Same-Gender Schooling

It's always been a good idea, especially for boys. Once derided, it's now experiencing a come-back, with brain research backing it up:

The educators, citing emerging brain research, say that the two sexes learn differently and that schools are more geared to girls than to their ants-in-the-pants counterparts. But they are adopting strategies to help boys succeed, from playing multiplication baseball to handing out stress balls and setting up boys-only schools.

"The public schools teach to girls. You have to be able to follow the rules and color in the lines," said Livermore parent Missy Davis, who moved her son, Collin, to the private, all-boys Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland after he struggled in coed public and parochial settings. "Boys get labeled immature and disrupting. (Teachers) don't know how to utilize the energy."

The only way to ensure gender equality is to base it on a firm grasp of gender difference. In today's educational world, a blank slate theory about human nature leads to boys' being short-changed.