By Anesta Henry
A retired educator has come out in opposition to a fellow veteran’s suggestion that boys and girls be taught in separate classes in primary schools.
Jeff Broomes has dismissed John Goddard’s recommendation as a crazy pie-in-the-sky idea since, culturally, boys and girls socialise together almost everywhere in society.
“I see no reason to divide children, separate children, none at all,” said the retired principal. “Every time I hear about separating children, it bothers me. It doesn’t happen in the home, it doesn’t happen in the church, it doesn’t happen in the general society. I don’t understand why. I would never support that.”
Concerned that the education
system seems to be failing males with many of them falling through the cracks, Goddard said he believes that boys and girls should be taught separately. He said this would result in an improvement in the academic performance of males.
Contributing to the public consultations on the Ministry of Education’s proposals for education transformation which continued on Wednesday at the Princess Margaret Secondary School, Goddard, who previously taught at St George Secondary School, Harrison College, and the Barbados Community College, argued that boys have peculiar needs that may not necessarily be met when both sexes are taught together.
Though saying that he believes boys and girls should be able to attend the same learning institution, Goddard argued that “we can teach the boys and girls separately in the primary schools”.
Broomes, a former principal of The Alexandra School, a girls’ high school which became co-educational in 1984 after 90 years in operation, called on Goddard to provide evidence to support his recommendation. He said that as far as he was aware, it has never been proven that girls outperform boys at the primary level.
“You got to prove that to me,” he said. “What is the problem with having them together? In what way are they suffering? I want to know how the boys’ struggles manifest in primary school. Yes, it is natural that girls tend to develop a little more quickly than boys but the boys catch up after a certain time in the senior stages of their teenage life.
“My next question is, is he going to be comfortable with a class of boys being taught by females? Because there are vastly more female teachers in Barbados than males. Will he be happy with that? Will those females be able to satisfy their needs? I don’t know,” Broomes questioned.
