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I attended an
all girls school from Kindergarten through 12th grade. Except for a
semester long study abroad program in my junior year of high school, I had
never experienced a co-ed learning environment before coming to Lewis &
Clark. I grew up being told of the exponential advantages I had been given by
attending a single sex school; teachers in all disciplines (science, PE,
English, art, etc.) would constantly praise the single-sex method and tell us
how lucky we were not to be in an environment where we had to worry about
impressing boys. My school had a uniform and strict dress code policy to
further limit differences and competition between students.
There have been many
studies investigating the proposed advantages of single sex education. Most
have arose out of a desperate need for reform in the United States’ public
school system. Many experts have claimed that at young ages (usually 6-18 years
old) girls and boys learn differently. In a report done by the American Psychological
Association, professors relied heavily on the biological gender differences in
learning.
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Other supporters
of single-sex schooling view it as a way to increase female empowerment. They
claim that boys are domineering in coeducational classrooms, and thus taking
away opportunities from their female peers. In coeducational classrooms, boys
tend to seek out and receive the majority of teachers’ attention, particularly
in math and science (Lee, Marks, & Byrd, 1994). The study also highlights the fear that a boy’s
sexist attitude and behavior will decrease a girl’s interest in traditionally
masculine fields (such as math, science, coding, and engineering). Classrooms
that do not include males, they argue, are more supportive of girls’ academic
achievement in fields that society tells don’t belong to them. Thus, in
single-sex classrooms, girls can develop self-confidence in mathematics and
science and feel empowered.
Critics of
single sex education claim that it may facilitate an increase gender
stereotyping and biases among children, who are seeing the segregation of the
genders and hearing teachers’ and schools’ messages about the differences
between girls and boys. As a result, single-sex schooling may lead to an
increase in children’s endorsement of gender stereotypes.
I was always
told that in co-ed learning environments, girls won’t say the answer even if
they know it because they don’t want boys to see them as know-it-alls. Coming
to Lewis & Clark, I was really interested to see if this was true. I was
(pleasantly) surprised to see that in most, if not all, of my classes, girls
were more likely to raise their hands and contribute to class discussions than
boys were. I have a feeling that this is because we are learning at a college
level, and impressing boys isn’t as important as it was in Middle School. I am,
nonetheless, very proud to have gone to an all girls school for my whole life
and given the opportunity, would not have switched to a co-ed school. I gained
enormous confidence and was constantly encouraged to challenge myself and my
education, something I’m not sure would have occurred to the same extent in a
co-ed environment.
Sources:
Lee, V. E., Marks, H. M., & Byrd, T. (1994). Sexism in
single-sex and co-educational independent secondary school classrooms.
Sociology of Education, 67, 92–120.
Pahlke, Erin, Janet Shibley
Hyde, Carlie M. Allison, and Hinshaw, Stephen P. "The Effects of
Single-Sex Compared With Coeducational Schooling on Students’ Performance and
Attitudes: A Meta-Analysis." Psychological Bulletin 140.4
(2014): 1042-072. Web.
Julia,
ReplyDeleteI think your post is really insightful. I have always wondered what it would be like to attend an all female school, and I almost did for my college education. I was really close to attending Mills College in Oakland, CA, but didn't because I felt I would benefit from having guys around who could provide a different perspective on things based on their personal experiences with their gender. I don't know if you've heard of something called stereotype threat, but it's something I learned about in Psychology, where if individuals are told something, like girls aren't smart enough in math, if they are girls, they'll start to believe it. In this case, it's interesting to see the comparisons of gender dynamics in two types of education systems.
I've never thought of single-sex education from this perspective before and I think your argument really conveys the complexity of the issue. It seems to me that a lot of the learning differences we see between genders could be a result of the way gender is socialized rather than a result of inherent biological differences. This particularly stood out to me in the part of your post where you talk about advocates of single-sex education claiming that "boys are domineering in coeducational classrooms." This definitely makes sense in the context of Pascoe's argument about the way boys are socialized to act in the book "Dude, You're A Fag."
ReplyDeleteI find this post to be really interesting, coming from the perspective of someone who did go through the co-educational public school system. While I think you can find pretty convincing arguments on both sides of the aisle, I think the explicit statement of the intention to give girls opportunities is so important. I went to school with a lot of very smart and motivated girls and boys, but also a lot of people who fell through the cracks, unmotivated by the promise of education and beaten down by middle school.
ReplyDeleteI also attended an all girls school for high school and experienced some of the same types of messages (of female empowerment and encouragement of women to enter into male-dominated fields) and I agree that I would not change it for anything. Gender and education seems to be largely dependent on socialization and how children grow up seeing themselves in the context of school. I also see a connection to a version of Labeling Theory, where one adopts a mentality based on what they are told, perhaps shifting based on one's schooling.
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