One new study raises the possibility that my maleness harms the education of my female students -- and that the femininity of some of my colleagues impedes the education of their male students.

For all the differences between the sexes, here's one that might stir up debate in the teacher's lounge: Boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women.

That's the upshot of a provocative study by Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University. His study was to appear Monday in Education Next, a quarterly journal published by the Hoover Institution.

Vetted and approved by peer reviewers, Dee's research faces a fight for acceptance. Some leading education advocates dispute his conclusions and the way in which he reached them.

But Dee says his research supports his point, that gender matters when it comes to learning. Specifically, as he describes it, having a teacher of the opposite sex hurts a student's academic progress.

''We should be thinking more carefully about why,'' he said.

I don't have an answer to this one. Is it single-sex classes? Single-sex schools? Is it something else? And if the best education for the most students is found in one of the first two solutions, will that certain forces in our society allow for such a system to be implemented?

Posted by: Greg at 06:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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