Vol. 13 No. 10 (October 2003)

SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL: RETHINKING SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLING, by Rosemary C. Salomone. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003. 287 pp. Cloth $29.95. ISBN: 0-300-09875-8.

Reviewed by Stephen Arons, Department of Legal Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Email: arons@legal.umass.edu

School Wars have been fought in the United States since Horace Mann proposed in the 1840s that universal, compulsory education in government-supported common schools could be an effective means to socialize children to proper social norms. The wars, of course, have almost always been about whose vision of those norms should hold sway. Mann, a lawyer, preferred a bland and non-denominational Protestantism, and was apparently untroubled by fears that the separation of church and state might be compromised by his crusade to spread these benefits of public schooling. Since the mid-19th century, the main battle grounds for the school wars have been local and state school boards, state legislatures, the state and federal courts, and more recently, Congress.

In the 1943 Supreme Court case that ruled the compulsory Pledge of Allegiance and flag salute in public schools to be unconstitutional, WEST VIRGINIA v. BARNETTE, Justice Robert Jackson wrote: “Probably no deeper division of our people could proceed from any provocation than from finding it necessary to choose what doctrine and whose program public educational officials shall compel youth to unite in embracing” (319 U.S. at 641). But Jackson’s warning went unheeded, and by the last quarter of the 20th century, the school wars had spread across the country. Battles were fought over such things as Darwinism v. Creationism, ideology-based censorship of textbooks, sex education, multiculturalism, the content of state-wide school standards, and the efforts of the Christian Right to impose its agenda on public schools already dominated by the moderate center.  

Into this sulfurous and maddeningly repetitive mix comes Professor of Law Rosemary Salomone’s engaging, well-written, and thought-provoking book, SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL: RETHINKING SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLING. Salomone covers one important and ongoing part of the school wars—the battle over gender equality in education in general, and over single-sex schooling in particular. Salomone has provided us with a useful and intelligent discussion; and the book has many more merits than it has problems. Even readers who are skeptical of her conclusion that, in view of constitutional doctrine and educational research, “it defies reason for government to mandate coeducation for all students enrolled in public schools” (p.243), will find that SAME, EQUAL, DIFFERENT provides a balanced review of the legal, political, cultural and educational dimensions of the struggle over gender equality. Readers will also find that the author has mastered the technique of embedding the presentation and analysis of legal and policy issues firmly in the contexts of history, philosophy, current culture and the realities of schooling and of research about schooling. The book is a lively, multi-disciplinary success, whether one finds its conclusions persuasive or not.

One of Professor Salomone’s gifts—much in evidence in this book—is her ability to anchor a subtle analysis of complex intellectual questions in an empathetic telling of the human stories behind the political, legal and cultural struggles that are her subject. In SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL Salomone begins by telling us that she was drawn into the public debate over the merits of a single-sex public school in East Harlem in 1996. One result of this involvement was that she “began for the first time in many years to consciously reflect on my own all-girls high school experience,” an experience that she says “nurtured and validated” her intellect (Preface, x). The book then relates the struggles over three single-sex inner-city schools in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. These narratives sensitize us to the complexities of single-sex schooling. Three following chapters present a “history of women’s exclusion and subordination” and an update of the struggle over gender in the schools. The author emphasizes the philosophical and cultural elements of the issues that thread their way through school and public policy. Salomone is careful to give all sides a fair presentation, but she is not afraid to point out the lack of logic and avoidance of evidence that she finds in the more extreme positions. The tone is always respectful, and there is something satisfying about the firmness and assertiveness with which Professor Salomone clears intellectual underbrush and makes the finding of common ground easier.

Mid-way through the book, Salomone focuses on gender issues and education questions on single-sex schooling.  She writes “…rather than focus on achievement test scores, a more promising approach for educators might be to examine the stages at which sex differences typically develop, all the while remembering that there are variations within each sex group. It then becomes a matter of how to improve the differential performance and maximize the potential of different populations of girls and boys across the schooling experience and across the curriculum areas without falling into the pitfall of harmful stereotypes and gender essentialism” (p.115).  Salomone is trying to disentangle the polarities and stereotypes of the past from the opportunities and the research findings of the present. The leading edge of her concern is the quality of BOTH girls’ and boys’ schooling, especially among disadvantaged children. The focus on the possible benefits of single-sex schooling for poor and minority children is much like that used in other contexts to advance the case for school vouchers.

The heart of SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL comes in three chapters entitled “Legal Narratives,” “Reconciling the Law,” and “The Research Evidence.” Written for the intelligent layperson, the text moves through several symbolically important cases to reach the landmark case of UNITED STATES v. VIRGINIA (the 1996 Virginia Military Institute case). It also examines in detail the problem of Title IX and the regulations that the Office of Civil Rights must draft to enforce Title IX in light of the VMI case and Congressional amendments. With OCR’s regulations still unsettled at publication time, Salomone also examines in detail the education research that might provide some guidance. Ultimately she concludes that “the research comparing the relative merits of single-sex and coeducation has not yielded definitive answers” (p.235), but that we are “at a critical juncture” in which “we should dare to rethink and redefine this seemingly anachronistic approach [of overwhelming cultural preference and legal presumption for coeducation] to meet present day understandings and realities” (p.237).

In the last pages of the book Salomone offers a conclusion that seems so hopeful that one wonders if it could possibly be a reasoned reflection on the extended school war she has been analyzing. It is a clue to the three small but significant shortcomings of an otherwise excellent work. Here is her statement in part:

     . . . shedding the language of compensation rescues the debate from the divisive and unjustly one-sided discourse of girls’ disadvantage, and even worse, victimization. Within single-sex education, moreover, the principles of liberty (in the form of choice) and equality (in the form of equal educational opportunity) are clearly reconcilable and mutually reinforcing despite assertions to the contrary—assertions grounded more in ideology and misplaced fears than in sound pedagogy or reasoned judgment. This argument rings especially true in the case of low-income minority students, for whom three decades of compensatory programs have proven a dismal failure. . . [G]iven this profile, the road to gender equality should be paved with diverse blends of same and different educational experiences. . . as schools across the country…serve as laboratories of opportunity and diversity for educating future generations” (243-244).

The first of the three issues that deserve more attention than they receive in SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL, concerns African-American girls and single-sex schooling. In a twenty-five page chapter on “Equality Engendered,” Salomone writes barely two pages exploring the philosophical, historical and education research findings about the intersection of race and gender. The author does mention the work of bell hooks, and she references several other feminist scholars working in this area. But the complexities of intersecting race and gender identities for children, and especially the ways that these issues might influence the policy debate about single-sex schooling for minority children, are not treated extensively enough by Salomone. The decision not to go into depth on this subject is especially noticeable in comparison to her substantial exploration of the other tensions within feminism. Because so much of the book refers to the possible benefits of single-sex schooling for minority children, a further exploration of the intersection of race and gender would have been helpful.

The second, more significant problem is the absence of discussion of gender issues experienced by gay and lesbian students or children who may be engaged in explorations of sexual orientation and gender identity. The constitutional doctrine on these aspects of gender identity is not, of course, as well developed as the legal material that the book does cover. And Title IX does not mention matters of sexual orientation at all. Furthermore, as controversial as single-sex schooling has been, it is a walk in the park when compared to the confusion, hostility and stereotyping that surrounds gender bending.

But the reality of schooling is rife with examples of children of varying ages whose sexual identity and gender explorations have become the target of misunderstanding, hostility and even violence. And certainly a discussion of feminism and gender stereotyping in schooling cannot be complete without considering the experiences of gays and lesbians. Can it be that education research contains nothing useful on this subject when research that is so inconclusive about the effects of traditional gender-defined schooling is worthy of review? What choices and opportunities would gay or lesbian students have available if single-sex schools are seen, in effect, as a way to improve the academic and social experiences and self-esteem of straight boys or girls?

Perhaps the inclusion of other approaches to gender and schooling would have produced a book that was too lengthy and too controversial to be effective. Nevertheless, these are things that we must think about, and do think about, when the issue of gender and schooling arises. Salomone is too intelligent and too sensitive to education issues to have left this out inadvertently. One wishes, therefore, that she had given us at least a couple of pages explaining why she chose not to deal with such important matters of belief and identity. Otherwise, this omission may render the tone of Professor Salomone’s concluding remarks somewhat misleading in its prediction of a reasoned solution to the single-sex school debate.

Finally, there is the problem of the compatibility of liberty and equality. Salomone is philosophically correct in this assertion, and it is a tribute to the sincerity of her commitment to the children about whose education she writes that she makes this assertion. I have labored myself, in SHORT ROUTE TO CHAOS: CONSCIENCE, COMMUNITY AND THE RE-CONSTITUTION OF AMERICAN SCHOOLING, to show the importance of dissolving the false polarization of choice and equality.

But the persistence of this polarization is not merely a philosophical phenomenon. It is the product of the political structure of education in America, just as the school wars themselves are a necessary result of that same structure. If schools can legally choose to programmatically support some world views and not others, then the public will be factionalized in a struggle to determine whose world view will be adopted. Public school policy is at bottom the product of majoritarian political processes. The School Wars are often about issues of basic belief and value transmission—the “sphere of intellect and spirit” that the Court sought to protect from majority control in BARNETTE. For this sphere of intellect and spirit to be protected from the hydraulic pressures of majority rules, choice must be equally available to all. Salomone recognizes as much in her discussion of single-sex schooling; but the recognition, though necessary, is not sufficient.

Professor Salomone has urged us to take a more nuanced and less polarized view, to reconsider the fundamental concepts of gender schooling that have become entrenched in our collective psyches and in our law. She has wisely written that single-sex education should be a matter of choice, and she has ably defended her conclusions and explored the validity of others’ views with a balanced review of law, history and education research. But in the end, this fine book avoids its most important implication. The book acknowledges the central importance of family choice in single-sex schooling; but it does not make clear that for family choice to be made real in this one area, the entire educational structure would have to be re-examined.   

So long as majorities can effectively control the expression of belief and the transmission of values that are central to socialization in the schools, choice will remain a slogan rather than a reality. The polarizing School Wars—including the battle over single-sex schooling—will go on in the absence of a systemic provision of choice. By stopping short of a call to re-assess basic principles of school structure in SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL, Professor Salomone may have painted a rosier picture of the future of gender-based education than our past school wars suggest is warranted. The irony of seeing single-sex schooling through these rose-colored lenses is that Professor Salomone has written elsewhere quite convincingly about the restructuring issues.

If the basic structure of public education is ever subjected to the kind of searching, well-informed, and honest re-examination that Professor Salomone brings to her issues, equal choice in schooling might someday become a reality. In that event, SAME, DIFFERENT, EQUAL may acquire additional importance. It may constitute an argument that single-sex schooling should not be constitutionally forbidden or required in a regime of school choice in which only the most compelling state interests would justify restricting the diversity of schools “for educating future generations.”

REFERENCES:

Arons, Stephen. 1997. SHORT ROUTE TO CHAOS: CONSCIENCE, COMMUNITY, AND THE RE-CONSTITUTION OF AMERICAN SCHOOLING. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

CASE REFERENCES:

WEST VIRGINIA v. BARNETTE, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

UNITED STATES v. VIRGINIA, 518 U.S. 515 (1996).

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Copyright 2003 by the author, Stephen Arons.