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"What kind of message does it give when you tell a group of kids that boys and girls need to be separated because they don?t even see or hear alike?"

By Ann Althouse

Here's a big, interesting NYT Magazine article about educating boys and girls separately.

The walls of the boys? classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls? room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer...

Gah! I'm getting hot just thinking about it. You're cooking the girls!

Actually, I love the idea of classrooms set up for different styles of learning, and I can even accept one classroom designed to appeal to most boys and another designed to appeal to most girls, but you've got to let boys and girls self-select into the classroom that suits them.

AND: 69° is not a cool classroom, and it's a waste of energy heating a room even to that temperature in the winter. I recommend 62° and put on a sweater if you're cold. And as for the warm yellow light... I thought Congress was taking away our incandescent bulbs. I'm pretty upset about that, and I'm warming up to the idea that it's sex discrimination.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

"Taking away" incandescent bulbs? That would be a revolution-provoking act, as far as I'm concerned. And I consider it disability-based discrimination, since fluorescent lights (tubes, the stupid compact fluorescents, whatever) trigger migraines (with and without aura) if I sit under them for prolonged periods. They do not produce continuous illumination, no matter how "flicker free" they claim to be.

I am also very sensitive to color and light, in order for me to work I need proper, non-irritating light. I use both regular incandescents and incandescents coated with neodymium (full-spectrum bulbs), especially in my studio.

I said:

Palladian, the law is already passed. You have 4 years to stock up on incandescent lightbulbs to last the rest of your life.

Palladian said:

Christ.

I hate the fucking compact fluorescent bulbs. Their light is ugly, the bulbs are ugly, they don't fit into a lot of classic lamps that I own, they're expensive, they've got mercury in them, it's illegal to throw they away in New York, placing yet another burden on taxpayers to try and figure out how to dispose of them.

Seriously, it's this kind of petty tyranny, this kind of ignorance to aesthetics, this kind of disregard for personal choice that pushes me closer to anarchism.

This kind of collectivist shit is fast turning us into Europe with less-interesting architecture. Fuck congress and the lobbyists from Philips who I suspect were primarily responsible for hiding this little turd in the "energy" bill.

Doing some calculations to figure out how many bulbs I'll need to buy...

Buy a lot so you can sell them to your aesthete friends who will beg for them and so you don't have to skimp and worry about whether any given situation is "lightworthy" (like "spongeworthy").

Full post as published by Althouse on March 02, 2008 (boomark / email).