Commenter Thread

Comments on Perpwalk Imperial by Hartmut

OK, this is not up-to-date in any sense but I remember studies from my own time at school (so, mainly the 1980ies) from Germany that stated that girls behave differently, when a class is girls and boys mixed from when they are separated (talking about the same class but taking some lessons mixed some separated). If the boys are present the girls were far more reticent, would raise their hand less often and would not speak about personal experiences. In separated lessons their behavior was far less different from the boys, they were more active, would also bring in personal experiences etc. The behavior of boys in class in the absence of girls was iirc only slightly different. So, there was a bit more show of dominance by boys in the presence of girls than in their absence but it was visible only in direct comparison. It also depended on what lesson was on the menu. On topics that were traditionally connoted as male (math, physics, chemistry, less so biology) the boys displayed more dominant behavior than in 'neutral' areas (humanities, geography) and the behavior of the girls showed the greatest difference there too. This led to public discussions, whether classes should get separated occasionally in the former. Administratively that would not have been a problem since classes were often split for science anyway since experimental setups for full numbers were often difficult to obtain (=not enough material/devices in store) and one could have done so along gender lines.
There were a few attempts in that direction and those proved successful (for the girls at least) but the experiment was soon ended because of protests and reservations/suspicions that this would be used (by conservatives) as a tool to abolish coeducation again and also that the girls should have to learn to counter the male dominance behavior while still in school (the separation seen as a step backwards there). When I went to university, the gender gap in the 'hard' sciences had more or less disappeared, in some cases even reversed.
I think at the school I went to the differences were much smaller than in general, so there would not have been much of an effect in having non-coeducative lessons (PE excepted, where there was separation in secondary school from iirc 7th to 10th or 11th grade where the emphasis was on athletics, which put the girls at a disadvantage).
To-day, at least around here, the problem has re-arisen due to the steeply rising percentage of children with Middle Eastern background. Now it IS about inculcated ideas girls and boys bring back from home. While the girls with that background 'know how to behave correctly' (from the boys' POV) this is not true for the German girls which leads to increasing conflicts with the boys of that cultural background, who try to display dominance and can get angry or even violent, if the girls don't put up with it (even worse, if it's a girl from 'their' side that has gone native (=Western)).
I have to add that at my primary school the percentage of 'foreign' children was exceptionally high for the time but that problem did not exist because they all were German in all but looks and some had to learn their 'native' language in afternoon courses because they did not use it in their day-to-day lives except to play translators for elder relatives.

add "woman" between same and twice (It was there when I posted but then diasppeared)

„Wer zweimal mit derselben pennt, gehört schon zum Establishment“ (he, who sleeps with the same twice, is already part of the establishment) was an (in)famous slogan of the German 68ers ("student revolution"). In theory this was about "free love" but in reality it put pressure on young women "to be available".