I can safely say that someday, as I lay hemorrhaging blood on some operating table in the hopefully distant future, none of the scenes that will flash before my eyes right before I cross over will involve middle school. Like Medieval Europe, middle school represents a time of regression where the kids start to get ugly, the teachers get apathetic, and your dreams of the NBA sit next to you on the B team’s bench. In some ways, the active repression of middle school memories is like a rite of passage for all kids. It’s why they make so many movies about high school. But there is a growing movement in this country that sees these growing pains as unnecessary and counter-productive, and their solution is even crazier than your epic seventh grade ski trip.

Marshall Middle School, located in Janesville, is just one of many schools subscribing to what I call “The Offspring” policy. When it comes to creating a positive learning environment for boys and girls, they believe “you gotta keep ’em separated.” Officially referred to as single-gender classrooms, Marshall Middle School offers students the option of taking classes in sexually segregated environments. In doing so, they hope to create a more focused, cootie-free atmosphere, but the long-term costs outweigh the short-term gains.

There are two major concerns when considering single-gender classrooms. The first, rather obvious issue is whether any sort of segregated classroom is good. Obviously, race-segregated education is unequivocally bad. But even advanced learning classes, which separate more talented individuals from the majority of students, are not a good fit for a middle school environment. Middle schoolers don’t need to hear they aren’t as intelligent as some of their friends, and they don’t need to be told that they’ll be more effective students if their classroom doesn’t include certain kinds of people.

The other concern deals with the development of a student, and whether it’s acceptable to sacrifice social maturity for algebra. Proponents of single-gender classroom say teaching certain concepts is easier when a teacher only needs to deal with one gender, and while it’s unlikely that all boys or girls think alike, there may be some truth to this. But even with this slight increase in teaching effectiveness, it can’t offset the necessary, awkward social development that occurs during middle school. If boys and girls don’t interact on a daily basis in class, where will they? It won’t be middle school dances; Moses himself couldn’t do a better job of parting those seas.

If a parent’s heart is absolutely set on putting his or her child in a single-gender learning environment, there are gender specific private schools they can look into. But this shouldn’t be a parent’s decision. In fact, it probably shouldn’t even be a child’s decision. If you gave your typical middle school boy the option of having class with all his recess football friends instead of potentially having to sit next to a girl during math, he’d take his fellow XY’ers. It’s a phenomenon that’s been known for centuries: Bros before hos.

I’d like to write this off as just another crazy idea from those wacky Janesville residents, but single-gender classrooms are being offered by over 200 school districts in the United States. If this thing gains legs, it could seriously stunt the social development of generations to come, not to mention the razors’ edge we walk in regards to educational segregation. Most middle school students conduct most of their conversations through instant messages anyway, and eliminating daily interaction with the opposite sex won’t help that. Sure, middle school segregation might lead to smarter high schoolers, but smarter high school kids never get invited to the cool kids’ parties, and tell me, How smart is that?

Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.