Parent upset that my class is coed

At the school that I teach at the classes from the age of 4 up are separated by gender most the day. They have art, music, recess and lunch at the same time. The other electives cooking and sewing is girls only, and automotive and woodshop is for boys only. There is 1 exception for this gifted which is what I teach is coed though the boys and girls sit in separate table groups. Today at church one the moms whose daughter is new to my class this year told me she's not happy about this. I explained to her that we had tried to do boys in the morning and girls in the afternoon system the first year but found this easier (all my students from the same grade come to me one day a week for the entire day). She still seemed upset about it but she walked away. I find it funny cause we tend to have more parents upset about the separating the genders for most the day than we have of the small amount of time they are together. I have a bad feeling about this too.

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1490wayb · 61-69, M

i feel for the child😟

Mountainlady16 · 26-30, F

@1490wayb i do a bit too i get the reasons for separating the genders esp in the older grades. I'm not sure I really myself think that as young as prek is necessary but its the school I teach at. My 2nd year of teaching the year before we started the separate gifted class. I taught kindergarten girls. My first year of teaching I had toddlers which is coed. I think separating the genders could wait til at the earliest upper elementary or least middle school

MoSmith · 70-79New

None so funny as folk. When I was a teacher we had all sorts

ArishMell · 70-79, M

I am puzzlesd by this post, so:

- What is "Gifted", as a curriculum subject?

I don't recognise the word "gift" as a verb ( with "gifted" as its past tense); but I have never heard of any school subject called that.

- Why should children be separated by sex for any subject apart from PE and Games, especially in a modern, co-educational school?

My school, as did most upper schools in the UK's national education service in my day, did teach the boys woodwork or metalwork and the girls domestic science (later called "home economics"); and PE and Games were single-sex; but all other academic and arts subjects were taught in mixed classes.

My upper school had approximately the same number of girls as boys in all classes; indeed this was so in our Infants' and Primary schools too.

Pupils mixed freely in their breaks too, although they tended to form their own single-sex circles of friends.

That however was in the Nineteen-Sixties, sixty years ago, last Century; not the Twenty-Twenties! (The schools likely still teach PE and Games in single-sex classes. I think the independent schools are still allowed to be single-sex but this is fading and most people may now see it as very old-fashioned, even undesireable.)

No British school to the best of my knowledge ever taught car repairs. That was for automotive-trade apprenticeships; but the woodwork / metalwork and the domestic science classes were intended to impart a basic level of general practical skill.

With hindsight we mere males ought to have been taught domestic science too. We all have to wear clothes and eat even if we go into non-practical careers!

None though ever taught subjects given arcane, ungrammatical names like "gifted".

Mountainlady16 · 26-30, F

@ArishMell Gifted is actually a program thats been in the US for many years though it often goes by another name now. Its for kids who achieve higher than is expected of a child in their grade. The kids that come to my room for instance that are in kindergarten are often already reading or doing math at a 1st or even some cases early 2nd grade level. In my room depending on their goals because I meet with the kid and their parent at the beginning of the year and least once a term to set goals. They work on different activities and projects sometimes individually sometimes in a group if other kids have similar goals. The way that gifted is handled depends on the school though. As far as seperating by gender its seen as less a distraction so that students can concentrate more on their work. As far as having girls learn domestic arts and boys not its simply the culture we live in girls are expected to become wives and mothers those of us that do work like I do often its in feminine type jobs like teaching, nursing etc. The boys are expected to be providers my husband is useless in the kitchen he can barely run the microwave, but I don't expect him to know how.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@Mountainlady16 Thankyou for explaining it.

Ah - I understand "gifted" meaning being particularly good at something; but I'd not encountered any sort of formal differentiation.

However, you remind me that in my third (of four) primary school years there were a couple of girls in the class who were so ahead of the rest of the class in arithmetic, our teacher gave them more advanced work which they studied more or less independently during the normal arithmetic lessons in class. The teacher would do such things as setting the rest of us some exercises to work though while he coached these two advanced ones.

The culture here is now such that career choices that have to be influenced by an individual's sex are relatively unusual. Those would be mainly those involving very personal care; but there are also many female lawyers, bus and train drivers, scientists, Armed Forces personnel, company directors, plumbers, etc. While many husbands and fathers see helping their wives with housework, cooking and tending babies as normal. Indeed, for many couples both spouses work for a living; or the husband stays at home while his wife goes out to work - as with one man I knew, married to a doctor.

(Of course, there are many people living alone, who have to perform all work and home roles themselves.)

A big cultural difference!

Birdbox1986 · 31-35, F

That’s silly girls and boys should have the option to do either sewing and woodwork and automotive

ReptilianFromPlanetCrush · M

you cant please everyone.

Mountainlady16 · 26-30, F

@ReptilianFromPlanetCrush no you cant pretty much her option is to pull her daughter out of gifted and her teacher give her an independent assignment while shes working with the students who don't qualify on the day I have her grade. The day I take the higher learners out gives the teacher and helpers time to work with the struggling students without having to stick the higher learners on screens or busy work

FreddieUK · 70-79, M

This is happening in 2026! Unbelievable that a modern society has this 'problem'. I know it's an issue in some other religions, but this is crazy to me.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

@FreddieUK Adding to that, the basic curriculum is set nationally although different schools use syllabii with detail differences, to suit different examination boards' own editions of the national school-leaving examinations.

(I took evening-class courses in the standard school maths and physics, ending in taking the national exams, as a mature student about thirty years ago, for work reasons. The text-books covered more than the actual syllabus; and the exams did not include all the topics we learnt; but the resulting passes would be recognised anywhere in the country.)

Further, UK schools' teaching, welfare, equality and pastoral care must meet minimum standards. Even as purely "work places" the management also still has the same over-riding, statutory "Duty of Care" to its staff and users as any place of work.

I think one major US / UK difference is that the former allows external, non-teaching governors much more control over what is taught, and to what standards, in their local schools. I expect most such boards do leave teaching to teachers, but this site and other sources suggest some exert undue academic control; for the boards' rather than teachers' and pupils' benefit.

FreddieUK · 70-79, M

@ArishMell English school governors (I have no experience of other parts of the UK) cannot change the National Curriculum, but may have an influence of how it is taught. I was once at a governors' meeting where my English Department were under scrutiny for some alleged misdemeanour, when one member of the Board expressed the idea that Chaucer shouldn't be taught because he was 'rude'. She was met with a moment's silence and the meeting moved on. I wonder what would remain if we left out all the 'rude' bits from English Literature á la Thomas Bowdler? 🤔 😂

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@FreddieUK There'd not be much left....

Just as well our school governors cannot control the curricula and syllabi! :-)

How did I survive Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of our set books for O-Level, with its earthy jokes between the "Rude Mechanicals"?

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