ARTICLE Critical Analysis
HW1
Read the two articles about single sex schooling.
Using an academic tone, write a one
–
page
critical analysis of the two articles. Think about and discuss the following items, but write about
them in paragraph form:
?
Purpose
?
Audience
?
Thesis
?
Tone
?
Style
?
The
author’s use of Ethos, Pathos and Logos
?
Compare and contrast the articles:
?
What are the strong points?
?
What are the weak points?
?
What is missing?
Use quotations, paraphrases and summaries as needed. Don’t forget to cite! (You do not,
however, need to in
clude a references page).
Typed, 12
–
pt. Times New Roman, double
–
spaced, 1
–
inch margins
~~
Here is some information
from the OWL website to help with your citations~~
Unknown Author:
If the work does not have an author, cite the source by its title in the s
ignal
phrase or use the first word or two in the parentheses. Titles of books and reports are italicized
or underlined; titles of articles, chapters, and web pages are in quotation marks.
A similar study was done of students learning to format research pap
ers (“Using APA,”
2001).
Sources Without Page Numbers
:
When an electronic source lacks page numbers, you should
try to include information that will help readers find the passage being cited. When an
electronic document has numbered paragraphs, use the
abbreviation “para.” followed by the
paragraph number (Hall, 2001, para. 5). If the paragraphs are not numbered and the document
includes headings, provide the appropriate heading and specify the paragraph under that
heading. Note that in some electronic s
ources, like Web pages, people can use the Find
function in their browser to locate any passages you cite.
According to Smith (1997), … (Mind over Matter section, para. 6).
Note:
Never use the page numbers of Web pages you print out; different computers
print Web
pages with different pagination.
Retrieved from: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/
the articles are below
Single
–
sex education
By
–
The Washington Times
–
Saturday, September 13, 2003
Single
–
sex education is taking public school students to a new level, providing them with a
greater variety of academic opportunities. More importantly, studies show that single
–
sex
education vastly improves students’ reading scores, their overall grades a
nd their acceptance
into college.
Benjamin Wright, outgoing principal of Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Seattle, says
his students improved significantly when he began offering single
–
sex classrooms three years
ago. The average boys’ score in read
ing went from the 10th percentile to the 66th percentile
after single
–
sex education was implemented, Mr. Wright said at a recent forum sponsored by
the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE). Discipline referrals were
dramatically re
duced, from an average of 30 per day to fewer than two per day. Other benefits
include an improvement in student morale, the doubling of the number of students going to
college and a reduction in teen pregnancies.
In Washington, Moten Elementary School be
gan offering single
–
sex programs in 2001. Prior to
the change, the performance of the students on standardized tests at Moten was among the
worst in the District. By the end of the school year, the percentage of the math portion of the
Stanford 9 test went
from 49 percent to 88 percent. The reading scores also shot up from 50
percent to over 91 percent. The discipline problems among the students dramatically
decreased by 99 percent. These results ranked Moten, which is located in one of the city’s
poorest n
eighborhoods, alongside some of the top public and private schools in the District.
Some critics believe single
–
sex education is “strange” and “old
–
fashioned,” not in tune with the
reality that men and women have to live and work together. They also conte
nd that single
–
sex
education, instead of breaking down gender stereotypes, reinforces them, creating a wider gulf
between the sexes.
However, the opposite is true. Single
–
sex education helps break down gender stereotypes by
giving students greater freedom
in taking a wider variety of classes. Says psychologist and
NASSPE founder Leonard Sax, “girls who attend single sex schools are more likely to take
courses in computer science and physics,” while boys “are more likely to study non
–
gender
–
traditional subj
ects such as art, music, dance, drama and culinary arts.”
Single
–
sex education has bipartisan support. Two years ago, four senators
—
Republicans Susan
Collins and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barbara Mikulski
—
crafted
single
–
sex ed
ucation legislation that now is part of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.
The legislation is “a solution to a problem that we have seen over many years: that is, obstacles
put in a place against public schools being able to offer single
–
sex classr
ooms and single
–
sex
schools,” Mrs. Hutchison told us.
Currently, there are only 62 single
–
sex programs in public schools. As the school
–
choice
movement gains broader acceptance, we urge educators to develop more single
–
sex programs
to boost student achiev
ement.
Retrieved from:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/sep/13/20030913
–
112113
–
5901r/
The case against single
–
sex schooling
June 4, 2012
,
The Washington Post An
swer Sheet
By Rebecca Bigler and Lise Eliot
This
was written by Rebecca Bigler and Lise Eliot. Bigler is a professor of psychology and
women’s
and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Eliot is associate professor
of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University. Both are co
–
authors of
“
The pseudoscience of single
–
sex schooling
” published in the journal Science last
September
.
Educators have spent several decades trying
—
and largely failing
—
to improve public schools.
What if the solution were as easy as re
–
sorting students in
to their classrooms? Some supporters
believe
single
–
sex schooling
is just such a magic bullet. But multiple lines of research show that
single
–
sex schooling is both ineffective and detrimental to children’s development. This is why
we support the
American Civil Liberties Union’s new effort
to investigate potentially unlawful
single
–
sex programs in school districts across the country.
Throughout the United States, hundreds of public schools are segregating boys and girls as
young as kindergarten age into single
–
sex classrooms based on highly distorted claims about
differences in the
ir brains and mental skills. What’s worse, such schools are ignoring important
research showing that such segregation may actually be harmful to children.
Consider the new Franklin Academy for Boys in Tampa, a public middle school whose charter
applicatio
n states that “the typical teenage girl has a sense of hearing seven times more acute
than a teenage boy,” and continues with this claim, “Stress enhances learning in males. The
same stress impairs learning in females.”
Such statements are laughable to ne
uroscientists, but have proven highly persuasive to
parents, teachers, and school boards. Yes, researchers have identified small, group
–
level
differences between boys and girls (or more often, between male and female rats) on a variety
of brain and behavio
ral measures. But none of these differences justify single
–
sex education.
Here’s why:
The sex differences that have been identified are small and statistical
—
not a seven
–
fold effect.
Scientists agree there is much more overlap than difference between bo
ys and girls in their
brains and behavior. That is, boys differ more among each other in academic and social skills
than they differ from girls, and vice versa. Placing children into classrooms based on their
gender and
—
and making assumptions about their
physiology, brains, interests, and learning
ability
—
will virtually guarantee that teachers’ expectations are biased and their gender
–
based
practices are misguided for most of their students.
Perhaps more importantly, the idea that “boys and girls learn
differently” is unsupported by
scientific evidence. Decades of research have failed to identify reliable differences in the way
male and female brains process, store, or retrieve information. For example, the popular idea
that “boys are visual learners” an
d “girls are auditory learners” is simply untrue. Learning is best
accomplished when the delivery method matches the subject matter. It is the quality of
teachers’ training, lessons, and classroom management practices
—
and not gender of their
students
—
that determines how much learning occurs in their classrooms.
Indeed, rigorous educational research has found that, contrary to popular belief, single
–
sex
education does not produce better achievement outcomes compared to coeducation. Careful
analysis in
both the United States and from around the world demonstrates that any apparent
advantage of single
–
sex schools disappears when you account for other characteristics, such as
students’ prior ability and the length of the school day. Superior schools are su
ccessful for
reasons that are unrelated to the gender of their student body.
While single
–
sex schooling does nothing unique to improve academic achievement, gender
segregated classrooms are detrimental to children in several ways. First, research in
develo
pmental psychology has clearly shown that teachers’ labeling and segregating of social
groups increases children’s stereotyping and prejudice. Imagine the consequences of creating
separate math classes for “black students” and “white students.” Even if enr
ollment were
purely optional, the mere existence of such classes would lead to increased racial stereotyping
and prejudice. As is true for race, classroom assignment based on gender teaches children that
males and females have different types of intellects
, and reinforces sexism in schools and the
culture at large.
Second, research on peer relations indicates that children who interact mostly with same
–
gender peers develop increasingly narrow skill sets and interests. For example, boys who spend
more time w
ith other boys become increasingly aggressive; girls who spend more time with
other girls become more sex
–
typed in their play. Developmental research finds better mental
health outcomes among children who develop a mix of traditionally masculine and femini
ne
skills and interests
—
like playing competitive sports and discussing emotions
—
compared to
more one
–
dimensional peers.
Most importantly, single
–
sex schooling reduces boys’ and girls’ opportunities to learn from and
about each other. Boys and girls mus
t learn to work together, and the classroom is the ideal
setting for such practice because it is both purposeful and supervised.
It is not long before the youth of today will be the parents, co
–
workers, and leaders of
tomorrow. Rather than segregating boy
s and girls during this important developmental time,
schools should take better advantage of coeducation to model the truly egalitarian society that
we hope for their future.
Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer
–
sheet/post/the
–
case
–
against
–
single
–
sex
–
schooling/2012/06/03/gJQA75DNCV_blog.html?wprss=rss_answer
