Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Troy McCullough, Tim Davis, Jennifer Holland, Kathleen Carlson and Jenny Hykes.

The early results seem quite conclusive. Elementary classrooms in West Des Moines separated by gender are proving to be quite successful.

The classrooms are taking advantage of a well-known fact that boys and girls learn differently. Educators have long been worried that traditional classrooms often cause girls to be left behind when math and sciences are taught.

Separating classes into boys-only or girls-only would seem to fix that problem, allowing students to feel less intimidated and allowing educators to focus on specific learning methods.

But doing so would create some problems of its own.

Aside from the traditional readin’, writin’, and ‘rythmatic, there’re some other very important things that elementary students learn in school.

Maybe the most important is how to interact with the opposite gender.

In a time when violence against women is a major problem in society, and in a time when many men still treat women as objects and not people, do we really want to segregate the genders? Keeping boys and girls apart would only perpetuate stereotypes and myths that boys and girls have about each other.

That could be very dangerous in the long run.

It is true that boys and girls learn differently. That’s the problem.

The solution is not to segregate the classrooms. The solution is to train our educators to this fact. Make them aware of gender learning differences and have them teach their classes accordingly.