The Bush administration, reversing three decades of federal policy, yesterday announced its intention to encourage single-sex education in the nation’s public schools.
Arguments for:
Arguments against:
FWIW my wife went to an all-women’s college. She thinks that setting provided a better educational opportuity (although it was harder to get dates.)
I can’t believe NOW would be against this.
I also went to an all-woman’s college.
However the issues for postsecondary school are different.
I’m all for single-sex education for those who desire it. Give parents the option. It’s not about inequality, it’s about choices.
There is quite a lot of evidence to support single-sex schooling from an academic point of view, in certain subjects. (Will find cites later - time limited sorry). Women in particular are supposed to do better in single sex classes, for various reasons.
However single sex schooling derives from an era where there was inequality between the sexes. Women and men weren’t geared up for the same careers and workplaces that they are now. I honestly think that women and men need to learn how to interact as young as possible - ie in the classroom - to smooth their path in later life.
I went to an men’s college and thought it was great. Actually, I appreciated it more afterwards than during, but that is part of life. 
I think its the history thats the problem. Will they truly be “seperate but equal” schools or will “seperate but equal” be the joke that racial segregation in schools was. Will girls schools encourage the same athletic opportunities? The same opportunities to take shop?
Choices are well and good, but not everyone lives in a community big enough to support the boys school, the girls school, the co-ed school, the private Christian school, the charter school for difficult kids, the science magnet, etc. If you live in a small town and most of the town wants segregated schools, and seperate but equal becomes “girls like home ec” and “boys like shoop” I can see where it would get dicey (and that’s the reason there aren’t more public schools like this now).
Also, I’ve lived in a big city with lots of “choices” for parents. The problem is that the “choices” are often illusion. Want your kid in the school with the best reputation - good luck! You really don’t get a “choice” unless you get lucky in the school lottery in the beginning of the year. Many people have their kids in their third choice, or their community school (I think they have to take you at what has been defined at your “community” school). So you want your kid to go co-ed, but their are only openings in the boys school - guess what?
There is also a big difference between women and men in college and five year olds.
Oh. I thought this was going to be about Jocelyn Elders’ suggestion that we teach masturbation.
I am not in favor. I believe that instead of seperating ourselves in this nation, we should be uniting. The problem with seperating boys and girls is that they don’t get to interact with each other until much later on, and thus recieve preconcieved notions of the other gender without that much to go on or to oppose stereotypes that might be brought up. Basically the view of the opposite gender becomes something that would have been difference if they had instead gone to school with them since the beginning.
I also fear it would lead to more objectifying of women by males. Basically their would be no examples to offset the stereotypes and talk that males have of females… and this view would be carried well past what is healthy and will be part of them for much longer than if they were in integrated schools. I also think that it would lead to MUCH more sexual harrassment in the workplace as males revert to their stereotypes in dealing with women.
Bad, bad idea to promote single sex classrooms. Hell, I’m against the single sex college at Rutgers, here in New Jersey. I think it is discriminatory. I don’t subscribe to the seperate but equal ideal.
Everyone knows what I’m going to say, here, right? I don’t usually say it in this sort of thread, but…*
I distrust it. I don’t have cites or anything but gut instinct telling me it’s a bad idea - or at least a dangerous one.
Therefore, I will watch this thread, and see what I can learn.
[sub]*Separate but equal isn’t[/sub]
Like perhaps the five year olds act more mature? 
You’re alleging, then, that coeducation is what cures stereotyping and objectification of women? I think that your average 9-yr old boy is not going to have his stereotypes about women changed by the presence of 9-yr old girls in his classroom.
In fact, after a certain age, studies have shown that girls begin to act more deferential in the classroom. Their behaviors and self-perceived aptitudes start moving towards fulfilling, not challenging, stereotypes about what is proper for women, what women are good at, how women should behave. So I doubt they challenge boys’ views. In fact, who is to say that they aren’t reinforcing them?
CrankyAsAnOldMan I think ISiddiqui was talking more about how men simply would not know how to act towards women at all. You would have adults who never got to sexually mature and act like highschoolers around the opposite sex.
Public school really is more about socalization than education. It is better to have people who can interact with the opposite sex, than people who are a little better with physics.
Well, in New York, we already have a single-sex public school. It’s the Young Women’s Leadership School and it is one of the highest rated schools in the city.
As for Isiddiqui’s remarks (or, at least Sterra’s interpretation of Isidiqui’s remarks), I can tell you from personal experience that that is not the case. I went to an all-boys high school and have no problem relating to women. Of course that doesn’t hold true for everyone, but I think that you’ll find social misfits who can’t relate even in mixed-gender public schools.
In any event, I think it’s a good idea where there is a choice. I don’t think parents should be forced to send their kids to a single-gender school. But the option should be there for those parents who want it (caveat: in a place that can support these different schools. In Smalltown, USA with a population of 5,000, I admit it may not be feasible.)
Zev Steinhardt
Riiiiiight. This is why our country, supposedly the greatest, most powerful superpower in the world, is ranked like 20th in the world (not exactly 20th, can’t find a cite right now) in education.
Fact of the matter is that nobody is trying to force all kids into single-gender schools. They are making the option available. Kids are different and have different needs (they’re kind of like people that way). While some kids may learn better in a co-ed environment, others may benefit from an all male or all female surrounding, respectively. Let’s let the parents have all the options we can possibly provide them.
Maybe it is why we are supposedly the greatest superpower in the world, but not the most educated Lord Ashtar?
Though that actually probably has more to do with what percentage of a country is urban. Rural areas don’t value education as much and we have a lot of them.
I look at it this way. School is about preparing children for the workplace, and you should only have single sex schools if you want a single sex workplace.
Are the studies that lend credence to single-sex education specific as to the subject? Do boys and girls learn better with their own gender if they’re studying just math, or history, or language, or chemistry, or do the studies say the learning is enhanced across the board without regard to topic?
I ask because, while my humanist side shudders at the thought of segregation of any kind, my pragmatic side suggests that if it is indeed superior, we’re hurting ourselves by rejecting it. And I wonder if, perhaps, a blended approach might not be feasible. In other words, your average sixth-grade student would have classes in (for example) math in a single-sex room, then co-ed language, then back to single-sex for basic science, and so on.
Note, of course, that these are merely hypothetical; I have no idea if the studies indicate a difference between discrete subjects, or which subjects might lend themselves to this approach. That’s why I ask.
Lord A: Let’s let the parents have all the options we can possibly provide them.
Who could argue with that? The trouble, as Dangerosa pointed out, is that resources aren’t infinite, and we can’t always provide lots of different options all of high quality. As the article linked in the OP comments,
On the one hand, I think local oversight of and input into public education is very important. On the other, I’ve seen what happens when some school districts get “much more latitude” in determining what constitutes, say, a high-school biology textbook. Like Dangerosa, I don’t want to see something that is intended to give everybody more options end up in practice confining most of those affected to fewer options.
(BTW, december, nice OP; we whale on you hard enough for your “baiting” or “propaganda” threads that it seems only fair to show you some appreciation for a serious question, fairly propounded. Same goes for the OP on the ICC “unsigning”.)
Thank you, Kimstu.
going with cervaise’s idea…
wouldn’t it be possible to have a single school for both boys and girls, with classes divided by sex? everyone in the same school, but girls have english with mrs. smith and boys have english with mr. jones. there would be no need for extra resources as it would still be one school with the same number of students, and it would be less likely that two classes in the same school received unequal educations. plus there would be ample time for coed socializing while still providing a learning environment without the distractions of inter-gender relations.
Warning - exclusively anecdotal evidence ahead!
My (religious) school system divided the boys and the girls after third grade. What I remember from the transition is an overwhelming sense of relief; the boys had been noisy and disruptive, and we could finally get on without them. Of course, this was from the opposite-sex-ick stage of life, so my perceptions might have been skewed.
Given that nearly everyone I hang out with went to similar schools, and the fact that they all seem to get along OK with the opposite sex anyway (and even date! and get married!), I don’t think that our social abilities were destroyed by the experience. I haven’t noticed a particular difference between the social abilities of friends who went to co-ed, but otherwise similar, schools and those who went to single-sex ones like mine. Generally, the perception among my guy friends is that having girls in the classroom is both a distraction and a civilizing influence, and thus taking them out was something of a wash. The girls generally do feel that they gained more assertiveness and confidence away from the guys.
While I can’t find any cites right now, IIRC, this pretty much reflects the studies; girls do better in single-sex education, while guys do about the same in either situation.
It will all depend, of course, on how things are implemented. Title IX would force equal spending on and equal participation in sports teams if schools were of the separate classes/same school type, no? But if all the girls are taking typing when the guys are doing calculus, it’d obviously be a Bad Thing.