Boys and Girls: To Segregate or Not To Segregate?

My last post focused on controversial clothing, marketed to young girls, and decorated with gendered slogans such as “Future Trophy Wife.” As I noted then, retailers such as Urban Outfitters hide from potential outrage over these products in the claim that they’re intended to be sold to a college-aged demographic, presumably one that is 18 and over. Yet under the banner of “Back to School” shopping, that intention is vague at best. As we all know from the experience of being in High School, what’s cool to 18-22 year olds is irresistibly cool to 15-18 year olds. It would be crazy to assume that none of these types of T-Shirts, with printed messages like “I Drink, You’re Cute,” have ended up on the backs of girls still “safely” occupying the K-12 zone. Reflecting on this discovery I began to think about other gender issues as they exist within the realm of the educational environment, specifically in public secondary schools.

This train of thought eventually led me to the public debate currently taking place over “Single-Sex” education, or “Sex-Segregation.” I came across the Time Magazine article “Ew Boys: TheGrowing Legal Battle Over Same-Sex Education.” According to the article’s author, Adam Cohen, the number of public school systems which separate boys from girls in the class room grew from about 12 in 2002, to “as many as 500” a decade later. But why? What are the perceived benefits of this trend and does it pay off? That is very much the question at the center of the debate.

According to the National Associationfor Single Sex Public Education, “The single-sex format creates opportunities that don’t exist in the coed classroom.” This school of thought operates on the assumption that boys and girls are psychologically distinct from one another. Because of this, according to advocates for single-sex education, both girls and boys benefit from being separated in the classroom and educated along different trajectories according to how each gender learns best. The NASSPE emphasizes this last part as the key to their argument. Simply isolating the sexes and teaching the same curricula to each group simultaneously wouldn’t be effective, they claim. Instead the group advocates special “training” for educators that will allow them to tailor lesson plans to the specific educational needs of each gender propelling them to reach their maximum potential.

Others, however, aren’t buying NASSPE’s stance. The assumption that girls’ brains work differently from boys’ brains is seen by many to be just that, an assumption, not backed by any scientific data. National Public Radio’s Neal Conan hosted a debate forum on the subject on his show Talk of the Nation. In this episode he cited an article in the scholarly journal Science, which found “that there’s simply no empirical evidence that segregating boys and girls improves education.” The American Civil Liberties Union has been active on the issue in recent years, filing lawsuits against school districts in Louisiana and Mississippi, condemning the practice of sex segregation as discriminatory. In a statement published on their website they say, “We have seen time and time again that sex segregated programs are inherently unequal for both girls and boys” and “can shut students out of the best classes simply because of their sex.”

My opinion aligns with the ACLU which cites Title IX and the Equal Education Opportunities Act as the legal basis for bringing these districts to court. Even though groups like NASSPE seem well intentioned and claim to be working to break down gender stereotypes, they lack crucial supporting evidence. Without academic research to conclusively prove that separating girls from boys raises achievement levels, I’m left to assume that this is another example of gender biases appearing in public schools.

Back to School Marketing: What Retailers Are Teaching Us a Girl Should Be

Each August, as the summer season finally comes to a close, the first signs of autumn bring the perennial "back to school shopping" ritual to many of America's young people. Year after year retailers and educators inundate enrolled families with messages touting the need for new supplies: notebooks, pens, pencils, binders, book bags, art supplies, rulers, compasses, calculators among them.  (According to Forbes Magazine, the average parent of a K-12 grade student will spend close to $700 per child on this kind of merchandising.) Least of all on this list is a brand new, fresh off the shelf wardrobe, replete with the latest fall fashions.

Unfortunately, the "back to school shopping" season also perennially brings with it clear and hard to mistake images of a young-Americanhood which many find to be more offensive than idyllic. This week the retail chain Urban Outfitters, which opened a franchise in Louisville this fall on Bardstown Road to a mixed reception, has been in the hot seat for images appearing in their online catalogue of a young girl, possibly underage, sporting a T-Shirt from the company's fall inventory with the phrase "I drink, You're cute" emblazoned in large, blurry text across the front. The message here is an obvious acknowledgement of lowered sexual inhibitions brought about by excessive consumption of alcohol. Of course this T-Shirt isn't the first to raise eyebrows among potential buyers in such a way, last fall J.C. Penny found themselves in similar trouble over a shirt, marketed to an even younger demographic than Urban Outfitters appeals to with a shirt which read, "I'm too pretty to do my homework, so my brother has to do it for me." Again and again disempowering slogans appear, apparently labeling young women (literally) as being enrolled in school not to obtain an education, but to be attractive and even subordinate to their male peers.

As you might have imagined, the teenage consumer archetype isn't the only group susceptible to this type of gender-biased marketing. As older (and younger) American women are indoctrinated to believe that their late teens is a kind of gold age, apparel in other markets begins to resemble and follow the trends set by youth fashion. Nike was recently scrutinized for it's "Gold Digging" T-Shirt marketed during this summer's Olympic games in London, available ONLY in women's sizes. 

"I'm intoxicated therefore, I'll probably sleep with you." "My brother is smarter than me because being 'pretty,' and being smart are mutually exclusive." "I'll trade romantic favors for riches and status."

What's most interesting to me about these particular products is the way in which the messages they convey relate one gender, that of American girls and women, to another: American males. Of course there are other examples of controversial clothing marketed to girls reinforcing the idea that they can't succeed academically, but not all so directly involve boys as a contrast. 

The good news, perhaps, is that each of these shirts mentioned have received such objections from consumers that retailers have been forced to pull them off of shelves.