Obama to Deliver Commencement at Memphis H.S.:
The school edged out hundreds of applicants in the Race to the Top Commencement Competition, an annual contest aligned with the president’s education initiative that rewards schools for “promoting college and career readiness.” The graduation ceremony is May 16, according to the White House.
“Booker T. Washington High School proves what can be accomplished when students, teachers, parents and administrators come together to support achievement in the classroom, and I’m looking forward to delivering the commencement address at this extraordinary school soon,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.
According to the White House, the school’s graduation rate rose to 81.6 percent in 2010 from 55 percent three years earlier. Along the way, the school added separate “academies” for male and female freshmen as well as A.P. classes.
Let’s set aside the issue of whether sex segregation exhibits efficacy in improving academic performance over the long term. From what I have heard Booker T. Washington High School went beyond sex segregation, they took male and female differences into account in their pedagogy! For example, Romeo and Juliet’s romantic element was emphasized for females and its violent inter-familial conflict for males. The natural objection from some quarters is that this “reinforced gender stereotypes.”
Perhaps. But what some on the cultural Left don’t want to face full on is that those stereotypes emerge from robust average dispositional differences. Male and female is not just a detail of plumbing. The average difference of course can be abolished to a great extent, but likely only through positive reinforce and cultural pressure. This is not objectionable to me as such, there are human urges which needed to be channeled, mitigated, and mastered. But the cultural Left’s project of sexual egalitarianism of outcome is a challenging task.
Instead of facing up to this there is often an implicit assumption that humans are “blank slates,” that the differences emerge only through outside imposition. I don’t think this is empirically justified. But we are at a position in culture where that’s not an uncontroversial assertion.
“they took male and female differences into account in their pedagogy!”
I am shocked that
1) this happened
2) Obama is praising the school (although not necessarily for this)
I’ve read mixed reports on the benefit of single-sex education. I’ve heard claims that it helps boys but not girls, or girls but not boys. I’ve never seen a study that says single-sex education is academically harmful.
I can certainly see the benefit of single-sex high school education. The kids’ hormones might be held a bit more in check, and the idea of different pedagogies is a good one, as long as the pendulum doesn’t swing too far, and we stopped teaching physics to girls.
as long as the pendulum doesn’t swing too far
agreed. balance and lack of dogmatism is critical IMO, and all to lacking….
For what it’s worth, the two usual rationales that used to be given for all-female academies were that a) the girls wouldn’t mute their intelligence in class for fear of alienating the boys and b) that teachers/professors in two-sex classrooms neglected the girls in favor of the boys. I think there’s some truth to both, although much more truth to the first than to the second.
Generally sex-segregated secondary schools (usually just religious ones nowadays) impose stricter overall social and academic discipline on their students than do non-sex-segregated public schools. As a public school, does BTW have the option of bouncing its dullards and troublemakers? If so, that could account for their success rate, too, particularly since this is an “inner city” school. Apparently the students get a lot of individual attention as well. That helps.