the time, with every guy that’s even remotely interesting.  And the only thing you can think by now is that you must really be a total tart.  You didn’t used to be; but everything about your life is totally different than it was three years ago.  Well, first, you’ve got a body now– you didn’t have that three years ago.  Everyone seems to be paying attention to you– men and women both.  You’ve got a shape other women love to hate you for, and you dress like you don’t care– or worse, like you do, and they hate you for it either way.  The men– well, you know what the men are thinking, and if you don’t you will in another year or so.  Every guy from 12 to 100 stares at you; and the awful part is, there’s a good-sized bit of you that actually likes it, and, even worse, there’s a little bit of you that actually wouldn’t mind doing whatever it is they’ve got in mind.  Oh, Lord! –what a tart you must be.
  Now the Darwinists will say that all of this is perfectly natural, that the strange attraction you feel towards that kind of scumball is normal and you ought to be brave enough, or intelligent enough, to just admit it and accept it.  But there’s a problem with believing this.  It suggests our basest feelings represent our true selves, that we are nothing higher than naked apes and it’s the way of all flesh.  That’s a pretty sad way to think.  If we were put on this earth with all the marvellous faculties and abilities we have for no other reason than to do as all other warm-blooded creatures do, then what’s the point of being here?  All our logic and faith tells us this can’t be the case.  Man, as an animal, is an admirable piece of work... ‘how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.’  It’s a crying shame to simply toss all that out and deny that we are ever called towards more than birth, sex, nursing a few infants, and death.
  But people who accept the Darwin argument are never going to be truly valuable in society– they only think they are because there’s so many of them; and the reason there are so many of them is because it’s an intellectually lazy way to think.  And men in particular are particularly lazy intellectually.  When a guy comes on to you with the attitude that ‘You’re a girl; I’m a guy– hey, let’s get together’, remind yourself that he probably follows an ideology suggesting he is directly descended from smelly apes who poop on each other, and the resemblance at the time ought to be crystal-clear to you.
  The truth is that there are only two things keeping you from being the tart you have been dreading you’ve already become.  The first is the love of God.  I’m not saying the will of God– no, not His will, powerful as that may be.  No, I mean the love of God– that true love, unconditional, unchanging, never-ending.  This is the love of a good father, who cares for you and teaches you and protects you from hazardous situations, and then takes you back in with open arms and repairs the damage when you’ve gone wrong anyway.  So you always have somewhere to turn whenever you are in doubt of what to do or how to act.  No child of God will ever be unwelcome in His house, because He chooses to love us all.  So you are never lost, bad as you think your situation might be.
  The other thing is your will.  God grant you a will like His own, so that you would have the ability to choose between His way and any other way.  Certainly God is not interested in seeing you become a tart.  But all His efforts at trying to prove to you that He exists and that you ought to follow Him will amount to nothing if you choose to turn your pretty head and ignore what He’s trying to say.  You have to remember that at any given time, you can say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.  You can decide what you will be– tart or virtuous woman, the choice is all yours and you can’t blame anyone but yourself.
  Only those who choose to believe in God and accept His love and His rules for good living ever realise this.  They are saved even before they have doubts, because they know there is always an alternative to sin, and that is to follow God, live under His roof, abide by His house rules, have His protection, receive His love.  God is your best friend and your most powerful ally.  He can bear any confidence and intercede in any problem you have.  –‘If God is with us, who can be against us?’
  Now the next time some guy makes a lewd comment, it would be unchristian to reduce yourself to his level and respond in kind.  Don’t play his game at all.  When he looks at you with sinful thoughts on his mind you play right into his hand by replying sinfully.  No; the correct thing to do is to smother him with virtue.  Act as though you don’t understand what he said– never mind that it makes you blush.  Say, ‘Pardon me?’  First of all, just saying that in a respectful tone will throw him off.  Guys don’t know how to deal with a young lady using real manners.  Oh; he’ll try again in some other way, if he’s really persistent.  But you’ll respond again like before. –‘I’m sorry; do I know you?’ –or, ‘I’m sorry; did you want to talk with me?’ –or something to indicate you were not aware you were supposed to value what he’s just said, as though you’re too nice to have got it at all.
  The main thing is to do it with absolutely the best manners and most ladylike– let’s even call it ‘prissy’ –tone that you can.  A scumball can’t handle that.  He’ll immediately brand you a prude and go off in search of someone who gives him less trouble; and what should you care if he calls you a prude? –for the opinion of a scumball isn’t worth anything and sooner or later everyone figures that out.
 You may wonder now why simply insulting him isn’t easier to be rid of him faster.  Well, you’re thinking; and at least you do want to be rid of him.  The reason insults won’t work is because deep down inside this kind of guy believes that he really is a scumball.  See; it’s the Darwin idea at work.  When you insult him, it meshes with that– he doesn’t even know it well enough to admit it, but you’ve just validated his deepest beliefs.  It’s easy for him then.  He doesn’t have to try to be anything more than a scumball, because the woman he’s attracted to already accepts him that way.  He’ll continue to insult and degrade you until he’s certain he’s brought you down to his level, where he feels most secure– where he is in charge, in his scumball world.  The single worst thing a woman can ever do is to allow a man to believe that being nothing more than a scumball is acceptable.

 Ultimately, countering with politeness will do exactly the opposite.  It doesn’t change the fact that the guy is interested in girls.  It won’t change the fact that he still may believe some of them are available tarts.  What’s different is how he will change after attempting to insult you.  You let him know that acting like a scumball is unacceptable, that if he wants your attention he’s going to have to earn it, and that he’ll have to try being more gentlemanly and polite to do it.

  Now there are two kinds of guys who’ll insult you and they’ll each handle this differently.  The true scumball doesn’t want to change from being a scumball; and, since you obviously want him to change, he’s not going to go there.  He’s lazy.  He’ll decide that you’re not worth his effort and just go after a real tart who doesn’t ask him to be anything but a scumball.  The sooner he realises this, the sooner he’ll give up on you.  You don’t need this guy anyway; so my advice is to be quick about it and spare both yourself and him a lot of aggravation.
  The other guy is the one who acts like a scumball because he thinks it’s expected of him because so many other guys seem to be scumballs; but he has a great potential for being a gentleman.  This guy will at least try to rise to the challenge you give him.  He’ll immediately apologise and possibly go away and approach you later with a better comment.  Be wary– but sound him and see how well he does.  It might be amusing.  It might even lead to something good.  After all, by trying to look like less of a scumball he’s making an effort to earn you.  But don’t let your guard down.  Don’t even meet him halfway.  Let him know in no uncertain terms that it’s going to take everything he’s got.  If he’s worth it, he’ll meet the challenge.  If he’s really just a scumball after all, he’ll give up and you won’t have lost anything anyway.
  Of course a guy who’s already a gentleman would not have made the lewd comment in the first place.  He’s probably been gazing at you from afar and, I assure you, though he is not stupid his thoughts are anything but lewd.  One day you will meet eyes with him, and he will say shyly, ‘Hi.’  It might take another few weeks for him to say more than that.  This is the way he sounds you out.  The best way to encourage him is by keeping your guard up and keeping your standards high, because that’s what’s attracting him to you.  Don’t worry about losing him– if he’s really good enough he’ll pass every test, and you won’t end up with a scumball.  This is how confident girls with less than goddess-like looks are able to get attention.  They attract it by sheer force of goodness.  Lesser people can’t handle that.  You see, it’s got nothing to do with your looks.  It’s got everything to do with your virtue.
 The deep-down secret which every guy will ultimately confess is that he just wants a nice, sweet, innocent, virtuous girl to fall head-over-heels in love with no-one but him.  Note, I said every guy.  Most of them know what’s required.  The best of them already try to do it.  The scumballs are just either stupid or lazy– probably both.  There’s simply no reason to accept a scumball; and you should never give up as so many modern women do and say, ‘All guys are scumballs’.  If that appears true it’s only because there are so many lazy or stupid women out there who accept them that way.  Most guys are essentially lazy– they won’t change if they don’t have to.  The best ones are hard workers and they’ll accept any challenge if the reward is appropriate.
  This is where you come in.  You see, you are the reward.  We all know you don’t get something for nothing– everything has its price.  And... ‘the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies.’

* * *

A delicate affair.

Jonnie Comet

15 July 2000


’Tis an old maxim in the Schools,

That Flattery’s the food of Fools;

Yet now and then your men of wit

Will condescend to take a bit.

  In block-heeled shoes too heavy for her frame she traipses up to the house, having slyly bade her mother leave her at the kerb.  Ringing the bell she is greeted by the housemaid who comments on how lovely she looks.  It’s an oft-heard comment and fairly given; yet she blushes more today that ordinarily.  She’s attired herself most presentably this afternoon in the maturest of her party-going wardrobe, though it is hardly the first time she’s made the effort.  In fact this is hardly the first time she’s been here. Familiarity doth breed contempt in all but the most virtuous of maidens; in their case it doth breed quite the opposite.

  When the housemaid conveys to her that the girls are off on a hike and not likely to be back before dinner, she responds, ‘Oh!’ –only shallowly feigning disappointment.  For she had suspected, or hoped, that her own sister and the motherless young mistress of the house who are close friends would be busy in girlish pursuits elsewhere.  Asking after the master of the house she is shown below stairs to where he is mixing some passage of digital video in the studio.

  He is surprised but obviously not displeased to see her, for the moment withholding the comments that might have been appropriate about her pretty dress and the tinge of makeup which her sweet young face scarcely wants.  ‘I brought the paper you said you would help me with,’ she says carefully, tentatively lowering the school bag to the floor.  ‘If... you have time.’

  He nods.  ‘This may take a while.’  He thinks better of that.  ‘How long are you able to stay?’

  That question! –she gathers her composure and remembers her station, saying carefully, ‘As long as my sister can.’

  It is agreed without words: she is staying for dinner.  Demurely she sits beside him at the console, studying the screen intently, and, as usual, they are at once teacher-and-student and co-learners together.  She listens to his side comments about piano tuning and visits to Europe and the origin of some Shakespeare quote, fascinated, amused, receptive.  Her eager mind and willingness to demonstrate its fruits make her an efficient co-worker; and over the next hour the video is satisfactorily mixed down onto tape for later broadcast in the sitting room.  She receives a credit in the end-title sequence as ‘Assistant to the Producer’, which she regards much less whimsically than does the one who dared call himself ‘Producer’ on the homemade basement production of his child’s acting.  It is an accolade for her, a memory of the afternoon she spent in company one-to-one with him, working not merely as coworkers but as friends, even– and she dares only carefully to contemplate the word– as peers.

  Up in the house the children return and find this twosome sitting at the library table, he pouring earnestly over her writing assignment whilst she poises herself as close beside him as her decorously crossed knees in the skirt will allow.  Of course he has criticisms for her, and she will bear them well; but he pronounces it a solid piece of work ‘for a first draught’ –and then, with the audacity only a former schoolteacher can muster, directs her to sit there at the table and rewrite the whole thing.  He even provides her with the proper lined paper from a drawer.  And then she is alone, but only in the room; his comments scribbled in the margins and the knowledge of his genuine interest in her achievements, however sophomoric they truly are, abide genially in her head and her heart.

  Anyone else who heard, ‘Nice effort– now change all of this and rewrite it,’ might have balked at once, cursed the accuser, and tossed the only draught upon the fire.  Perhaps if anyone else had told her so, she herself might have done the same.  But now, in the intimate, greying light of the library, she scrawls away, striving to include all his suggestions in the context intended whilst deliberately maintaining her most delicate, feminine hand, beautiful in its adolescent elegance, the odd misspelling and misplaced modifier notwithstanding.  It is the handwriting she would use for a love letter; though she has never written one– that is, before now.

  Dinner, typically sedate for father and daughter alone, becomes something to anticipate tonight with two young guests to table.  Still there is a solemnity to entering the candlelit dining room, deep red and bright white, with the expanse of mahogany table spread out before them, its islands of white lace and bone china seeming leagues apart.  The young mistress of the house takes her place three metres from her father and her confidante to her right, so that the place of honour is left to the second eldest of the party, across from her sister and at the right hand of the host.  As he seats her in the way he might have seated any other guest she blushes, knowing no boy in her class would ever have made the effort.

  Indeed she must scavenge up every scrap of etiquette learnt from her mother and grandmother from the depths of a will too often diluted by what passes for protocol among teenagers.  But she knows the occasion calls for it; and having been so genteelly treated today she will not disappoint.  The linen napkin is spread open in her lap, draping over her legs farther than is covered by her own skirts.  She breaks her bread to butter it, sips from the spoon with nary a sound, and compliments the soup.  Her host initiates a lively discussion of the video and she cheerfully participates, true to her age in owning a little too much of the production credit for herself.  But in the next quiet moment she effects a more elegant air, much too transparent to everyone but herself, and remarks sincerely that dinner by candlelight is so charmingly old-fashioned.  Her host smiles, pleased that any young person in this day and age would admit such an anachronistic sensibility.  ‘I could eat like this every night,’ she says offhandedly; and, whilst genuine, it is also a thinly-veiled invitation to be invited back.  For those at the table there is no doubt that she will be.

  The big television set makes a rare appearance, switched on solely for the purpose of airing the video mixed down this afternoon.  The two younger girls cheer and gloat over their own performances, teasing each other and begging to have parts played back again and again.  The best friend’s sister is reluctantly caught up in their humour; she is drawn out by the host’s jokes and participation in the fun but only guardedly. For this evening she is a young lady in a short skirt and makeup who will not compromise her dignity for childish antics.

  Her essay, ostensively her reason for coming today, is read again and pronounced a success.  It will never be perfect; yet both principal players have different reasons for believing why not.  One is too much a perfectionist about writing; the other too passionate about making personal positions known.  Neither has entirely succeeded in the self-assigned missions of the day; yet neither will pronounce it a failure.

  At eight her mother comes to collect them; and her sister makes some foolishly immature attempt to hide and prolong the visit by such means as she can, abetted of course by the mistress of the house herself.  But the senior dinner guest levels her chin and rises to her full height in the block-heeled shoes, extending her hand to her host and complimenting him on the hospitality.  ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ she says graciously.  They both know she had more invited herself; but both too are convinced she always be welcome in future.

  Her mother waves from the car, grateful for a family friend who will gladly deign to entertain and chaperon her children on the long summer days of school vacation.  He says it is no bother; he enjoys their company.  How much of an understatement this is may be anyone’s guess– he surely will never confess it aloud.

  But why should our wearied old friend not claim some satisfaction from the attentions of such a delightful young companion?  To be sure, she is everything lovely, beyond merely young; she is affable, intelligent, fair, generous, virtuous, eager to learn, and respectful and admiring of his experience and opinions.  She might draw many kinds of attention from many kinds of males– and surely does– yet she chooses to dwell on him alone, considering what he is to be worthy of her time and efforts to impress.  It is impossible to overlook– in all her efforts to appear casual, she is gravely serious; in trying to appear artless, she is shamelessly cunning; in her ladylike aloofness she is single-minded even to the point of entertaining implausible fantasies.  To be the object of this is high favour indeed; and our friend must tread a tightrope between the healthiest limits of encouragement, to keep her in his care, and restraint, to keep her at a safe distance.

  On one hand his young admirer is fragile– the wrong sort of response would ruin her, his child’s friendship with her sister, his friendship with her parents.  The love innate in all these relationships is what has earned the unwavering trust.  But on the other hand she is more than just a friend, a child’s friend, a friend’s child.  Her brave attention to him is validation of everything he means to be for all young people to behold– a kind of model for them all of what ought to be a man in this world.  She is all teenaged girls everywhere, who are precious in what they are and stand for, at once both engagingly nubile and yet blithely naïve.

  This is what young people are about; and their emotional or physical desecration at the hands of one who knows better is itself the demise of a Christian society.  The mission of every adult must be to nurture them towards responsible, virtuous, Godly adulthood, demonstrating what appropriate relationships are in all their stages and guises.  If she, tabla rasa, has invested in him her impressionable innocence, it is his moral duty to uphold that trust, taking care to impart to her those lessons which only an honourable man who is not her father can ever teach her without ever going past the demarcation of propriety.

  It is a delicate balance; but as she honours him he must in turn honour her by being the very best he can be, demanding of himself attributes which only the most carefully cultured, educated, ethical man can put into proper perspective.  Fortunately, this is our friend’s God-given forte.  His affinity for the company of young people is well known.  His reputation for being appropriate and more fatherly than friendly with them is above reproach.  His faith that the closest of his friends know this is unwavering.  His sense of obligation to them is sacrosanct.  The trust they place in him so often for the best welfare of their children is his greatest honour.  To acknowledge some small degree of satisfaction from an afternoon and evening so innocently and respectably passed is therefore to him the height of ecstasy.  After all she is by now a dear friend of his own; he welcomes, entertains, teases, teaches, values her in the ways that he ought to.  They will never be lovers; but she shall be cherished in his heart forever.

  His young admirer may not understand the half of it.  What her innocent heart knows is that he is a man, one of the best of the species, entertaining, warm, caring, noble and virtuous.  He is a safe object for her interest– he seeks to educate and entertain, not debase her nor demand anything onerous from her.  What she does not know is that for her this is only a practice before the real thing, that, one day when this all seems like silly schoolgirl stuff, she will have seen enough of the world to regard him as a role model by which she might gauge adult men in general, to help her determine the one she will wish to spend her eternity with.  No fourteen-year-old boy will ever be able to fill that role for her.  One can only hope that some day, inspired by the standards of a young lady sure of what she wants and resolute about what she is willing to do for it, some former fourteen-year-old shall.

  It can be considered an admission of either the basest pride or the sublimest satisfaction for a mentor to delight in the success of a pupil.  Our friend will readily acknowledge that he has taught only what was always good, and that his young charge has chosen to follow the good path and done well in it only of her own volition.  That she has become so universally charming is only proof of her own predisposition towards virtue; and he is only the more honourable to acknowledge it without shame.  After all it is natural that a young lady should investigate men, and the more she seeks him, the more good he can do for her.  Through her burgeoning interest she tests her own identity and, receiving the right sort of attention, learns what she is and what a man ought to be as well.  In the hands of the right sort of idol she will be respected, valued, taught and bettered for it and, in due time, come to value herself more for having known him– and that is the greatest joy he can derive from having known her.

  So, cynics, call him a flattered fool who condescends to delusions that he might be striking enough to be sought by a young charge.  Question his pride, that he might think himself worthy of her heart’s attention and responsible for her mind’s education.  Accuse him of indulging his own special fantasies; suspect that they might be improper.  Yet the irreproachable will accept the truth, that as an Idealist, humble and honourable, his most earnest fancy will always be that the whole world might be as innocent of guile as his young admirer’s interest and as true to virtue as his response to it has been.  For the fact shall ever remain– that only a true gentleman deserves to inspire a true lady.

* * *

epigram  - ’Tis an old...  take a bit  - Swift; Cadenus & Vanessa; 1713

Girl in a dress.

Jonnie Comet
11 June 1999

  She was probably in tenth year, about 15 or 16, lithe and lovely, carrying herself down the pavement with her shoulders back and chin set firm– unusual in such a young lady.  She wore those block-heeled shoes that for some inexplicable reason have come back from the ‘70s to haunt us– she might have done far better in a pair of plain white two-inch slingbacks.  But the shoes were forgivable.  Draped in a print of violet splashed upon white she was a picture of femininity, in the best sense: a vision of beauty in a simple cotton dress.
  What is it about a girl in a dress?  Have I gone so old and feeble-minded that I cannot help but gaze, lecherlike, at the compelling comeliness of a young lady so presented?  But I assure you, it’s not the physiognomic appeal that waxes me to words.  A woman’s shape is essentially universal. –no, do not fret, dear ladies, but you’ve got to admit that on a purely rational level, the female form varies very little from example to example.  All the same parts are there on every one, intended for the same functions, and in their function lies the truest beauty of the form.  To a given man one example may appear more attractive than another; –but, to each his own.  The only delineator is taste.
  It is not purely a cultural appeal either.  I know of women who toil an hour to get ready to put on a dress and go out in public– though for my life I cannot understand why.  I do pity them, not for the ordeal they must endure in dressing but for their belief that they must do it.  Doubtless these are the same women who growl with envy at one who can pull her hair back with a clip, throw the dress on over her head, and step into shoes on her way out the door.  I suppose such envy could even be healthy; it’s not the physical form that’s envied, but the aplomb.  Aplomb is always appealing in a woman.

  No; I mean that the young woman in a dress has a profoundly intellectual appeal.  There is something unspeakably satisfying to a mature man who observes a woman, particularly a younger one, in a dress, as she displays all the aplomb of one who wears dresses as a daily matter of course.  As with most things men think, this whole principle is admittedly anachronistic.  In days gone by all women wore dresses.  It was even more than stylistically de rigueur; for a woman to do otherwise was unthinkable.  Yet the generation of women born in the 1970s and thereafter have grown up knowing they can wear absolutely anything and be socially acceptable.  Good-fitting jeans or slacks always look sharp.  Shorts are cute– what other word could describe them? The tunic-and-tights ensemble of autumns past is sensible and flattering.  A skirt and jacket, as for the office, is exquisite. –indeed any top looks good with the right skirt; a savvy woman can wear a plain t-shirt with a wool skirt and look terrific.  But none of these beats the dress.
  I’ve never polled a sample but I would like to know just why any woman, in this age of liberated genders, would choose to wear something so gender-specific as a dress.  For one thing, there is a certain inherent vulnerability to a dress, in more than one sense.  The physiognomic entwines with the cultural to suggest the very reason why even less respectable men than myself find the look of a woman in a dress indubitably irresistible.  On one hand the woman in the dress is unprotected, socially and physically– there is little room to ‘hide’ in a dress and you certainly can’t run in one.  The woman so attired exhibits that vulnerability to the world, true; –but by choice, and therein lies her power.  So long as she has a choice in the matter a woman is never truly vulnerable.  She chooses the dress from her myriad of wardrobe and goes out with head held high, to brave the onlookers whilst knowing half of them will ogle her wantonly.  Not every man’s thoughts run pure as spring water.  Most men’s imaginings rage and bubble like lava just beneath the surface, frustrated to look upon the outward appearance of a woman and to only imagine what lies beneath what they see.
  Yet I tell you, the mature, thinking man sees much more than the surface and imagines much more than what lies just beneath.  He smiles to behold the girl in a dress, not out of base lust, but of sublime satisfaction.  He is comforted to see that a modern young lady might choose to wear a dress in the face of all she must endure for it, as though he believes she’s enduring it all for his approval.  But he approves– any man would.  His mother wore a dress.  His teachers wore dresses.  The girl he first dreamed of in grade school wore a dress.  Females are supposed to wear dresses.
  It’s not about physical vulnerability or the opportunity to see more of her than she might prefer to exhibit.  It’s just that to the man, the young lady in a dress seems to represent everything good and wholesome about feminine virtue.  Never mind that it’s only a façade– don’t break his bubble.  The young lady in a dress appeals to his best intentions: to admire, to protect, to cherish.  He may envision a companion in a dress bringing tea and slippers to his favourite chair.  In forty years she will not have changed enough for him to notice– still the tea, still the slippers, still the dress.  He closes his eyes and sighs happily, and the example before him saunters past and disappears into traffic.  It is not really the example he savours, but what she stands for.  When she is gone from sight he will still ruminate on it– that under more favourable circumstances he might meet a woman like that, that they would talk, admit a mutual interest, even date.  She will wear a dress.   He will adore her.
  The illusion does not lead to a perceived reality, but the reverse.  The mould is preexisting– every man’s dream girl wears a dress.  To see one so attired reminds him of that carefully cultivated dream.  The man marvels that the woman in a dress seems to have anticipated his dream and means to appeal to it.  It is not merely acquiescence on her part, because the choice is hers, and therefore so is the power.  The poor, admiring, well-meaning man is helplessly enraptured by her.  He cannot be otherwise.  Those men old enough to understand this will smile doubly: once at what they see and once, even more so, at what it means.  God is in His place and all is right with the world, when young ladies choose to wear dresses.
  I watched, as the little beauty strolled by and disappeared into traffic, but I wouldn’t let her see me smile.  I am no ogler and my thoughts were hardly shameful– it never even crossed my mind that under other circumstances this girl in particular might have had potential for me personally.  True, she was a pleasant picture that my memory could savour for the rest of the day, but she was more than that also, a symbol of all that is right, can be right, should be right, amongst young women.  She made an impression on me– in fact a profoundly good one– and may never know it, and might not have understood if I’d attempted to explain it to her.  You see, I don’t have to know her– I know what she stands for, and that is enough for me to be thoroughly, hopelessly charmed by her.  She chose to wear a dress today.  And a girl in a dress is omnipotent.

* * *

A defence of segregation by gender in comprehensive secondary schools.

Themed review of Education, Gender and Anxiety by Jenny Shaw [i]

Jonnie Comet
2 December 1996


  For some years, and especially since the early 1970s, the issue of a ‘hidden curriculum’ in schools which favours the cultivation of desirable male traits at the expense of the education of girls has produced heated discourse. In her intriguing book, Education, Gender and Anxiety, Jenny Shaw, lecturer and professor of sociology at the University of Sussex at Brighton, makes a case for a psychoanalytic approach to better understand the effect of gender differences in school-age children.
  Gender differences are clearly evident in the patterns of girls’ and boys’ reading, in the sex-stereotyped and polarised subject choices at the secondary level, and in the debate between coeducational and single-sex schools. The author maintains that ‘Some gender differences should not necessarily be eliminated and that not all are equally pernicious or disturbing’.  This is a view I have always held as well, and for me so the book made for intriguing and even riveting reading.

  Ms Shaw gives two firm reasons for her psychoanalytic approach. First, the benefit of formal, conscious and visible discrimination is giving way towards informal, and thus invisible, unconscious division which makes this kind of approach appropriate.  Also, the approach will be adaptable to the variation and fluidity of gender issues.  Anxiety is at the heart of gender-related differences, and the way the sexes uniquely defend against it create preconditions for gender differentiation.  The author assumes five broadly interconnected themes to consider in her analysis:

1. Unconscious processes and anxiety affect learning.

  Social factors in classrooms affect a child’s ability to learn, especially in reading and at lower levels. Early group interaction will prove crucial throughout the child’s further educational development. In response to anxiety the sex and gender roles of those in a child’s preferred group almost invariably homogenise after about the first full year of schooling.

2. Teachers are not only legally but emotionally ‘in loco parentis’.

  Teaching and parenting are interdependent. The parent-child relationship is imprimatur of later relationships; its nature will govern all other associations with adults and authority figures which the student will make through young adulthood. The sexes have discernible differences in relating to male and female parents and teachers.

3. School subjects can be compared to other areas of childhood learning.
  The similarities extend to the first childhood experiences with coping alone, which contributes to the growth of an autonomous individual. Infancy can be likened to adolescence– both are major growth periods characterised by moves from dependency to independency.  Choosing academic subjects becomes very important as the student encounters anxiety about decision-making in general.  In secondary school teaching changes from being person-based in primary school to being subject-based, and so attitudes about school change from being based on student-teacher relationships to student-subject ones.

4. The gender dynamics of groups are a major consideration.

  Single-sex subcultures can become subversive, vying for power with the teacher’s authority. This raises two important questions: are schools more important as disseminators of subject information or as training ground for social interaction? –and, since ‘gender’ is an abstraction, and sexual polarity is often arbitrary, is it fair to make ‘gender’ the more significant issue?

5. Where gender is an educational problem, anxiety is greatest, and vice versa.

  This is the root of the author’s thesis; and it is her firm belief that viewed psychologically, the construct of gender differences may be more a reaction to anxiety than a cause of it.

  Ms Shaw author slyly likens the sex-stereotyping ‘hidden curriculum’ to the DOS computer system which lurks under her ‘Windows’ operating platform– no matter how prettily camouflaged it may be, it is still there as the basis for interaction.  Instead of Windows’ ‘Band-Aid’ approach what may be needed is a sweeping change to a new programme, a fresh start with a whole new idea.
  This, however, is admittedly unlikely. The unconscious curriculum which helps girls thrive better in primary school because of strong identification with female teachers will create problems at the secondary level where maths and science in particular are often taught by men.  Sociologist Raphaela Best notes the presence of a ‘third curriculum’ which encourages boys at this male-dominated level to be tough and hard and ‘macho’ at all costs. Girls of the same age must walk a tightrope between an emerging interest in sexuality and the social pressure to refrain from pursuing that interest. For them it is a lose-lose proposition, as Shaw notes, ‘Heterosexual codes and patriarchal power limit and constrict girls and women, whilst they enhance the power available to boys’.
 Thus, the concept of same-sex subgroups becomes recognised as a primary issue in social, and educational, interaction.  School as an institution does not tend to resolve the issues with same-sex association but to justify them, often ineffectually and without comprehending why. The author notes that ‘covert ability groupings in formally mixed-ability classes are often single-sex de facto’. She contends that classroom teachers do not intend to push any policy which exploits sexual divisions, but they recognise the dynamics of any institution are founded in the formation of effective subgroups and that gender divisions facilitate this process. One problem with the dynamics of these single-sex subgroups is that a group, which views itself as vastly more important than the inclinations of an individual, is challenged by the formation of pairs of friends. Any child who forms a friendship with a member of the opposite sex (read that: outside the group) will be viewed as a threat to the established order and will almost inevitably be chastised by what is commonly called ‘peer pressure’, here in its most apt connotation, until he or she toes the line and rejoins the group on its terms, thus circumventing any possibility of an individual’s survival without it.
  By these and other means the formation of single-sex subgroups in schools serves to reinforce the gender identity and therefore maintains and promotes the ideology of heterosexuality.  The author states: ‘The belief in coeducation is essentially an “innocent” one; it assumes that contact between the sexes can and should be asexual and without conflict…. When voluntary, informal separation takes the place of [prescribed] formal segregation within coeducational schools it may indeed be performing the same function, but through sex segregation, not without it’. [italics added].
  According to the author, the present public has almost universally embraced coeducation whilst educational professionals are returning to support single-sex schooling, largely due to statistics which illustrate how well single-sex schools do, particularly in the academic achievement scores for day schools for girls.   But there is an overriding agenda which is driven more by subjective anxiety than by empirical data. She asserts, ‘The adversarial and long-running debate about same-sex schooling needs to be understood as a defence against thinking about sexuality and about the sexuality of the young in particular’.  She cites ‘the subversive potential of sexuality’ as a defence mechanism forms the ‘deep structure of the debate’.  Much of the argument is based on irrational fear or unrealistic expectations. Separation is promoted both to avoid heterosexual union and to develop control, and also to ensure heterosexual choice in the long run through the establishment of gender identity; but coeducational schooling is promoted to avoid homosexual union and to leap-frog a volatile stage in adolescent development.   It is a paradox.  The author’s view is that the ‘dogged’ popular support for coeducational schools despite empirical evidence that coeducation is not ‘particularly harmonious’ is a naïve utopianism which, rather than to advocate an ideal, serves to prevent advocacy of its opposing position.  A prime defence of coeducational schooling is that social separation of any kind encourages ignorance and fear (Ms Shaw calls it ‘fantasy’). Support for same-sex schooling includes the idea that academic excellence can be better ensured without the distractions of the opposite sex. Other considerations typical of the debate have included:

1. Keeping boys from becoming too ‘soft’ through ‘feminine’ influences.
At boys’ schools, staff nurses and even wives of faculty are kept present in photographs, etc., but kept physically removed from students except in very limited and controlled circumstances.  ‘Leadership’ is promoted as a uniquely masculine province. There is a militaryesque regimen of expectations, behaviour and consequences. The punishments common in older boys’ schools have been justified as educational: if you as a patriarch will one day mete out punishment, you have to know what it feels like.

2. Literary ‘fantasy’ about teachers.
  The author notes that ‘school stories’ are a long-established subset of English-language literature and traditionally most popular with girls. Much of it is anti-teacher and heavily caricatured, especially in single-sex settings. She notes: ‘For women the images of teachers are of bizarre, obsessional neurotics whilst men are either ineffective but lovable fools, or sadists. And until Robin Williams played the charismatic teacher in the film Dead Poets’ Society, there was no popular image of the teacher as a romantic hero’. [ii] The author suggests that teachers in general pose a sexual treat to children. Teachers are intended to be asexual, yet the fantasies of brutal sadist and innocuous mentor which are exemplified in literature are in fact both equally unrealistic extremes.

3. Political and fundamentalist concerns.
  There is no fair correlation between progressive political affiliation and either support for or opposition to same-sex schooling. Any supporter of either same-sex schooling or coeducation may be ideologically conservative or progressive, yet an increase in interest in same-sex schooling is most often equated to a ‘rise’ of conservative fundamentalism.   In Britain the issue of Anglo-Muslim parents’ school choices bears a distinct resemblance to the American debate over including so-called ‘traditional values’ in public schools.  Just because some members of the growing Muslim population in Britain lobby to support same-sex schools does not mean they wish schooling in general to become increasingly fundamentalist. In fact the vast majority apparently do not; but the anxiety subsists.

4. The ideology of sexuality.
  The arguments over same-sex schooling tend to centre on the fears associated with heterosexuality in general and male sexuality in particular. Ms Shaw states: ‘The most common prevailing notions of femininity and masculinity are based firmly and exclusively on heterosexual difference, a difference that has to be maintained’.  These notions support and contradict both coeducational and same-sex schooling. The author suggests that any notion of a fluid or ‘polymorphous’ sexuality can make nonsense out of either arrangement.

  This is the point which begins to establish Ms Shaw’s own view. She asserts that of sex and gender, gender is the more important since it is not a biological fixture but a sociologically-defined concept and therefore appropriate for concern in schools. But some aspects of sex cannot be passed off as gender issues. ‘The case is made [that] the idea of sex differences is of something clear and unproblematic that can be manipulated,’ Ms Shaw writes, meaning, to produce a concrete and positive educational benefit.  ‘It was only when the ideas of sex differences and sexuality became recognised as various and variable that the rationale for either type of schooling falls apart, whether it is based on educational or sexual grounds’.  The perceived lack of stasis about sexuality and sexual identity forms the core of new debates about the virtues and drawbacks of both coeducational and same-sex schools, and this issue, like the one of educational excellence, essentially serves more to legitimise anxieties and pose idealistic solutions than to face facts objectively and recognise what they suggest.
  The author concludes by suggesting that further sociological research may not be the appropriate answer to the problem: ‘If there is indeed a relationship between anxiety and gender divisions within education it is because unconscious factors permeate the feelings and behaviour of teachers, pupils and parents alike’.   In the end the fact that school tasks such as reading, maths, computing, etc., produce gender-differentiated responses is incontestable– the question remains, however, as to why.   The author’s thesis is that differences in the emotional development of each sex cause different timings and types of responses to school demands because, socially and psychologically, the defence mechanisms employed by each sex are different. She acknowledges that if this is accepted as definite a whole new range of research must be undertaken to cope with the ramifications.
  If anxiety and reactions to it create certain problems for schools it may well be due to insufficient attention on the part of administrators to the experiences of teachers and students.  Teacher-proof methods proposed by administrators tend to de-skill teachers and eventually lead to wash out. [iii] Teachers and students cope in strikingly similar ways: males retreat into hardness and ‘boys’ clubs’; females resort to idealising the models of perfection they have formed of nurture-figures. Increased emphasis on standardised testing will surely illustrate the various differences between male and female performance in crises.  These differences have to be fully addressed.   Simply recognising that girls do better than ever on tests is not the resolution; the question remains of how gender is a factor in educational performance. Ms Shaw illustrates that the problem may be masked by its own hidden curriculum, purporting to maintain a self-defeating status quo: ‘If boys and girls typically face different crises at different stages then an educational system which does not take this into account but expects both sexes to proceed through that same system at the same rate may well contribute to covert discrimination’.

  This is something I have always believed and makes a prime case for the value of same-sex education.   It does not matter which sex is superior in which subject at which stage.  All evidence suggests that the sexes are sufficiently different to justify different treatment at certain developmental stages.  If it is true, for example, that girls outperform boys of the same age in reading comprehension, might it not be detrimental (and therefore discriminatory) to expect either sex to conform to an academic programme which can only fairly accommodate the learning level of the other sex?   If girls tend to wash out in certain subjects, unconsciously ‘dumbing’ themselves down to what they believe are social expectations, might it not just be because they feel frustrated at not being able to perform at their best and receive due rewards in a curriculum focused at the boys’ performance level?

  These kinds of questions prompt debate; but in my view the fact that such questions can be raised at all is reason enough to consider alternate forms of education to the conventional American coeducational, comprehensive, mass-production model of schooling which has been the norm since 1945.  When educators are calling for educational reform perhaps some serious consideration should be given to the differences in learning rates and styles between the sexes, and that public funding, if necessary, should be provided for same-sex schools on more than a numerically-insignificant trial basis.  In my opinion it is well worth the effort, sociologically as well as financially.  Until the public accepts that same-sex schooling might represent not negative discrimination but rather a progressive opportunity for the full self-actualisation of all students, I submit that we are allowing the types of subjective anxieties Ms Shaw discusses to manipulate our thinking and in the meantime failing in what ought to be our prime objective: to provide the highest possible calibre of education for our young people.


* * * 


__________________________________[i] Shaw, Jenny; Education, Gender and Anxiety. 1995: Taylor and Francis, London. ISBN: 0 7454 0101 6.
[ii] teacher as a romantic hero - I must note here that to overlook Sidney Poitier’s character in the 1966 adaption of E R Braithwaite’s 1959 teaching memoir To Sir, With Love (my personal favourite) seems a glaring oversight for a British educator –and note too that the story portrayed an urban, comprehensive, coeducational school. –JC
[iii] Teacher-proof... wash out - In Australia, for example, the common complaint among educators is that the State-prescribed curriculum removes teachers from decision-making processes concerning subject matter and instrctional strategy; Ms Shaw would doubtless conclude few sweeping changes in educational policy like the adaption of single-gender public-school classes would be popularly accepted there. –JC