Segregated Schools Link Byfield Summary

There is great debate in society today in regards to whether our school systems should reintegrate a gender segregated education system. In the article “If Girls Can Succeed Only at the Expense of Boys, Maybe We Need Segregated Schools,” Link Byfield proposes that by reintroducing segregation into our educational structure it could eliminate the declining performance of male students and allow both sexes to achieve greater scholastic success. Although Byfield presents some valid points to support his argument, upon close examination many biases become evident which weaken his case. These generalizations of why girls are achieving higher success opposed to boys fail to persuade the reader to accept his standpoint. Byfield reports that according to research gathered by the national School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP), in conjunction with Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education, girls are accomplishing the same level of knowledge in math and
Where is this shift? The manner in which he concludes that “boys are more competitive, risk-oriented and dominant... [And] intuitive, co-operative and circuitous...female mind” (Byfield) is simply unjustly alleged. There still remain the same amount of maths, sciences and technology courses available to students in today’s public schools as there are family studies courses. In fact, there remain more opportunities for so-called “male-dominated” studies versus “women-dominated” studies in our public high schools (http://www.brits2bc.com/school-curriculum.htm). There are definitely signs of progression from how the school curriculum was organized 50 years ago however, the possibility of integrating more women’s studies into secondary schools