It is artificial to isolate boys and girls from one another. They fail to learn ways of fully interacting together, intellectually as well as socially. Sexually segregated schools produce unbalanced young people, experienced in the ways of their own sex but naive in, and untempered by, the ways of the other.
Poor and minority girls in inner cities are especially at risk from problems such as teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, sexual abuse, depression, drug abuse and gang violence. Many girls in co-ed schools absorb attitudes of passivity, choicelessness and submission to men, that separate schools could change by supporting girls' efforts to choose their own lives and by promoting leadership for women.