Teaching to the Testosterone 

Letter to the Editor submitted by Susan McGee Bailey, Ph.D., to New York Times Magazine in response to the article "Teaching to the Testosterone" which ran March 2, 2008.
March 5, 2008 (unpublished)

The article, “Teaching to the Testosterone" (March 2, 2008), ends where it should perhaps have begun—on the issue of citizenship and the role of public K-12 education. Neither neuroscience nor educational research offer convincing evidence for the particular efficacy of single sex K-12 education in terms of academic measures. Sax and his followers present an essentialist view, one that ignores a crucial goal of public education—educating girls and boys who can work together as effective citizens. Apparently Sax prefers to have our public schools transmit traditional gender roles and stereotypes that limit and narrow opportunities for both boys and girls in the service of unsubstantiated academic gains. This is moving backward, not forward.