I loved my slightly hippy, rather lax, 1970s coeducational primary school. It smelled of slightly off warm milk, blackboard chalk and musky boys.
But because single sex schooling was the norm in my area, my high school was a girls school that smelled of musk sticks, Impulse and Johnsons Baby Oil.
I don’t remember missing the boys. The handsome ones in primary school never liked me anyway, and I was still slightly traumatised from kissing a boy called Mathew whose lips were as claggy as Perkins Paste.
But I do remember, as my high school years went on, that boys became increasingly mysterious to me. And I gradually forgot how to behave around them.
Australia is one of the few countries in the world that has more than 10 per cent of its students in single sex schools. Most countries do not divide students on the basis of their gender.
The most recent research from the United States concludes separating boys and girls is wrong. It says their brains are not different enough to require different teaching and when you take out socio-economic influences, single sex schools do not actually perform better.
The debate continues to rage in the US. Post continues after video...
And some researchers say single sex schools are actually damaging students, because they increase gender stereotyping and legitimise institutionalised sexism. They argue we don’t separate children on the basis of race, so we shouldn’t separate according to gender. There is some evidence that in single sex schools, boys become more stereotypically male – rougher and tougher – and girls become more girly and (I cringe as I write this) ‘bitchy’, because the boys are not there to moderate their behaviour.
I have observed the tendency for a greater proportion of all-girl school students to be more boy crazy. It does seem girls and boys at co-ed schools have more genuine, accepting, healthy friendships, and these students tell me they feel girls from single sex schools seem more ‘giggly’ and ‘silly’ around boys.
A friend’s daughter says “girls schools girls think boys are too mysterious and too exciting. When you sit with boys every day they are not boys – they are just friends”.
So I wonder: have I done the wrong thing? Because I sent my daughter to a single sex high school.
Why?
It was partly because she begged me. She just didn’t want boys around her anymore. She said they were noisy in class and she is highly distractable. When she was in kindy she only played with boys, but by Year 6 she wanted nothing to do with them. She said dealing with a little brother was enough, and she didn’t want to deal with boys at school. The only thing she didn’t like about a girls school was having to wear a dress.
Perhaps I should have insisted on a co-ed school so she should face her problem with boys and just learnt to deal with them. But, after six months in a single sex school, I have to admit she is completely flourishing. She is more confident, relaxed, settled, driven and focused than ever before.
She loves the quietness of the classroom. The focus of other females. She feels heard, accepted, wanted and listened to. She puts up her hand and takes part in class discussions far more than she ever did in primary school.
Of course my child is not ‘evidence’ and my perspective is an individual one. We all make decisions according to the child we have. And perhaps I will regret it if she goes boy crazy in Year 10. But I feel I’ve made the right decision.
I’m not hard line on this.
My son will go to a co-ed school. He feels comfortable around girls and has female friends. He is not into sport and will never be a blokey bloke; he has long hair and sings in the choir. While some single sex boys schools may celebrate him, I’d rather him go to a less gender stereotyped environment.
Besides he loves girls (although I admit, sometimes I worry he might love them too much and he won’t be able to get any work done while trying to impress them).
It will be interesting to see how I feel about same sex schools by the time they both finish.
This post originally appeared on Debrief Daily.
Did you go to a single sex school? What about your kids? Do you accept it’s sexist to seperate the sexes?