Michael Gurian, Spokane Author Who Fueled the Single-Sex Education Movement, Fights Back Against Science Paper Undermining His Ideas

For years, Spokane author and education guru Michael Gurian has promoted the idea that "boys and girls learn differently," as he entitled one of his many books on the subject. He has often focused on boys, and what he argues is their need for a classroom that embraces competitiveness and aggression rather than tries to suppress such traits. His work has helped spawn a new movement in single-sex education. But a paper published by Science magazine on Friday launched a scathing attack on that movement.

Now Gurian is fighting back.

The Science paper, "The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling," asserts that "sex-segregated education is deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims." Rather than help boys and girls learn, such education really reinforces gender stereotypes. "Boys who spend more time with other boys become increasingly aggressive," claims the paper, which was written by eight academics, including psychologists and neuroscientists. Its provocative claims drew a slew of press coverage, including in The New York Times.

Reached by phone today, Gurian emphasizes that the authors did not conduct new research for the paper. (Instead, they reviewed existing research.) "It's not a 'study,' " he says. "It's an opinion paper."

He points out that its authors are founders of the American Council for CoEducational Schooling. As such, he says, they are ideologically opposed to single-sex education and further their "political" beliefs by casting "people as villains. I'm one of the villains."

Gurian also forwarded to SW a three-page response he's written, which he plans to release more widely later this week. That response says that the lead author of the Science paper, a Claremont McKenna College psychologist named Diane Halpern, herself found significant gender differences in an "actual study" she did in 2007. Presumably, he's referring to a paper she and others published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, which states that "females tend to excel in verbal abilities" while "males outperform females on most measures of visuospatial abilities." (see pdf)

That's not the point, Halpern replies, speaking with SW today. "There are some differences. But the question is: Does single-sex education lead to better educational outcomes?' "

"Thousands of studies," including one conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, say no, she asserts.

Halpern refuses to comment on Gurian directly, saying she wants this to be about data, not individuals. But in a podcast about her newest paper, she refutes one of his most famous claims. "In fact, boys and girls do not learn differently," she says. Just because each gender may do better in certain areas doesn't mean there's an essential difference in "how" they learn.

The spitting match is more than academic. Gurian has turned his theories into a major enterprise, training teachers through an institute he founded as well as churning out book after book. The ACLU has brought a lawsuit against single-sex classes in Louisiana. And Halpern and her co-authors are asking the federal Department of Education to toughen its rules that permit single-sex education under some conditions.

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