i’m a wild child

as you may remember i wrote a rather vitriolic post about one approach to single-sex education. so, here is what i think another solution to rearranging classrooms is- ability grouping

the very words strike fear in all those who subscribe to the american values of equality, and that anyone-can-do-it attitude. however, when you take a closer look ate what ablility grouping is when it is done right you can see that it benefits everyone. first off, modern ability grouping programs do not have fixed “tracks”. there is frequent testing and at any time a student can switch classrooms, so students do not just slack off because nothing they do matters. instead there is the positive message that when they work hard they get ahead. there are also many more positives

• students get to be with peers who think and communicate at their level
• the bright students are not held back by the slower ones, and the slower ones are not rushed ahead by the bright.
• teachers do not have to dance between ability levels, each lesson only has to be tailored to one level. also, each student gets more attention because the teacher does not have to go off and catch-up some people, or move others ahead. no group is left to sit while the other is being helped
• students get a class room where the lesson always challenges them, but never leaves them drowning

yesterday i saw a clown at the metro. we were sitting in the care waiting for my sister to emerge when up pulls sparkles in her bright yellow wig and big red nose. for a while we just stared. how often does a clown ride the metro? and then sprkles handed me a magenta balloon dachshund through the window. after that she was gone. for a few minutes our life had been the setting of an absurdist play.

so here he is, reposing on my dresser

so, i have absolutely to desire to buy yarn for “stash”. none at all. if i do i can feel it haunting me, calling out with its little voice “make me into something, make me into something.” and that is both creepy and irritating. However, i have discovered the chink in my armor- knitting accessories. the pretty little stitch markers, the row-counters, the circular needle sets, they all call to me. i mean, they will make my knitting so much easier, more convenient. how can i resist? while trawling the web i found this latest labor-saving device from knitpicks

so, we can agree that it is completely pointless, would probably tangle the skein, and get strangers to cross to the other side of the street, but oh how i want one.

i just read this great article on single-sex education. (if you want to be shocked, informed, and understand what i talk about next if suggest reading it)

while i am a fan of single-sex education i think that the way Sax goes about it is incredibly messed-up, and gives it a bad name

• The neurological philosophy of single sex-education so clearly divides everything into charicteristics of girls and characteristics of boys that it doesn’t recognize the overlap, and the fact that not all students will fit their profile. there are girls who will act and think like boys, and there are boys who will act and think like boys.
• not only that, but the profiles are so stereotypical. girls are artistic, verbal, social, and fragile. boys are action oriented, strong men who don’t like to read. they completely re-enforce gender roles, and wasn’t the point of single-sex education to free boys and girls from stereotypes?. Gender is a broad umbrella, and there are many kinds of people underneath it, a fact that Sax’s approach completely ignored.  his approach pushed teachers to first think of the students genders, rather than their individual characteristics
• also, if handled badly seperate lessons and approaches could turn into watered-down lessons for one of the groups. The lesson plans and paces could end up being on radically different levels, with the excuse being that that is the level appropriate for that sex’s mind, and we get yet again have the problem of separate but not equal.
• then there was this disturbing quote- “[sax] maintains that a school’s teachers and staff need only 14 hours of training — two 7-hour days with him — to prepare to switch from coeducation to single-sex” fourteen hours!?!?!?! this is a whole new teaching style that we are talking about, a whole different way of looking at students and this can be done in only fourteen hours. its sounds like people who receive this kind of training will resemble their taught-to-the-test students. they will be able to answer the question, but not explain why that is the answer
• and the even more disturbing “Sax credits Bender [a teacher following his lessons] for helping focus a boy who was given a wrong diagnosis of attention-deficit disorder by telling him that his father, who had left the family, would be even less likely to return if all his mother had to report was the boy misbehaving in school.” so, you are telling a kid that it is partially his responsibility to make his father come back, and then partially his fault if he doesn’t come back. that is just so twisted
• finally there is this problem which can occur with both single-sex approaches. while single-sex classrooms are fine it is important that there be structured time where the two genders interact. only by actually interacting with each other in a supervised and structured environment will the two groups dispel gender stereotypes and learn to interact with one another, an essential life skill.
• however, what irks me most is how sax is trying to use science to justify all of this, much like how eugenics was used, on a much larger and more dire scale, to justify segregation.

so, single-sex classrooms can be amazing experience and a great help to students, but they need to be VERY closely supervised and thought out.

its the trifecta of happiness

1. my yarn is here! its knitpicks shine worsted in coral

2. i’m in at one of the high schools i wanted

3. i am soon to be the proud owner of a set of interchangable circular needles

so i repeat- YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY