What we understand by differentiated education is to separate girls and boys in different classrooms, changing the method of teaching but not the content. Girls and boys are different, so they also learn, think and express their feelings in a different way. The curricular content does not change, it’s just that, in a separate environment, the teaching is adjusted to the preferences, needs, motivations and the learning style of each genre.
As parents, you know that each child is different and unique and has qualities, talents and special notes that are not repeated in the same way in their siblings or their friends because each human being is unique. You know that the best you can do is to give each child what he needs, depending on his age, maturity, genre, and character.
For example, boys and girls do not sleep in the same bedroom, you do not buy the same toys for boys and girls, and they are not corrected in the same manner. As parents, you know by direct experience that the preferences and needs of each child are different and are heightened according to the sex to which they belong. This is due to the fact that every man and woman, even if they are equal in dignity, have the specific qualities that nature provides each of them just for the fact of being a man or a woman, that is to say, because of having a different identity.
Our teachers claim that the dynamics within a classroom of only boys are very different to those in a classroom composed only by girls, and this has been proven in several studies that found that, generally, competitions to determine winners and losers, under pressure, with limited time, stimulate boys positively, while girls prefer to work in a team where all of them win and nobody loses. If we try to explain a mathematical formula to boys, the examples that they will understand better will be different from those that girls will. The same thing happens with reading, because the preferences are very different between boys and girls. In fact, the ways of teaching, motivating and treating each genre vary.
A group of researchers affiliated to Michigan University studied the academic performance in some Catholic schools with only boys, only girls, and mixed. Students in schools of only boys, got better grades in reading, writing and math, than those boys studying in mixed schools. Students in schools with only girls had better grades in science and reading than girls of mixed schools.
