Here’s some news that preschool boys don’t want to hear: Those who attend preschool classes with a majority of girls receive an intellectual boost by the end of the school year. Conversely, preschool boys who attend majority-boy classes fall increasingly behind girls on measures of learning skills and other developmental feats.

Yet the proportion of boys and girls in preschool classes has no effect on girls’ development.

These provocative but still preliminary findings come from the first large-scale investigation of how the sex ratio in preschool classes influences girls’ and boys’ mental, social and motor development. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com

“At the very least, the findings from this study suggest that educators should exercise caution if considering a move toward greater sex segregation in early childhood education,” says psychologist and study director Arlen Moller of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.

Because so little is known about the influence of classroom sex ratios on preschool development, education researchers approach the new study cautiously. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire