Single-Gender Education: Why the Rush?

I have taught in single sexed classes and these students scored much higher on all state testing and were a joy to teach. Students attended class prepared to learn and with no distractions from the opposite sex in middle school.

I have attended some classes that were segregated and felt it beneficial.

My school has used gender based learning in reading and science lab classes for 5 years. Students in these classes talk about how much more enjoyable class is now. They also want everyone to know how fortunate they are to have reading materials to choose from that are interesting for them to read (boys and girls in middle school like different books). The local health department can use the gender based classrooms in science lab to teach sex education in a comfortable setting.

What do you think about single-sex colleges? I have taught at a women's college for over 20 years. I think single-sex education at the college level is great. There is a vast literature on the advantages of attending an all-women's college. What do you think?

As one who many years ago attended by choice a single-sex high school, a big-city public academic college-prep school that would now be called a "magnet" school, and then went on to a very good small co-ed college, I see a bit of mixed blessings in the single-sex environment.

There is no question that the lack of exposure to the opposite sex, on top of three hours of travel each day to get to and from this school and a lot of study time, essentially eliminated a social life during those years, thus making the adjustment to a co-ed environment in college a bit more difficult.

But on net, I have no doubt that those factors combined to make me a better student and helped me get into a very selective college, where I did well academically and socially.

So my socialization was deferred for a few teenage years. In retrospect, bigga deal. There was plenty of time left for that, and I do not regret my choice at all. Looking at all the teenage promiscuity today, and the problems it causes, just reinforces my decision.

I believe single-sex classes are a wonderful idea especially in middle school on up. I work in a high-poverty school and the kids spend so much time worrying about the opposite gender, it takes away from learning. When the opposite sex is removed the students are less inhibited and the kids are willing to take risks. I will enroll my daughter in an all-girl school in grade 6.

I taught many years ago in an all boys Catholic school run by Silesian Fathers in California. Discipline was firm and students were studious. I taught Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Generally the young men were focused on their subjects and well supported by their parents. This was both parochial and one gender. Having been in the military I was comfortable in the situation. When I moved to teach in the public school, with both girls and boys in the classes the first thing I noticed was that the boys behavior was "softened" by the presence of the young women. There was no better performance academically but the general attitude among boys was considerably improved because of the female presence.Occasionally now, at the university I have a science class for pre-service elementary teachers that is 100% young women, and I note a lot more question asking and overall interest in science when the men are not in the classroom. I suppose the next thing is to get some real numbers to back up my anecdotal observations.

I tend to agree with you. I wonder if segragation is the correct direction for children. Yes the genders do learn differently but they can learn from each others point of view too.
I do know this that seperating the sexes is no different than many Islamic countries. How is that working for them? We have done this in histroy before and look how long it took women to clim into the light from that. Do we want to return to that? I don't think that kind of world is what we want to build.

I suspect that the key to same sex education working will be to learn what ages, what courses and what cultural norms are best followed for different cohorts. There is an intersting book by Dr. Diana Meehan, Founder of Archer School for Girls (http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2007/NOV/html/spot-drdiana.html)in California. Although, in her case, her own wealth and her close connections with Hollywood helped monetarily, she gives a strong personal argument backed up as much as one can with the limited research.

I have also taught single-sex classes and found that it was enjoyable for both the students and me. We were able to tailor instruction to the sexes learning styles and we had an increase in test scores. My male students made the most significant gains.

I have given this much thought in the past 10 years or so because at the age of 34 I went back to college at a single-sex institution. I found that I loved the intellectual exchange that happened in an all female academic environment and discovered I understood something about why men fought int he early 70's to keep their single sex environments. I am not always proud of this understanding I have aquired, as it flies in the face of the feminism I have always supported, but understand it- I do.
I also spent my first 3 years as a middle school teacher at a school that was coed but had single-sex academic classes and anecdotally found that this worked well for middle school age girls but not as well for the boys. The gilrs were able to bond together and work collectively with each other while simultaneously becoming more competitive with the boys, something I do not see now that I teach in a coed environment. The boys on the otehr hand usually devolved into collective slothliness. (if such a word exists) I have considered doing my PhD work on the benefits of single middle school academic education for girls.

I'm a graduate of a women's college as well as a former Girl Scout; certainly my positive experiences with both of those influence my perception. Naturally, I'm skeptical that the brief, mixed statistics cited in the article paint the entire picture of single-sex education. Looking deeper into those classrooms, perhaps one could find certain practices within the single-sex framework that benefit all students either academically or behaviorally. The philosophy of the program, degree of professional development, and biases and experiences of staff members, among other things, could make a huge difference in implementation.

The single-sex learning environments I've experienced have been structured to foster and celebrate self-discovery and acceptance—isn’t that an important step in the process of learning to accept others for who they are? They also acknowledge differences that are real, whether by nature or nurture, instead of pretending those differences don’t exist and not addressing them. (With all the pressing concerns we have as educators, how many of us give adequate attention to this matter in our interactions with students?) I sure don’t think single-sex environments are a magic bullet, but they keep the conversation about educating regardless of/in harmony with/about gender alive. Let’s keep talking. Shall we abandon this approach because it may not work as well with homosexual children? Does it make sense to allow parents and students to choose between traditional and single-sex classrooms on an individual basis? Will one period each day of gender segregation retard social development? Is one period a day enough to make any impact at all? If this works better for girls than for boys, what can be done differently for the boys? Which areas of the curriculum or developmental stages lend themselves to this approach?

I tend to agree with the author in being skeptical about single sex classrooms. While sexual tension may be a problem for some students (not being heterosexual, I can't exactly use my own high school experience as evidence here), eventually women and men need to learn to work and learn side by side for an egalitarian society to function.

I think the real issue I have with single sex classrooms as a solution to the different scores between boys and girls, or the different confidence levels within classes, is that they fail to address the question of what is happening within co-ed classes. Instead, whether arguing nature or nurture, the solution seems to assume that sexual inequality within co-ed classrooms can never be overcome and we're better off abandoning the idea of teaching boys and girls together.

For some topics, such as sexual heatlh, single gender classrooms make sense because the differences are rooted in biology, and they've been shown to be very successful. For science and math, I worry that single sex classrooms seem appealing at least in part as a way to avoid asking ourselves deeper questions about how we educate our children to understand gender and sexuality.

I teach Language Arts and Reading at a suburban middle school. Our population is predominantly white (we do not have NCLB goals related to ethnic minorities); however, we have a lot of students of low SES, foster care, single parent homes, etc. According to our NCLB data, we have a 20 point gap in Reading between the boys and the girls (the boys being lower). We decided to try separating just the 6th grade reading classes (Language Arts stays co-ed) to see how it works, and personally I like it much better simply for the fact that it becomes easier to find materials that the class will be interested in. Sure, my girls in Reading have a variety of interests -- but their interests are VERY different from those of my boys. I think the separation has more to do with the way boys and girls learn, their topics of interest, and their distraction from each other. I agree that children have to learn to deal with the opposite sex -- but the fact is, in middle school, hormones are raging and that's not always something that individuals can learn to control in themselves. These kids don't understand the emotions they're feeling or sometimes how to deal with their friends of the same gender -- much less those of the opposite. Separating boys and girls, at least for some classes, is not the same as racial segregation, especially if both boys and girls are learning the same thing, and if we want these students to learn at high levels, we have to remove some of the distractions that prevent them from focusing. This is not to say that boys and girls should be completely separated until they turn 18 -- but when it comes to a safe learning environment, I think single-sex classrooms would make middle school students feel much more comfortable and we would find that they are much more able to focus on what we need them to LEARN. I don't know about your state, but "social skills" are not part of my core content.

Throughout middle school and high school, I have always had co-ed classes, which has really prepared me for working with diverse groups of people. When I started my elective classes during my graduate program, I decided to go for a Women's Studies minor. All of my classes are now single-sexed and it is awful. The viewpoints are very similar, everyonee is easily offended, and many of the undergraduates are noticably uncomforatble (and even afraid) of men. I am going to medical school next year...could you imagine if you only took classes that were exclusively single-sexed and then try to be comfortable with diverse populations as a physician? I have always had more male than female friends and even though making classes single-sexed classes may be easier to teach, they are not beneficial to students when they get out into the real world.

Why not just separate the kids in their academic classes, and during gym, rescues, art, and music have them together.

Hello, everybody!

Can you spare a few moments to take my survey on single-sex and co-educational schools? Your feedback is very important!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RSWN9RM

Thanks a lot!