On 31 January, the guardian.co.uk website published an article, which later appeared in the G2 section of the newspaper, entitled How to teach boys and girls. The article opens as follows:
“What does news that female pupils learn better in warmer classrooms mean for mixed-sex schools?
Research now suggests that girls do better in warmer classrooms. Heavenly news for the Girls’ Day School Trust, the group of 26 independent schools behind this finding.”
I’m not a journalist, but when an organisation promoting segregated education carries out research which shows that girls and boys need to be educated separately, I hear alarm bells.
It’s disappointing, therefore, that The Guardian – a newspaper I still have some lingering respect for – failed to take even the most basic steps to verify this claim. While clearly aimed at being witty and entertaining, rather than scientifically rigorous, the piece accepts the claims at face value, in an embarrassing display of lazy press release journalism.
In the originally published version of the article, they hadn’t even bothered to link to the Girls’ Day School Trust’s website (they have now), never mind providing any way for a reader to consult the original research.
So I Googled the Trust and visited their website. Despite being the basis of a newspaper article, there was no mention of their research on the website, so I decided to write an email to the school.
I received a friendly email in return, thanking me for my interest, and directing me to a newly uploaded page “which includes a link to the US research on room temperature that was quoted”, meaning that the Girls’ Day School Trust hadn’t carried out any research themselves.
It took me only a few minutes to find this out.
It gets worse: the link in question doesn’t actually lead to any research paper; instead, the reader is taken to a 2006 article by Leonard Sax MD PhD, author of the book “Why Gender Matters”.
In his article, Dr Sax mentions research carried out by “ergonomics specialists”, but provides no reference or detail by which the original paper can be tracked down – not even the name of the “specialists” involved, the country in which the research was carried out, or the year it was published.
A Google search of the key words provides nothing more than links or references to the Sax article.
Dr Sax’s article provides the following reference (which I somehow managed to overlook the first time I read the article):
M.Y. Beshir and J. D. Ramsey, “Comparison between Male and Female Subjective Estimates of Thermal Effects and Sensations,” Applied Ergonomics 12 (1981): 29-33
In other words, the Guardian article is based on research carried out over 30 years ago. So, the article not only misattributes the research to the Girls’ Day School Trust (who merely mentions it on its webpage), but also misrepresents this research as new and therefore newsworthy.
Many of us rely on the mainstream media to keep us informed of advances in science, even when those advances impact upon our own field. As a result, there will be teachers and educators who accept the claims without further investigation. Some parents’ decision to reject mixed schooling may also be influenced by this article in a respected newspaper.
I should add that the Girls’ Day School Trust have been very helpful and forthright in clarifying the situation; however, it’s now too late to share the truth with Guardian readers, as comments on the article are now closed.
The research may well be real (although I am starting to doubt it), and it may be valid, but I am left with the feeling that the idea originates with Sax, a segregation evangelist. I have written again to the Girls’ Day School Trust, but they have not, as yet, replied.
