What with the poverty question, the illiteracy question, the math and science
question, and the question of multiculturalism, it is only too easy for teach-
ers, school administrators, and even parents to forget just how important the
gender question in education really is. The authors of this wonderful volume
of essays not only remind us of gender's centrality in education but also pro-
vide us with immensely helpful ways in which to think and talk about gender
and education.

For more than 2,000 years -- indeed, ever since Plato wrote in the Republic
that sex is a difference that makes no difference -- philosophical discussions of
gender and education have swung back and forth between two extreme posi-
tions. The parties to the historical conversation about gender and education
have either denied the relevance of gender to education or insisted that gen-
der is the difference that makes all the difference. Neither answer to the gen-
der question in education is satisfactory.

Those who opt for gender freedom or neutrality appear to be on the side of
the angels. Starting from the valid premise that both males and females are
human beings, they correctly conclude that both sexes are entitled to the full
rights of citizenship. Unfortunately, from the simple fact of universal citizen-
ship, nothing whatsoever follows about gender's bearing on education. As it
happens, study after study of education has revealed that gender does make a
difference to education, and an enormous one at that. ¹

It should come as no surprise that gender is relevant to education. Having
projected it not just onto our own species but also onto our social and natural
worlds, we humans could scarcely have been expected to create a gender-free
educational system. Yet, although those who insist that gender does bear on
education are correct, it is a grave mistake to adopt the extreme gender-
bound approach to education that many do. Entailing separate educational
tracks for girls and boys that lead in opposite directions, this stance effec-
tively rejects both the common humanity of the two sexes and the centuries-
old struggle for gender equality.

Fortunately, there is another answer to the gender question in education.
It is possible to be sensitive to the workings of gender whenever and wher-
ever gender makes a difference to education without endorsing the two-track
system that was historically so oppressive to girls and women. In this volume,
Ann Diller, Barbara Houston, Kathryn Pauly Morgan, and Maryann Ayim
have adopted this alternative. Whether their subject be sexism or sex educa-
tion, women's physical education or the ethics of care, political correctness or

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