That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher.
>Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python.
Sounds like Dave was in the wrong class and should have been told so.
>I wondered afterwards why this extremely competent woman in her 20s would react this way after clearly mastering the material.
That's a learned technique for getting assistance. It worked on you, didn't it?
>Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python.
Sounds like Dave was in the wrong class and should have been told so.
>I wondered afterwards why this extremely competent woman in her 20s would react this way after clearly mastering the material.
That's a learned technique for getting assistance. It worked on you, didn't it?