The 60’s and 70’s of the 1900’s will always be remembered for the inroads made into our culture and society by the Feminist Movement and its associated allies. As part of its so -called “championing” the rights and interests of women and girls, the Movement began an all-out assault on what was then perceived as a patriarchal society.

All male institutions, clubs, colleges and especially the military, were targeted as places where gender divisions and separations were not only unconstitutional but were (claimed to be) inherently wrong and damaging to the general psyche of the female population .

As is usually the case, our society went from the ridiculous to the sublime when political correctness went awry as it tried to appease the women’s rights lobbyists by succumbing to demands that in many instances had neither scientific evidence nor common sense to support them.

Now at last, as we march further on into the new century, a policy shift is occurring in both political and educational spheres. In May 2002 (and again in March 2004), the U.S. Department of Education announced that it intended to revise the regulations on gender ( substitute: single-sex) education, so that school districts could have more flexibility in the establishment of all-boys or all-girls Public Schools (1). Although co-education has been a part of our history for over a hundred years, there is now new mounting evidence that such educational philosophy and teaching methodology can cultivate situations and strategies that may hinder academic progress in both girls and boys. In fact, some research is showing that co-ed settings may actually reinforce many of the gender stereotypical ideas, and prevent boys and girls from achieving their best in school and college.(2)

The main thrust of this new evidence is that medical, neurological and psychological research clearly shows that boys and girls DO learn in different ways.

Boys and girls are different!
They look different.
They act differently.
They think differently.

They process information differently and do so in environments that should be greatly different.

The “cookie-cutter” approach to education is therefore long overdue a decent burial.

Yet, it would seem that the established leadership in the field of education has failed to grasp these simple truths.

Forty or fifty years ago, the conventional wisdom was that co-education would break down gender stereotyping; that boys and girls are exactly the same and learn alike and that we were in some way ( as yet still unexplained) “damaging” students by isolating them in any way. That type of “innovative thinking” has turned out to be as flawed as many of the other idiotic ideas that came with the times.

The fact is that from the lowliest rural school to the megalithic institutions of the urban sprawl, education today is organized and managed for the convenience of adults. Schedules are built around teacher availability; classroom settings are geared towards teacher comforts and ease of instruction; quizzes and tests are (even sub-consciously) often used more as a tool of teacher assessment than as a means to discover a student’s areas of learning gaps and weaknesses.

It’s time now for an education reality check, but the problem is that many of those involved with the responsibility of educating children are more focused on teaching “things” rather than educating our young people towards becoming productive members of an ever-evolving society and culture.

The sad fact is that the empirical data is readily available to anyone who wishes to consider honestly its far-reaching implications. A few hours on the Internet will provide more than sufficient details for anyone to be able to make an “informed decision” as to the methodology we should employ in all of our schools.

Since the beginning of this new century, the interest in single-sex schools has risen dramatically among parents and educators. New government regulations (under the No Child Left Behind Act — especially sections 5131 (a)(23) and (c)) authorize Public Elementary and High Schools to offer at least single -sex classes under certain provisions. However, as is often the case, many school systems “jumped on the band wagon” without taking enough time to make a thorough investigation of all of the repercussions and complexities associated with such a dramatic shift in educational programs.

The result has been that these “failures” ( and indeed many of the experiments were abject failures), have given fodder to the negative notion that single-sex education is a fad that now deserves to be thrown out into the garbage with all the other failures that have popped up in the field of education from time to time.

The number one reason for these failures is a rush to action without first considering the intricacies of educational gender differences. Recent scientific discoveries have shown that the differences in boys and girls is far more distinctive than was first imagined. While all of the evidence is not yet fully tabulated and at hand, there is sufficient data to warrant a far greater investigation and debate than has been evoked so far. The suggestion for example that girls’ brains develop much sooner in the area of language than in spatial thinking ought to be a starting point. For boys, the reverse is true. Medical science verifies that these differences begin in the womb. Two Israeli scientists ( Reuwen and Anat Achiron) (3) have discovered that when a mother is around 26 weeks pregnant, it is possible to distinguish between a female and a male brain . Research also shows that brain development is so permanent that nothing—- neither education. lifestyle nor even clinical operations —will change a person’s brain from male to female or vice versa.(4). So then the question must be asked : “Why are we teaching geometry and language to boys and girls at the same age when they are ready for this at different ages?” In effect, a case could be made that in school, we are in a way actually abusing children of both sexes by demanding from them academic success in areas in which they are neurologically and mentally incapable of gaining such success.

Another marked difference is the speed with which boys’ and girls’ brains mature. The maturing of the brain is very complex and subtle and researchers are now certain that the area of the brain responsible for language and fine motor skills matures about six years earlier in girls than in boys, but the area of the brain involved in spatial memory matures about four years earlier in boys than in girls.(6)

The truth of the matter is that in boys and girls, different areas of the brain develop in a different sequence and at different age levels. Therefore, we must conclude that to group boys and girls together and expect the same results or even reasonably equal results is demanding the impossible.

It has also been proven that teenage girls hear up to seven times better than their male counterparts. In mixed classes therefore, that explains why girls will often say: “The teacher yelled at us today”, while on hearing this, the boys will shake their heads in disbelief and say: “No he/she didn’t”. Girls thrive under a quiet environment while (productive) noise actually enhances the boys’ educational progress. Another quite incontrovertible fact is that the male species academically thrives under stress! For a variety of medical reasons, the stress gives the boys a “gee-up”, but in girls it impairs their learning. That again explains the girls loving a certain teacher because his/her class is “so quiet and calming” while the boys love (usually) Mr. So and So, because his classes are so filled with excitement and action.

An AP newswire story from Atlanta, June 11, 2006 (7) reports that researchers have discovered that girls’ vision and thought processes develop over time to respond better to color, while boys are more readily adapted to processing movement and motion. We must therefore again ethically question to what extent are teachers and administrators demanding results from boys and girls in situations ( into which we as adults have placed them) in which it may well be extremely difficult if not impossible for them to achieve success?

For example, when we demand absolute stillness and quietness from boys, we are demanding something they cannot deliver. Boys thrive in an atmosphere of “controlled” or “productive” noise and movement, while girls are much more comfortable in the quietness of calmer surroundings and small group work.

Of course in this debate, we need to be careful that we are not advocating a “blanket-cover” for all educational situations. Yes, there are boys who would rather read or play chess than go out onto the football field. Of course there are girls who thrive on the soccer team (and other sports) and who have no interest in Barbie dolls or crocheting quilts. But the problem is that for too long girls and boys have been stereotyped as being capable of learning the same subjects at the same time in the same way. Now we are discovering the truth that this is not altogether reality and we should allow the facts to speak for themselves. Researchers at Stetson University in Deland, Florida completed a three-year pilot project at Woodward Avenue Elementary School, comparing single-sex class results with co-ed results. All other parameters were made equal —- the teachers were all similarly trained; class sizes and demographics were identical; teaching methodologies were controlled. While this experiment does describe a “one-of” situation, the results surely warrant further investigation and debate rather than the negative “put-downs” of which many administrators and teachers have been guilty.

On the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test for fourth grade, the results were as follows:

• Boys in co-ed classes  37% were declared proficient in the test.
• Boys in single-sex classes 86%
• Girls in co-ed classes 59%
  Girls in single-sex classes 75%

In June 2005, the BBC in Britain produced a report on the research completed by a Cambridge University team ,led by Mike Younger and Molly Warrington. This team had been commissioned by the Department of Education to complete a project involving no less than fifty schools in an attempt to discover how to close the gap in the variance between girls’ and boys’ averages in testing situations. This study was no “flash-in-the-pan” type of research. The team took four years and investigated even more than the fifty schools at first advocated. They also included a variety of socio-economic and ethnic groups. In using the strategy of single-sex classes, the researchers discovered that this format produced a dramatic improvement in the boys’ performance in English and other languages while the girls’ performance improvements were in the areas of math and science.

In 2001, the Australian Council for Educational Research completed a thorough investigation into single-sex and co-ed schools. That study was completed over a six year period, involved around 270,000 students in over fifty academic subjects. The results are staggering to say the least. Both boys and girls educated in single-sex schools scored between 15 and 22 percentile points higher than their co-ed peers. The sad fact about this study is that the results were widely reported in the English speaking world, yet as far as can be discovered, not one American newspaper carried this story.
On July 8th, 2002, the National Foundation for Educational Research in England released the results of their study on single-sex versus co-ed schools. This research examined almost 3000 schools under many of the same headings of the other studies and their conclusions enhance the previous data.

Critics of single-sex education have their own arguments to support their beliefs. One is that only children from affluent families benefit from the “single-sex education” experiment. The ACER (see above) and other studies can easily disprove this theory. Indeed, in 1998, a British Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) study examined the results from over 800 Public schools and showed conclusively that improved performance in single-sex schools was in no way attributable to socio-economic factors and that students in such schools had a more positive attitude to their academic studies and excelled in all-round personal development.

Finally, in Jamaica, a researcher named Marlene Hamilton discovered that students in single-se schools outperformed their co-ed peers in just about every subject. When the study was done in the mid-80‘s, the Jamaican public-school system still included many single-sex schools. Hamilton’s results showed that in that situation, girls in single-sex schools achieved best; boys in single-sex schools were next; boys in co-ed schools next and surprisingly perhaps, girls in co-ed schools achieved the lowest scores.
Another interesting facet of the debate is the results that come from what might be called “before and after” schools —-i.e. schools that have totally transitioned from co-ed to single-sex. In these cases we see the same students, the same teachers, the same academic programs –the only variant is the single-sex issue.

A classic case worth studying took place at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, in Seattle, Washington. Mr. Ben Wright, the principal, had been inundated with an extremely high number of discipline reports, averaging around 30 each day. (Interestingly again, the vast majority of these “trouble-makers” were boys.) Wright then transformed the school from co-ed to single-sex classes and within a very short space of time, the results were beyond his wildest dreams. The discipline reports dropped to one or two a day. This in turn allowed the teachers to begin more concentration on academics and the school’s results on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning Tests are almost legendary. The boys in the school went from between the 10 to 20 percentile ranking to over 70; their reading percentile went from the 20’s to over 60. Their proud boast was that the Thurgood Marshall boys outperformed the whole state in compositional writing !

Similar results were reported from an inner-city school in Montreal, where after the change to single-sex classes, absenteeism dropped from 20% (which is horrific in any school) to around 7%. The better news is that the rate of students in that school graduating and going on to college has nearly doubled.
So much for the research.

The benefits of single-sex education are more than just academic. It has been shown to open up a whole new world to students, encouraging them to explore areas of study and interest that were previously hampered by gender stereotypes. Single-sex educated boys are more likely to be involved in drama, languages and biology while the girls are now participating more in math and science. The problem of “too early in life” interpersonal relationships is also solved by single-sex schools. In co-ed schools, the question of who’s dating who, who is cool and who isn’t, who’s in and who’s out, provide only additional stress on the maturing process of teenagers. Usually such is not the case in single-sex schools and at least, the problem is minimized if it occurs at all.

The hard evidence is there for those who have the courage to examine it with an open mind. In many ways, the American dream of a complete and useful education is being stolen from students, often to appease political and union ideals. It does take courage to stand up against the status quo. Yet that is what is needed if we are to provide our children with an education that will take them into the world of 2050 and beyond. It is not only the Marines who “need a few good men and women”! Our current education system is failing us and the children it is supposed to serve. While change is never easy, it is sometimes essential. At least all of us involved in the education arena should have the courage to start this methodology debate and allow ourselves to be challenged to think outside the status quo. Perhaps we might even discover a better way and have generations of future students thank us for daring to be different and accept the differences they bring to the educational process.