Being the token angry black man of The Daily Illini, I would find myself guilty of dereliction of duty had I not taken up this issue with the general public.

Nationally schools are failing; the Illinois school system is a hammer that bangs the nail of economic and racial lines of stratification. The Department of Education wants to improve education as a whole so they are trying to shake things up by dividing our kids.

The problem, however, does not lie in the fact that same sex education will not work and will only deny children crucial opportunities for social growth. It is the fact that those in charge are not realizing that the reason schools are failing is because there is no national denominator of public school excellence.

The right to a public education is a state right and not a national right. Consequently all 50 states have different guidelines and laws that are specific for each state. So you would think that they’re all funded differently, they’re not. Nearly all states receive their school funding from property tax. As you know, or don’t, if you live in a nice area, you’re school is probably a reflection of the wealth that your area incurs. So if your house is on wheels and your car on bricks then your local K-8 school is an old World War II hangar bay that is surrounded by abandoned steel mills or has a minimum security prison across the street.

The problem of general education is in the bureaucracy of the government, separating kids by sex will only further complicate an already complex issue of governmental inadequacy when it comes to our biggest national security dilemma: having an uneducated generation running this country. Or it will just create an intelligence gap of those who are smart and went to private school and those who are poorer and went to public school.

Think about how much you would not have known about women or men if your childhood experiences with the opposite sex were only at lunch, after school or church. Some of the closest people in my life were women I met as young ladies in elementary school. Had those relationships been denied, my college years would have been wasted in search of what a clitoris is.

But seriously, a huge chunk of our childhood education is at school but not in our schoolbooks. It comes from childhood interaction with others in the atmosphere of public school and to take that away from our children would be another pillar stolen from the foundation of the liberty to provide for the common and basic education of our citizens.

Child development is as essential as multiplication tables. The Department of Education has not reported any consistent data on the issue of sex-segregated classrooms. So if this “experiment” runs amuck, then our children may, and I stress may, be better students. But they will not be better citizens, just sheltered citizens who will have to learn about the opposite sex by watching soft core adult videos late at night on HBO.

George Ploss

Last month the Department of Education released new Title IX regulations, allowing greater flexibility in granting single-sex education public funding. Upon hearing this, certain kinds of feminists and other so-called “progressives” lashed out against this option. National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy felt it appropriate to use civil rights language, crying “segregation” and insisting “separate is unequal.”

Thankfully, not all feminists have made such sweeping judgments or drawn such unfair conclusions. As a matter of fact, one of single-sex education’s many supporters is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D – NY, certainly one of the leading feminist icons of our generation. Five years ago Sen. Clinton, along with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R – TX, co-sponsored an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act that essentially paved the way for last month’s new regulations. Sen. Clinton said, “Public school choice should be expanded as broadly as possible. Certainly there should not be any obstacle to providing single-sex choice within the public school system.”

I commend Senators Clinton and Hutchinson and the Department of Education for allowing parents and children another option that has already proven its worth for many.

In 2001, the Young Women’s Leadership Academy of East Harlem graduated its first class. With a mostly minority student body including former remedial students, all but one student (who chose to join the Air Force) went on to a four-year college. Every single girl also passed the city exam on English; the city average is 42 percent. The YMLA is just one shining example of success in single-sex education; there are many others.

Since Title IX, research has proven without a doubt that girls and boys are genetically different in ways other than anatomy. According to a report published by the National Academy of Science in 2001, “There are multiple, ubiquitous differences in the basic cellular biochemistries of males and females.” Research has also proven that male and female brains develop and learn differently. These differences are made manifest in many ways, and single-sex education can address these indisputable differences and likewise mold the curriculum.

Both the British and Australians have conducted extensive studies comparing coeducational schools to single-sex schools. Regardless of socio-economic or racial factors, students of single-sex schools scored 15-22 percent better than their coeducational counterparts. The studies also found that graduates of single-sex schools had higher self-esteem and were more serious about academics.

Single-sex education is not a replacement for coeducation; it merely allows parents and children another choice – one that is in many ways superior. It may seem drastic or old-fashioned, but given the current state of our schools and the reams of positive factual evidence in its favor, single-sex education – just like our children – deserves a fighting chance.

Brenda Kay Zylstra