Education is a huge issue in this country that in some ways involves gender. Articles like “What About The Boys” by Michael Kimmel and “Missing In Interaction” by Myra Sadker and David Sadker do a good job of pointing out how boys have a tendency to dominate classroom discussions and get more attention from teachers. On the other hand, the articles pointed out how girls on a whole seem to get better grades in school and have less disciplinary issues. I think the idea of same sex education as a solution to the achievement differences for boys and girls is too simplistic. There are girls who do things that we stereotypically associate with boys such as call out in class and or get into fights. On the other hand there are boys that do things we stereotypically associate with girls such as staying quiet and attentive in class. In addition, I don’t like the current system that start earlier and earlier in education of “tracking” where children are separated by ability and taught different things at a young age. I propose a solution based on Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences which is something believe in. A brief overview of the theory is that the idea of smart and not smart is too simplistic and there are different learning styles and different forms of intelligence. Here are the different forms of intelligence that Gardner has uses: Linguistic Intelligence, logical/mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence. I believe that instead of separating students by gender or general perceptions of intelligence, that in the early grades teachers with the help of parents try to establish best what style of learning works best for a child. Then they can create groups within a classroom or even entire classrooms of children with similar learning styles and intelligence areas so that they can create curriculum that specifically jives with the students learning style.

Here is are example of what I mean, lets say you had a group of students who fits into the category of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence who learn better when using a lot of physical movement and you wanted to teach them a math lesson about statistics and percentages. You could take them outside to a basketball hood and have them shoot a ball; while they where shooting they could create a chart of how many times they made/missed a shot from different areas on the court. Then they could use the data they collected and break it down further into percentages and graphs. This type of learning would work a lot better for them then the more traditional class room setting. It could even be applied to things like reading Shakespeare where instead of just reading the text, they got to act out Hamlet’ sword fights with props while reading. On the other hand, there might be students with more linguistic intelligence who might learn Shakespeare better by sitting in a circle discussing the language used in the text.