Should Your Preschooler Go to an All Girls Academy?
Separate! You're disempowering the little lady.
Hard to believe that in crunchy progressive Santa Cruz, Calif., someone had the nerve — or is it the delicate and nurturing disposition? — to open a preschool just for girls.
This school isn’t just some little-women-hear-them-roar misguided attempt of “empowerment” and closing the math and science gender gap in math and science. Rather, it’s a school with the tagline, as Double X’s KJ Dell’Antonia reports, is “It’s pink, it’s girly, and it’s all about them!”
Ohmygodnoway!
The site for the school is now password protected but here’s a description, again from Slate’s Double X:
The all-pink Web site suggests a world many girls would love: playful, flowery, and utterly empty of boys and their disturbing truck-y, camo-and-gun influence. There’s a nod to gender-neutral subject matter: Your daughter won’t just make fairy wings, crowns, capes and butterfly wands, or snuggle on a flowery couch underneath a canopy of lace—she’ll also learn about sports and science and math in a multi-sensory way.
Because girls learn best when they can count on their nicely manicured fingers!
I feel for anyone wanting to earn a living in childcare and pre-K education. Speaking of underpaid teachers! So I have to hand it to whomever came up with the Pink Academy (pink! They site so much single-sex ed research, how did they miss the ones about gender stereotyping those single sexes?): the Waldorf, Reggio and Montessori market requires expensive silks and easily damaged wood toys. Meanwhile, the Pink Academy just has to paint a few walls and exclude half the under-6 population and, ding, ding, ding, they’ve got an angle.
I don’t know what would tempt a parent to agree to segregate their kids so early from male peers (open spots for next fall?). And I doubt that graduating from the Pink Academy would actually damage the child, long-term. But as Dell’Antonia points out, kids already start separating by gender in those late preschool years, why do it for them?
If we want our girls to be empowered, like science and feel safe, we need to create classrooms where that can happen with boys, not without them.
Photo: Gordona AM via flickr
Not somewhere I’d ever send my little darling (who currently attends a Reggio-inspired program, although one without “expensive silks and easily damaged wood toys”). I think children need to learn in an environment that mirrors the wider world around them – including other genders and cultures.
gag.
I can actually see how the absence of boys might be beneficial (at our co-op preschool, the boys often ran roughshod over the girls and their right to play in different manner) but why the hell does it have to be PINK and stereotypical? UGH!
I would argue that this would be terrible for girls’ social development – I mean, at some point they’re gonna have to learn to interact socially with boys, and preschool, when kids have more opportunities for free-form social play than they will at any other point in their life, is the time to do it. Instead, this school teaches girls that boys are totally different, alien creatures with completely different interests and needs.
All around: yucky.
I run a center that (by luck of the draw) is 17 girls and 1 boy. I would rather have a class of boys any day. That many girls in a room, even at that age leads to passive aggression, and social exclusion. A boy might hit you with a truck or block, but those bruises are easy to see and heal (plus they’ll be playing together again in no time). But the abuse little girls suffer from other little girls is disturbing. Having a more mixed classroom is easier because different genders can play together without really realizing their differences, so if a boy or girl don’t feel they belong in a certain group they can try others to see where they feel most welcome.
I realize this kind of preschool would not be for everyone, but some girls would absolutely LOVE it! Plus, it’s *preschool*, people. Who’s to say that the girls attending don’t get regular interaction with boys (like brothers, cousins, neighbors, etc.)? It’s an *option*, not a mandatory thing. Let’s take a chill pill.
Oh, barf.
You go girl! I am currently battling some very rude, aggressive and bullying little boys, which has been very traumatic to my daughter. Great idea!