Northern Hills Magazine 2015 Easter Issue | Page 18

IMAGE: 123RF.COM ARTICLE / GENDER BOYS AND GIRLS DO BETTER AT SCHOOL IF THEY INTERACT LESS WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX GENDER APARTHEID WRITTEN BY JOHAN FOURIE: JOHANFOURIE.WORDPRESS.COM S eeing that, according to the Cape Times, I don’t believe in gender parity, I might as well go the full distance and call for gender apartheid. Yes, I want separate neighbourhoods for boys and girls, separate beaches and benches, separate entrances to public buildings. Heck, I might even demand separate homelands for men and women. And to be honest, this will be much easier than implementing racial apartheid because we already have separate schools, separate sports teams and separate toilets. You might think that I do this because I believe that one gender is somehow inferior to the other, but in fact I’m basing my big plan for gender apartheid on science PAGE 16 / NORTHERN HILLS / EASTER ISSUE 2015 which says that separate gender development is better for both sexes. According to a paper published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, boys and girls BOY MEETS GIRL: NOW EXPECT THEIR GRADES TO DROP” do better at school if they interact less with the opposite sex. Here is the blurb for Andrew Hill’s paper The Girl Next Door: The Effect of Opposite Gender Friends on High School Achievement: This paper finds that a student’s share of opposite gender school friends negatively affects high school GPA (grades). It uses the gender composition of schoolmates in an individual’s neighbourhood as an instrument for the gender composition of an individual’s self-reported friendship network. The effect occurs across all subjects for individuals older than sixteen, but only in mathematics and science for younger students. Additional results indicate effects may operate inside the classroom through difficulties getting along with the teacher and paying attention, and outside the classroom through romantic relationships. Hill’s paper comes at a time when there is some WWW.NORTHERNHILLS.CO.ZA