Why did some schools have boys' and girls' vice principals?

In recent years, a number of high school annuals from around North America have been made available online, either at genealogy or alumni sites, and browsing through them can be instructive. Up until the late 60s to mid 70s, some high schools (not all) had administration with the titles “boys’ vice principal” (almost always male) and “girls’ vice principal” (almost always female).

What was the reason for this? Was it considered preferable that male and female students receive guidance/discipline from someone of the same gender?

My junior high had a “Dean of Men” and a “Dean of Women.” They each had their own paddle, and I’d assumed that had something to do with it.

When I was in high school (70s) we had more than one vice principal. One of them had the title: “Vice Principal in charge of discipline”. He had a paddle and used it plenty. I would guess some places felt the girls might prefer being beaten by a woman.

More girls have the sense not to get into situations where an official of the state would be swinging a wooden club at you.

Same-sex authority figures are a good thing to have in schools. It makes discipline easier, not to mention conducting searches or asking “personal” type questions. Students will often open up to someone of their own sex where they would be clams with one of the opposite sex.

My high school had three vice principals, with each responsible for 1/3 of the student body, divided alphabetically by last name. If the school is of the size and staff that it has two vice principals, dividing into boys and girls is an easy and practical way of doing it. I doubt there was much more reasoning than that.

My high school had a Dean of Boys and a Dean of Girls in 1968 when I graduated. I never had any interaction with either, when I was disciplined it was by the Principal himself.

So did most co-ed colleges; circa 1970 these positions started merging into a single "Vice-President (-Chancellor) for Student Affairs. Usually the Dean of Women was the only female dean (unless there was a nursing school attached). Of course these officials had the added roles of running housing systems and acting in loco parentis 24/7 throughout the school year.

Back in the day there was a lot more emphasis on the separation of the sexes. For instance, if you look at some of the old buildings in NYC that are still used as schools there is a central entrance and there is an entrance at either side. On the mantles over these entrances one will be marked Boys and the other will be marked Girls.

If they took it to the extent that there were separate entrances for the sexes it’s easy to understand that there might be vice-principles for each sex.

Huh? Did all those entrances lead into one big foyer or anteroom? Or did they all lead into separate places? Where did the central entrance lead to, and who got to enter there? Was it for teachers and staff?

Yes, I can certainly agree with that. In my (public) grade school, there was a boys’ entrance and a girls’ entrance. The playground was divided into a boys’ side (the gravel surface and baseball diamond) and a girls’ side (swings, slides, etc.) and we had to stay on our own sides until after school was dismissed for the day. When we lined up to go somewhere, the girls formed a line in front of the class and the boys formed a line alongside the class. In the assembly hall, we had to leave an empty seat between the last girl and the first boy. In the school office (kids were assigned to work there as a “reward” that got them out of class for an hour) there were two separate filing cabinets for the boys’ and girls’ cards (this was when records were kept on large index cards and before they were computerized). Teachers kept their official student folders in their desks sorted by boys and girls (alphabetically within each gender). Desks were assigned in the classroom with alternating boy-girl patterns. At graduation, we marched up the middle aisle in boy-girl pairs, then as we reached the stage, the boys went to sit on the right and the girls on the left.

This was in public school in a major northern city. I know that some of this stuff must be unbelievable to younger people. But back then it was just the norm. Nobody thought that there was anything unusual about this. And everyone (students, teachers, parents) accepted this stuff as just the usual thing. We only had one principal and no assistant (or vice-) principals, so there was no division by sex in that job.

Even worse, the city had two special high schools for the excellent students. The north side high school admitted only boys. Girls living on the north side had no other option (except to go to a Catholic school).

In all high schools, girls were not allowed to take drafting or shop. I remember once in 8th grade the teacher who was in charge of getting us ready to transfer to high school came into the class and said something like “I forgot who asked me this, but a girl asked if she could take drafting in high school.” At this point the whole class (boys and girls) burst out in laughter. She continued “I called the high school principal and he called me back and said no.” It was unbelievable that a girl would actually ask such a thing.

Yes, I am deeply ashamed of these things.

At my school, the two entrances were at the bases of the stair cases on opposite sides of the school. When the bell rang, two single file lines were formed at each entrance. One line was for floor two and one line was for floor three. (Floor 1 was kindergarten an first grade which had separate entrances at the side of the school and were separately supervised.) You walked single file up the stairs to your floor, then walked single file down the corridor (boys on one side, girls on the other) and turned into your classroom.

There was an “office entrance” that faced the side of the school, not the playground. One door was always unlocked there. All the other doors were locked except when it was time to enter the school. Teachers and staff used the office entrance as did anyone who arrived late after the doors were locked.

Along the same side of the school, there were two or three other entrances where kindergarten and first grade teachers assembled their students to enter (separate lines for the boys and girls, of course).

This is just another WAG to add to all the others, but given the timeframe, perhaps they were schools that had previously been single-sex schools which then became co-ed.

A lot of the old school buildings (mostly Victorian and Edwardian, as that’s when there was a boom in the building of schools in both the US and the UK) here are like that too, including those buildings which are no longer schools. They’re usually in cities where space was at a premium.

The boys’ school and girls’ school would share some facilities, like the gym (usually doubling as an assembly hall), outdoor sports facilities - if there were any - and the library, which took up a lot of space and were only used for part of the day, but the boys and girls would be taught separately and have separate playgrounds.

The central entrance is for staff, parents and other visitors. All the entrances feed into a very small lobby and a stairwell. There’s no big vomitorium. (I never in my life thought I’d write a paragraph - not about Rome - where that word was more appropriate than any other).

Alley Dweller,

Thanks. I didn’t go to a school like that, I have only seen the words “Boys” and “Girls” cut into the stone mantle above the entrances. I assume that the central entrance was for teachers, administrators and parents.

But yes, that apparently was the norm.

Thanks, everyone, for all your anecdotes. While I attended school in quite a different era, I do remember a bit of gender segregation when I was in kindergarten (late 80s). The teacher would seat boys and girls on opposite sides of the lunch table, and we usually lined up according to gender–I think we were still doing the latter into 1st grade. By 2nd grade I don’t remember these divisions being enforced very much.

Not to get the thread off-subject, but it’s interesting to note how many of these gender segregations have faded over the last 35-50 years. Co-ed gym class was absolutely the norm for me, and so was the presence of girls in Shop class and boys in Home-Ec. In 5th grade, I recall that boys and girls were given the “puberty talk” separately but a couple of years later we had more detailed discussions in a co-ed health course.

Even using the term “co-ed” is a little strange for me, since it has been the default for practically all of my education.

Both of the high schools I attended were single-sex, so a separated administration wasn’t an issue, but in both cases the administrator in charge of discipline was titled “Dean of Men”. Presumably, this is a sign that if the schools were co-ed, there would also be a “Dean of Women” (and in fact I think the school my sister attended had such a position).

My second elementary school did that. I remember it as a distinct relief from the first school, which made us all sit boy/girl/boy/girl at lunch, probably on the theory that we would eat instead of paying attention to our friends. That was in the early 80’s.

My Jr. High had not only Boy/Girl separate doors but separate fields and a “no mans land” so that when we were outside of the teachers control we couldn’t get into trouble. We had mixed classes though. This was in 79/80.

The elementary school I went to for kindergarten through second grade didn’t have separate entrances for boys and girls, but we did have to line up separately every morning – boys on one side, girls on the other – before going in. This was around 1967-69.

In my high school, health was still gender-segregated… and I had freshman/sophomore health in '96-'97.