The Pros And Cons Of Single-Sex Schools

How many differences are there between the minds of males and females? Are they more different than we believe, or do they actually have more in common? According to some, these differences call for segregation. Recently, a new trend has been coming back, one that hasn’t been popular since the 1950’s; single-sex schooling. Single-sex schooling was brought about originally to be a place where women could succeed in education and leave college becoming more than housewives, and frankly, those views haven’t changed. Several years later, the trend now finds itself coming back in a profound statement, with both it’s raving supporters and upset skeptics. Although the separation of genders seems to solve issues with school romance and a theorized

Of the cons of single-sex education listed in a 2013 report by Connecticut’s State Education Resource Center, two of the first listed were the promotion of stereotypes and the undermining of gender equality that came with the separation. As well, it mentioned that this single-sex system doesn’t prepare students for work or family life in the real world, as you cannot afford to only work with one gender. Yes, a lot of supporters agree that this system puts less pressure on female students to strive towards things such as arithmetic as they mature. However, that comment in itself undermines the goal of single-sex education by stating that females can’t succeed in a normal setting, despite how this is falsely proven. It puts kids in a situation where they grow up believing that the other gender is so different that they can’t survive and work together, which can be detrimental after they graduate, where the child will have to deal with men, women, and even those who identify with both or neither. These points are found often ignored by the system’s many

In 1998, the AAUW (American Association of University Women) published a report which explained that boys and girls will both succeed if the elements of a good education are present, regardless of other factors, and that to begin with, there is no solid evidence that single-sex education works better or is more effective than co-education. Anita P. Davis, Ed.D., director of teacher education at Converse college, noted that,”With teachers who treat them fairly, female high school students can perform academically as well as male students in the same class,” she stated. As well, an article co-authored by Diane Halpern, a research psychologist at Claremont McKenna college, came to the conclusion that,”there is no well-designed research showing that single-sex education improves students’ academic performance.” Even though there are articles that like to talk about the many benefits of these schools, they aren’t able to give strong factual evidence to back up their claims, or at least recent knowledge that isn’t from the nineties when research on psychology in general wasn’t near as good as it is