Our new school superintendent might wish to hire aides with Massachusetts experience
By adamg - 10/29/08 - 7:55 am
There's just one thing wrong with School Superintendent Carol Johnson's plan to create single-sex schools: The Globe reports it's illegal under state law: "Public schools cannot deny a student admission based on gender under state law."
Johnson, who came to Boston last year from Tennessee last year, told the paper: "I wasn't familiar with Massachusetts law at the time."
Comments
Well, you could always
Let a young fellow into the "Young Women's Leadership Academy" if he asks...
The funny part is this:
I'm sure it would be, you know, those womany things.
Carol, the 1950s called; they want their gender roles back.
Such a nice example
A nice example of exactly why gender segregated schools are illegal. It isn't so much the idea of getting students engaged in school by catering to gendered differences as it is the tendency of the resulting programs to enforce gender roles that is the problem.
I wonder what part of the historical failure of "separate but equal" she forgot? There always seems to be a "well, we will do it right this time" or "there are protections here" that crumbles in the face of reality.
Nitpicky point
Discrimination on the basis of SEX is illegal in Massachusetts. Discrimination on the basis of GENDER is only illegal in Boston, Cambridge, and Northampton. The Massachusetts courts have historically ruled in favor of the discriminee (hee) in cases outside of these jurisdictions where people have alleged discrimination on the basis of gender identity/gender presentation, but they've had to really stretch sex-discrimination laws to get to that point.
In other words, they've ruled that it's sex discrimination to tell Jane she has to wear makeup at work but no one is telling John he has to (where there's no law saying it's discrimination on the basis of Jane's non-femme gender presentation), or that it's sex discrimination to discriminate against someone who's legally male for wearing high heels and a skirt to work when people who are legally female do it all the time.
So basically I just wanted to clear up the terminology people are using, but this really does have a relevant point; sex- or gender-segregated schools just further alienate the many many adolescents who don't fit into binary gender roles. Where's the school for androgynous kids or kids who identify as feminine male or butch female? Or kids with intersex conditions? I've spoke with many people who identify as fairly androgynous females who report that they got through adolescence by hanging mostly with the guys and finding a role as a "tomboy" or whatever. Can't do that if there are no guys. It's much harder to not be a status quo female when you have only females in your peer group.
Oh, also, it wouldn't be discrimination unless they outright told a particular person that s/he couldn't attend the school. Plenty of places offer stuff like training courses advertised as "for women," but they're not generally turning people away because they don't feel the person qualifies as a woman. People at large generally respect these kinds of designations and most don't insist upon being let into a group that they don't actually identify with, so plenty of completely legal segregated settings exist.
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