What is the feminist view on single sex education?

Penthe - I got a First (a starred First) and didn't have to sleep with anyone or get groped or feel any kind of sexual pressure. I suppose the only sexism I encountered was post-finals when a fellow (male) student (whom I didn't know at all well) whether I had had an affair with one of our tutors. I was surprised at the question and have never thought about it much, but I suppose he probably hoped that I had come by my results by illicit means as it would have made him feel better about his own results. Which is hardly gross sexism, just human nature!

The world isn't nice, it's a tough, tough place, and men aren't always nice to women, but they aren't at all nice to one another either (albeit perhaps in different ways). It's a competition out there, and you need to have the weapons and defenses as well as the strategies and tactics you need at your fingertips.

WTF sakura? I think you've entirely misread me. I did not blame mothers for their boys' behaviour in any way.

Apologies - if I'm repeating another poster, trying to type quickly, baby due up in about 15 secs. I went to a co-education Catholic grammar school in the 80 - early 90's in NI. It was one of the few co-ed grammars at the time. A lot of girls transferred to us at age 15 from single sex schools, they were academically really well formed but seriously had a total "in awe" of attitude towards the boys, whereas we had been with the boys since the age of 11 so they were just friends but a lot of girls thought the boys were the "bees knees" and were the girls who changed their behaviour, attitude, looks etc to fit in with what they thought the boys wanted.

Girls who had been educated with the boys were much more likely to tell the boys to piss off, argue debate with them etc.

I have 3dds and will definitely send them to a co-ed school.

Well, an environment is either sexist or it is not. It has little to do with the person experiencing it, in my opinion. They may react to it in a particular way, but that does not change the fact that an institution is sexist, etc.

As I stated, I receiving a pretty bracing education (and life) at school. I believe I am plenty tough.

I just don't think that, for instance, being groped by a male fellow in a supervision; or having fellows or male peers express surprise that I received a first - rather than simply congratulate me; or a whole host of other little events are simply evidence that I am or was not "tough" enough.

Personally, I think that on those, and other, occasions, perhaps the men should have been a little "nicer".

Did you experience such things, Bonsoir? If so, I'd be interested to know how you "[set] out to change them or else [worked] around them to [your] own advantage." In my situation, would you have slept with the fellow in order to avoid making supervisions frosty?

Should I have apologised to my teacher and my male peers for having done well when they, in the case of fellow students, did poorly? Did you?

SybilBeddows - that's an extreme example and, indeed, ought to have been fairly straightforward to call to account. Most sexism is a lot more insidious and has to do with favouritism and allegiance, which is why it is difficult to challenge collectively. Women have to learn to recognise it and to work round it individually (which is hard, but a good school IMO) as well as relying on collective tactics.

sexism is still sexism though, even if you think women should deal with it differently.

At my university there was a don who would not teach women, which meant you couldn't do a particular specialist subject because he was the only one in the university who generally taught it.

One could argue that women should have been tougher and called him to account/worked round him and found someone else to teach it to them, but it can't be written off as not being sexism.

Penthe - I am not implying anything about you at all. I am just putting forward one quite strong hypothesis as to why my experience of the university environment was not sexist whereas my sister's was (and we had, to all intents and purposes, received an identical upbringing and education up until that point).

There is a current that runs through these conversations on feminism/sexism on MN which disturbs me greatly, and that is the one that consistently blames the harshness of institutional life on men's bad behaviour/poor treatment of women and that men ought to be nicer. Whereas I tend to think that women need to toughen up if they want to be taken seriously in the working world.

Straight - Do you mean the number of male staff at my school? Yes, I realise that this was unusual. I was just responding to Bonsoir's point that, in my case at least, it was not because I was unaccustomed to being taught by men, or that I had enjoyed a "maternal" school before going to university.

I don't think that is the case across the majority of schools in the UK penthesileia.

Girls do better in single sex schools. Near us the best schools in terms of results are the academically selective girls' single sex schools. I'd have quite liked there to have been no boys there certainly between the ages of 14 - 16 as they were the ones disrupting the classes and seemed like they were 11 not 16. Also as others have said there was a good deal of sexual harassment going on which I had no idea how to deal with - mainly comments and name calling, but also regularly had my bra strap twanged in lessons, the worse incidents were an older boy fondling my breasts in the corridor and another time a boy from the same year putting his hand up my skirt when I was getting off the bus.

I know girls can name call and have their own social problems but in my school after the age of 13/14 anyway it was largely the boys who caused me grief and I'd really like my daughters not to have to go through that so they can just get on with their education. I know this won't keep them away from boys at all and I'm not expecting them to not be normally curious teenagers but I think single sex education at 11 onwards is the way forward.

At A Level, 80% of the teaching I received was from male teachers. At GCSE, approx. 40%. Lack of male teachers, or a "feminised" environment (my boarding school was about as far from maternal and nurturing as you can imagine), were not the problems.

Bonsoir: you imply, then, that I am like your sister, and that the sexism I (or she) encountered was not sexism at all, but rather a more "bracing' environment, which I was somehow ill-equipped to navigate?

pointissima - very good point. And that, I think, may be an issue in general about the transition from school to university and beyond. School is a highly feminised environment (even mixed sex schools tend to have many more female than male adults around), which must, to a great extent, make girls' life easier. University and beyond tends to be dominated by males in positions of power - so maybe quite a few girls/women "feel" the transition in sexist terms?

Formative years in an institution where women make the rules, dictate the agenda and take all the leadership positions: what's not to like?

MummyBerryJuice got there for me. Though I would include maternal care in liking to be taken care of. My sister is the sort of person who complains about institutions or structures if they don't meet her needs (and hopes others will therefore help her out - which they quite often do) - I am the sort of person who either challenges them and sets out to change them or else works around them to my own advantage. And that has very much coloured our experience of life, both at university and beyond.

The difficulty is getting the balance right as it is in schools right now competition has pretty much been eradicated to be replaced by 'everyones' a winner in that type of environment many children who do like competition don't bother because there is no point. So many mixed schools are hardly balanced with teaching styles as it is.

They need a generalised teaching style which fits the majority supported by individual help with people who don't suit. Because teaching can't be tailored to every single child in school too many pupils, too few teachers and not enough time for that.

I think mixed schools with some classes being divided for boys and girls is best. That way girls can learn without feeling the discussion is being dominated by boys.

I don't think Trillian is saying that it is always the mother to blame, although bad parenting does often lead to children growing up to be dodgy as adults, not all children but enough that it is a noticeable trend.

Some may also turn out how they are because of their environment, environment including what they watch, their neighborhood, peers etc. And there are some children that despite all the support and good parenting they get just don't turn out right.

We can affect children's personalities but have got to remember that they are not only learning from their parents and they are an individual, hopefully we give them a good foundation with which to build on.

Yup. I didn't attend an institution or study a subject renowned for their progressiveness, I must point out, but still...

I don't particularly like "to be taken care of". I'd rather take care of myself. I'm not quite sure what that has to do with sexism, exactly, though. Could you unpack that for me?

Really, Penthe? University was a haven for me - I never felt a whiff of sexism. My sister, on the other hand, said she felt sexism quite badly at university (not the same one). But she has a different character to me and likes to be taken care of.

The first time I encountered out-and-out sexism, as in someone was sexist to my face, was when I left my single-sex school, where no-one had ever commented on my academic ability or potential in relation to my sex, and only the highest results in all subjects were expected of me, and entered university, where I was confronted by a) sexist dons; and b) sexist fellow students.

So, from my personal experience, single-sex education protected me during some formative years from any overt sexism either from fellow pupils or teaching staff.

No, obviously girls and boys shouldn't be taught differently. That's just something that people made up in order to justify the fact that girls consistently get better grades IMO

Trillian, I have to say you are being incredibly naive about the roots of men's behaviour. It's not the mothers who are to blame , it's the patriarchal society where the sexualisation, dehumanization and murder of women is displayed constantly on TV as entertainment, and the violent rape of women in porn is FUN for men .. so they can orgasm.. and then politicians act all suprised when, after all that training, adult men decide it's FUN in real life too and they'd like to try it out...

The rape culture and porn culture turns men into monsters, not whether or not their mothers were Sufficiently Feminist or not

I know the patriarchy is heavily invested in blaming women (well let's be honest, mothers ) for men's behaviour but we as feminists can't take our cue from them! Eliminate porn, eliminate the sexiness of female murder on our screens first and then look at how the child is being raised at home