Edutopia – Single Sex Schools

I recently read the article entitled Gender Matters by Amy Standen on the George Lucas website known as Edutopia.  You can access the article at this link: http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1749&issue=feb_07.  The article focuses on the debate of single-sex schools in public education.  The article focuses on three different public single-sex schools in the United States.  Throughout the United States there are only “fifty-one completely single-sex public schools” according to the article.  Beyond that number there are a multitude of single-sex classrooms within coed schools throughout the United States. 

The article touches upon some of the differing views regarding single-sex classrooms and schools.  The idea that girls tend to shy away from academics in middle and high school, becoming more passive participants in the classroom with the unset of puberty seems to resonate in the article.  Underlying the debate of whether the segregation of schools by sex is legal and equal under the Title IX legislation is the concept of ensuring that everyone receives the same opportunities to learn and the same opportunities to succeed in future.  Concern exists over whether single-sex classrooms will reinforce stereotypical gender roles and actually hinder the advancement of women into new careers. 

I agree with a point made in the article that by segregating the genders, you inflate the differences between the two groups and encourage the groups to focus on their differences.  I think the real task for public education is to combine everyone together and to work to find similarities among the entire group – facilitating discussion, learning, and future cooperation. 

Although I do not have a lot of experience with single-sex classrooms first hand, I would have to wonder whether separating the boys from the girls would really prepare each student for the future.  Job opportunities and positions in the business realm will most likely not involve gender segregation, so I think that in a way the single-sex classes are not preparing students to fit into the world they live in.  If students can not learn and work with other students from diverse backgrounds, whether it be ethnic, religious, or sexual, then they are in essence being blinded from reality.  Yes, working with a classroom of only females may allow some to thrive a bit more in a classroom, but what will happen when they start working with males in a job and can not relate to the differences in interactions, learning, or discourse abilities.  Sure scientific studies have found that there are gender differences in learning styles, but the true fact is that everyone learns differently.  One female may learn in a completely different way than another female, so the true challenge with public education is not to separate the genders from each other in order to target the major differences.  The better option would be to combine the sexes and allow them to learn from each other, highlighting differences but also working past the differences.

Another point made in the article that rings clear for me was the fact that many of the single-sex schools have smaller class sizes, specialized teachers, and a high public profile.  With all of these factors, is there really a way to gauge that the single-sex school is really the reason for success?  It could be that the small class sizes and better trained teachers are the reason that one sex is suddenly performing better than they did in the past.  A single-sex magnet school with a big reputation for churning out excellence can limit who it allows to attend with applications for entrance, so perhaps that filtering effect is why the students are succeeding.  They were already top notch and their abilities were only reinforced with smaller classrooms and experimental funding.  The fact is, education across the nation is in need of highly qualified teachers, smaller classrooms, and more per-capita funding.  The only way to truly gauge whether single-sex schools are actually better would be to compare that school with schools that have the same/equal resources.  But that may be nearly impossible.