Meyer Media Portfolio Entry #2

This video is located here

Mosley High Gender Segregation Classes is a video that I found on YouTube. It is a report by The News Herald of Panama City, FL. (www.newsherald.com) It is basically just some interviews with the Language teacher and several of the students who are in the gender segregated classes. The teacher says she believes that there are less distractions with the genders separated. She thinks that the segregation leads to better performance and more participation from both genders. It is a nice mix of hearing how the students feel about the situation and how the teacher justifies it. There are not many hard facts given but this video just gives some opinions of people involved.

This is sort of relates to what Johnson was talking about in Chapter 2 of Power, Privilege, and Difference. In that chapter, Johnson says that privilege and oppression occur together. In other words, in order for one group to receive privilege, another group needs to be oppressed. We can’t have one without the other. By segregating the genders, Mosley High School has separated the males, who receive privilege in society, from the females, who are oppressed by males. With the genders separated, maybe the females will not be oppressed and they will be able to get a higher quality education. They will not have to worry about dominating the conversation, the learning, and the teacher’s attention. They cannot be oppressed if there are no privileged in the class. The males, on the other hand, will not be given an unfair advantage over the females because they will be in a completely separate class.

I am not sure what to think of the situation at Mosley High School. It seems logical that separating boys from girls would eliminate lots of distractions. I may also help to curb the unseen and unrealized privilege that the boys may receive. However, I am not sure if it is the best situation. How are the boys and girls going to learn to work together if they are separated through their school years? One of the students mentioned the fact that high school is about more than just learning. That is true. It is also about learning to interact and work with people who may look a little different. These students are all going to grow up and have to work in the real world someday. The boys will be required to work with the girls and the girls will be required to work with the boys. They may as well learn those skills in high school.