Single-sex education

Gender-isolated education
Single sex schools
Sexually segregated schools
Single-gender education

Nature

Single-sex education refers to the practice of educating students in separate classes or schools based on their gender. While proponents argue it can enhance learning by reducing distractions and catering to different learning styles, critics highlight potential problems, including the reinforcement of gender stereotypes, limited social interaction between genders, and a lack of preparation for coeducational environments. Research on its effectiveness is mixed, with some studies suggesting no significant academic advantage over coeducational settings. The debate continues over whether single-sex education addresses or exacerbates existing educational inequalities and social dynamics.

Claim

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.

Counter-claim

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.