A rchive Date
[ 12-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/ryan.html
Checkmate for feminists
By DAVE RYAN - Calgary Sun
February 12, 2003
The Calgary Board of Education gave the idea of an all-girls school the no last week. You go, girls.
The Calgary Girls' School Society, the group spearheading the idea, held public interest meetings in January. They received input from as many as 100 families interested in enrolling their girls in such a program. The society will offer classes to girls in Grades 4 through 9.
Readers of my column know I am a strong advocate for rights and freedoms. I recently penned a column supporting Augusta National Golf Club in their silly, but constitutionally legal, stand against admitting a female member. Now it's time to go to bat for girls.
People will criticize the all-girls school idea as exclusionary, but why shouldn't girls have private schools? Boys have had them for years.
Such a program may only shelter girls from the inevitable interaction with boys that they will have to endure during their lifetime, but they should have the right to suspend this inevitability as long as possible.
The rationale for an all-girls program is based upon research which indicates that the brains of girls and boys are wired differently and, therefore, each have a unique learning style. Apparently girls learn better in environments with co-operative, relationship-based learning. Does that mean boys flourish in competitive, solitary-based learning environments? My personal learning style involved sitting next to the smartest girl in class and looking over her shoulder. I knew I'd just be cheating myself in the end if I allowed this practice to continue, so I only employed it until about half way through my final year of law school.
The only really good arguments against allowing the fairer sex to gain knowledge in a testosterone free environment are based on what it might do to the boys.
Most of my male classmates were barely able to wash their hair or change their underwear during junior high - and that was in a school that contained young ladies they were trying to impress. I can't imagine the depth to which boys' hygiene may drop in an environment without girls.
The society has also indicated the school's program will have a specific women's studies component. Maybe they will offer at least one course that reminds girls that boys exists outside of the schools hallowed halls. How about a course called: The Complete Guide to Understanding Men: A One Hour Symposium?
The study also suggested a single-gender program would allow girls to concentrate on academic work and give them a greater sense of empowerment. I'm no rocket surgeon, but it makes sense girls are better able to concentrate without boys around to distract them.
I suspect, however, that nothing empowered my female classmates and made them feel better about their own lives more than listening to me explain how my dog's appetite was to blame for incomplete homework.
For feminists, this decision may represent checkmate in a long battle for women's rights. Girls were initially segregated or excluded entirely from participating in boy's education. Then girls were allowed to participate in all of the same programs as the boys. But for hardcore-feminists equality was never the goal.
Now the girls are segregated again, but the difference is that this time it is their choice. It is an important symbol in the women's movement.
If this idea takes off, the boy's schools may have to add some classes as well. Examples: How to Admit You're Lost and Stop to Ask Directions, or How to Under-stand Girls: a Complex Course Lasting a Lifetime.
Dave Ryan can be reached by e-mail at dave_ryan@canoemail.com. His column appears every Wednesday. Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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