So, the first time I found myself cursing G. Bush's name was when I came across news article in the Olympian on May 9, 2002. Bush and his administration wanted to reverse a federal discrimination policy, Title IX, which outlaws discrimination based on gender. He wanted to segregate schools to give parents more options in choosing public school. "It is one more option we think ought to be made available to parents," said Brian Jones, general counsel for the US Department of Education. Advocates of this say research supports the ideas that single-sex schools offer benefits for both sexes. "Many boys do better in a single-sex atmosphere without the extraneous distractions of girls," said Sen. Hutchinson, R-Texas. Unbelievable! What about the stinky boys in the back of the class who were always making fart noises and spitting spit wads? What kind of distractions are they? Thank goodness for the civil rights' groups who stood up and said, "it certainly is not the best way to prepare boys or girls for the world we all live in." I see school segregation perpetuating the communication problem between men and women. In my opinion, the way to improve education is to decrease class sizes and increase parent involvement. Bush can take the $3 million he's offering to schools who choose to segregate and put it back into existing schools. Let's see how many more elementary schools (take King Co. for example) we will have to shut down before we figure it out.
