SINGLE-GENDER ACADEMIES' TIME HAS COME; ALL-MALE SCHOOLS NEEDED TO INSTILL POSITIVE MODELS FOR MASCULINITY.

Byline: Brad Stetson

PUBLIC education has long been the whipping boy of conservatives, and with abundantly good reason. But lately, the educrats who make their living spending other people's money on what are frequently dubious educational ``breakthroughs'' have made some bright decisions.

Certainly class-size reduction is one of them, and now, because of California's single-gender academy law, seven California schools - including one each for at-risk boys and girls in Fountain Valley - are set to begin before year's end for children grades seven through 12. So this is a bright day in local and state public education, because single-gender schools serve valuable educational and social purposes.

Studies have consistently shown that many girls fare better in school when they are separated from boys, because they are not distracted by the attentions of boys, which, spawned by the tyranny of testosterone, often veer into personally insulting and sexually coarse verbal bullying, a tack adolescent boys know all too well can paralyze their female peers.

An emotionally sensitive young female need not be a weak and wilting violet to have her self-confidence shaken by the relentless heckling of boys whose immaturity does not permit them to express their sexual interests in more understated and civil ways.

I used to teach junior high school, and witnessed the torrent of genuinely wounding words that flowed from young males to females, including one boy who had a remarkable if profane ability to rhyme girls' first names with brief, graphic descriptions of sexual acts.

No amount of adjuration, detention or suspension of privileges could restrain this fatherless boy from his hurtful mischief.

Similarly, boys prescinded from an environment full of the one thing most interesting to them - young females in sexual bloom - are much better able to concentrate on their school work.

This of course is horrible heresy to the feminist sensibilities of modern liberalism, the official story of which implausibly insists that boys and girls are really no different psychologically, emotionally or sexually, so boys amid girls should not have any problems focusing on their work, and if they do, it's because they don't respect women, or have been poisoned by the sexism of patriarchy.

Essentially this unrealistic sexual egalitarianism simply barks to boys groping with adolescence: Deal with it.

Well, young boys with intact families and a solid moral foundation can deal with it, and have historically. But in today's utterly sex-drenched culture, with 40 percent of American children living apart from their father, this is a naive and simplistic solution, as is the value-free explicit sexual instruction and condom distribution advocated by contemporary liberalism.

Young boys need to be taught responsible masculinity and the means of self-control, it doesn't just happen naturally. As dissident feminist Camille Paglia put it, ``A woman simply is, but a man must become.''

While the family is the best place for that critical instruction, the mother-only families of today are often not up to the task. Indeed, it is the swelling riptide of the phenomenon of fatherlessness that threatens to carry away so many boys' futures, and is a major reason for the need for all-male schools, where strong subcultures of masculinity that emphasize the vital values of self-responsibility, intellectual diligence, integrity and sexual restraint can significantly compensate for the socialization into sound masculinity that is so lacking in contemporary American life.

Anthropologists have long recognized that no society can survive unless it successfully socializes males away from violence and sexual predation. When families, the locus of socialization, fail at this task, the practical role of all-male schools looms large.

The imprimatur of manhood conferred through an all-male culture - and the masculine self-confidence this creates within boys - reduces the likelihood that they will try to prove their virility through violence, particularly against women, or through sexual promiscuity.

Tragically, such a misguided pseudo-masculinity, and the suffocatingly brutal culture that it engenders, is the norm today, particularly in our inner cities, which is why from Los Angeles to Milwaukee to Detroit to New York grassroots community leaders are working to establish all-male private and public schools for their at-risk youth, even as they are unwisely opposed at every turn by anachronistic liberal interest groups like NOW, the NAACP and the ACLU.

Single-gender schools diversify public education and provide much-needed options for parents and school administrators who are charged with the formidable task of contributing to the character formation of tomorrow's nation. Even someone with only a casual awareness of the problems facing today's youth must deem them a welcomed trend, and support their proliferation.