Recently in a class discussion, we talked about the pros and cons of same sex schooling. Among the “pros” were listed ideas such as “empowerment without gender comparison,” “specialized subjects,” and my personal favorite, “fewer distractions.” Frankly, I have always been wary of the idea of same sex schooling and this discussion did little to convince me that same sex schooling does more good than harm in today’s educational system.
In my experience, same sex schooling exclusively happens in privatized schooling and is often tied to some kind of religious group. Obviously the cliche, catholic, plaid-skirted school for girls comes to mind, but other circumstances exist I am sure. I believe having religion in schools can unintentionally lead to more sexism, simply by the way the administrative and student community discuss gender. I’m referring to the way Christianity’s Bible and other religion’s holy documents discuss the roles of the traditional man and women within a family and how sometimes these traditional or religious values are abused and taken out of context. “Wives submit to your husbands” and the rest is history. Still today women are assumed to be better at the humanities and are often expected to be successful at homemaking, while men are expected to enjoy math, science, and social studies, even when there has been no evidence beyond socially engrained stereotypes to prove this to be true. Small children who haven’t been taught the expectations of gender do not show gender-specific subject interest, but students who have been in the educational system for longer periods of time do.
Gender conformity is a learned behavior, found in education as well as society, and our vocabulary and understanding of gender in education needs to change.
Some discussion surrounding sexism in same sex schools argues that in a same sex school there is no one of a different sex to compare to, and without differences, students will have the freedom to pursue whatever interests they would like instead of feeling obligated to pursue what society says they should enjoy. This argument could be plausible if students were identical in every way, but I think it's fairly obvious to see that they aren't. Students will always find differences between themselves and those around them, as they well should. Gender is only one of many things students can be divided on, and comparison runs rampant regardless. To separate students to avoid "harmful comparisons" is an unrealistic expectation for education that could only exist in a single teacher single student environment. Even if same sex schooling was proven to be empowering for the majority of students who identify within a gender binary, there is still the matter of the great number of students who do not. Single sex schools beg the argument of transgender bathroom rights on an exponential scale, all while directly affecting children whose emotions and rights are neglected. While this is obviously an issue in co-ed schools as well, co-ed schools are more likely to have various options readily available for students who do not conform to a gender binary. A same sex school is more likely to be discriminatory towards transgender students. This could look like a lack of health and hygiene classes and facilities for students who identify differently than their peers or are biologically different. It could also look like a dress code, which brings me to the last common argument in favor of same sex schooling; distractions in the form of peers of the opposite sex.
The idea that half of the general population is cause for a deficit in learning in a regular educational community. The idea that youth and adolescence and romance and education shouldn’t mix. The subconscious message that girls are too sexual, and because of it boys cannot focus on their schoolwork.
When you separate boys and girls into different classes to remove “distractions” you are implying that there is something distracting about the other sex that needs to be ignored. A “distraction”, defined as something that catches attention and pulls it away from what is more important. By separating boys and girls, you call to light the one thing that is new and different about the opposite sex — their sex. Same sex schools highlight the fact that boys and girls are different, and subtly scream that it’s imperative that the students remember this difference.
So why is the difference in sexual anatomy such a big deal to schools? Adolescence is the time in which children become adults, and naturally, there are incredible amounts of new hormones doing all sorts of things in their bodies. Middle school brings new emotions and sensations, including romance and sexual attraction. This is the root behavior branded as a “distraction”, but should it be? Stigmatizing male + female friendships and relationships into a label such as “distractions” teaches students to think that all male + female relationships have something inherently sexual or romantic about them. Furthermore, teaching youth that romance and sexual attraction is enough of a “distraction” to cause detriment to their educational environment teaches them a lot of harmful things about love. It teaches them that someone else is at fault for their feelings, instead of teaching them that it is their own responsibility to learn despite these feelings.
Most often, women are shamed and blamed unjustly in the form of rigorous dress codes in many schools, covering everything from collarbones and shoulders to knees and belly buttons (all parts of anatomy found on everyone, not just girls).
By asking girls to cover themselves or to attend a different school to keep the boys from getting distracted, we are blaming them for the chemical changes going on within the minds of their male peers (and vice versa). Logically, this is absurd.
Within all reasonable arguments, I see no defining facts proving that same sex schools are more effective than co-ed schools. They deprive youth of interaction with up to half of their peers, causing them to be at an interpersonal developmental deficit upon re-entering a society with a wide variety of gender definitions and identities. Same sex schools are less compatible for students who do not identify specifically within the preferred demographic of the school.
At the end of the day, I recognize that all the problems I have highlighted within same sex schools are still relevant in co-ed schools. I believe this is because they are societal problems implemented in education, not because they are educational problems. Yet they are educational responsibilities.
