Did author Jacoby fall prey to ‘unreason’?

Last week NewsLanc praised Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason” as possibly one of the two most important book in recent years, along with Barry Lynn’s “Cornered.” But we also mentioned that while both books contain fresh and vital insights, the peripheral materials are often questionable.

Jacoby’s chapter “Junk Thought” flails away at the concept of same sex schools, seeming at times to treat research in the soft sciences with little more respect than she shows for anti-evolutionists.

Jacoby summarizes a story in the October 15, 2006, New York Times as saying   “[George W.] Bush administration had adopted a new policy allowing public school districts to create single-sex classes and even single-sex schools, as long as enrollment in such programs is voluntary and as long as classes of ‘substantially equal’ quality are made available to students of the excluded sex.  In other words, separate but equal.  The policy contradicts a landmark law, Title IX of the education amendment act of 1972, that prohibits sex-segregated education in public schools except for physical education and sex education classes.”

She has her facts wrong according to Wikipedia. In reference to case involving Central High School in Philadelphia:  “After 139 years of existence as an all-male public high school, Central’s all-male policy was challenged by Susan Vorchheimer, who wished to be admitted to Central. On August 7, 1975, U.S. District Court Judge Clarence C. Newcomer ruled that Central must admit academically qualified girls starting in the fall term of 1975. The decision was appealed, and the Third Circuit Court ruled that Central had the right to retain its present status.[5] The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court which, on April 19, 1977, upheld the Third Circuit Court’s verdict by a 4 to 4 vote with one abstention.[6]”

Equally prestigious is Philadelphia Girls High and they share many social events with the boys from Central High.

Jacoby never mentions the obvious reasons for separating girls and boys in middle school and high school settings:   They distract each other!  Instead of concentrating on subject matters, they are thinking about or trying to impress the opposite sex.  Perhaps Jacoby has not had the opportunity to eaves drop on the chatter of pubescent and post-pubescent girls.

“Separate but equal” had no rational basis when it came to dividing races and, even if it did, there never was any ‘equal.’”  “Separate but equal” as a viable option has worked well for Central High School and Girls High in Philadelphia and many other institutions, including big city Catholic schools.

At the end of the chapter, Jacoby finally concedes:  “Even when research on sex differences is scientifically respectable, the identification of such differences, whether cultural or genetic, does not necessarily mean that anything needs to be done to remedy them.  There really is brain research highlighting many differences between girls and boys.” So then, why shouldn’t  parents and students be given the option of single sex schools or classes?

Students at all girl Linden Hall score an average on their SAT’s of 2100, several hundred over national average and hundreds above a prestigous local co-educational private school.  Being devoid of the company  of boys in their classes doesn’t seem to have stunted their education.