Oh, yes, they took the statistics in that one apart on Language Log; basically these ideas came from someone thinking that if there was a slight statistical tendency for one sex to prefer something, then one could assume that all members of that sex preferred it. To see how daft this is, it's well known that men tend to be taller on average than women; however, if you decided on that basis that everyone who was at least 5'8" should use the men's loos and everyone who was less than 5'8" should use the ladies', you'd be in some pretty serious trouble. This particular set of single-sex educators have done the equivalent to that. Speaking personally, if I had to learn in a room with the thermostat set at 75 F (which is about 23 C), I wouldn't be learning anything much. I'd be thoroughly uncomfortable from the heat.
That, of course, doesn't mean that single-sex education is necessarily a bad thing; like anything else, it has advantages and disadvantages. But I have problems with this particular set-up because it is based on bad science and bad mathematics. It's clear that gender differences do exist, but there is always a vast amount of overlap just as there is with the obvious and visible one of height; if men are on average better than women at A and women better than men at B, you can always still find women who are better than most men at A and men who are better than most women at B. People who don't take that into account are going to end up making a lot of people of both sexes feel very uncomfortable.
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Date: 2008-03-03 11:35 am (UTC)From:That, of course, doesn't mean that single-sex education is necessarily a bad thing; like anything else, it has advantages and disadvantages. But I have problems with this particular set-up because it is based on bad science and bad mathematics. It's clear that gender differences do exist, but there is always a vast amount of overlap just as there is with the obvious and visible one of height; if men are on average better than women at A and women better than men at B, you can always still find women who are better than most men at A and men who are better than most women at B. People who don't take that into account are going to end up making a lot of people of both sexes feel very uncomfortable.