What is the feminist view on single sex education?

So if you're a girl and you rather like competition, and do better with exams than coursework, what do you do? Join a boys' school?

my 9yo dd was in a Maths competition/fast thinker competition yesterday. 8 teams from different schools making bridges to speed, and doing maths problems in between. Her team of 3 girls and a boy came top. She came home fizzing with excitement. She is by far the loudest and most confident child in her class, in fact she could do with a bit of quashing. She absolutely thrives on competition, she doesn't bother trying if there's noone to challenge her.

I seem to have forgotten to teach her that girls learn best with the more feminine approaches. The school also doesn't seem to have quashed its girls very effectively either.

redvelvet, I completely agree with what you wrote about the male gaze.
I went to a mixed school and. Any hair out of place on a girl (too fat, wears glasses, not fashionable enough, first to develop breasts etc) and boys would notice and bully. If you were a good-looking girl then you had a great time, if you weren't then school was hell unless you just kept yourself to yourself...

so I would say there's nothing wrong with a girl's school at all. BUt I would worry that society would pretend that a girl's school (and therefore education) was inferior

Having recently read the Gender Delusion I get very twitchy when people say 'boys learn better with X method and girls learn better with Y method'.

But even if it were true that most boys learned better with X and most girls learned better with Y, if we had only single sex-schools then we would be massively disadvantaging those who did not fit with the norm. Boys who learned better in the "girl" way and girls hwo learned better in the "boy" way would have no chance at all.

So I am still going to argue for mixed education, using a variety of teaching and learning styles, and recognising that individuals learn best in different ways.

I went to both mixed and girls' secondary schools and have no hesitation about going for single sex education for my son.

Main reason? Some research that was done by Leonard Sax in the US, showing how boys and girls respond differently to different methods of teaching. Specifically, boys need louder, more confrontational methods of getting them to take notice "MR SMITH WHAT IS THE SUM OF..." etc whereas girls are better with one-to-one softer approaches.
Also men and women (all ages) work best at radically different temperatures. Ever wondered why you feel cold if you walk into a room where just men are working? Or why your DHs moan about the heating being on when you're freezing? There's a 2-3C difference in preferred temperature, so a boy's school will probably have colder rooms. (Dr Sax mentions that if you educate boys at a girl's optimal temp, they can quite literally go to sleep)

I share an office with two men and we are always arguing about the temperature!

(Oh and girls most definitely can do physics! I'd decided that I was going to do it while at the mixed secondary, but I met a lot of hostility from the boys who were most peeved that a girl not only wanted to do it but was better than them! Girls' school was a relief - I could do what I wanted without hassle and went on to get degrees and a career in physics. The same goes for arts subjects in boys' schools.)

The 1/3 statistic doesn't ring true to me at all either, but I don't want to say "that number is wrong because I feel it is wrong". Where does it come from? And does "sexual assault" include having your bra strap pinged once? Because I bet that happens in girls schools too.

I'm actually more concerned about the wellbeing of boys, and of their learning to cooperate with and respect girls and women (despite being a feminist and having 3 daughters and no sons) than I am about the risk of sexual assault in schools. Perhaps because that 1/3 statistic doesn't bear any resemblence to my experience at school or the girls I know now at mixed schools - I'm not sure what that statistic includes, but most of the women and girls I know who've been through mixed schools are not in that 1/3 statistic.

My point is not that existing mixed schools are ideal, but that separating the sexes entirely is not going to benefit boys or girls in the long run.

(I still think that spending age 11-16 in an environment where there are people of both sexes and having friends of both sexes is good for boys and good for girls)

Turning boys into men who know how to treat women is beneficial for the wellbeing of everyone.

Thanks for that insight MrIC - that's what I thought, and we should remember that although our boys are clearly lovely because they are beign raised by feminists, the boys from these boys-only schools will shortly be the men that we all encounter in the real world.

One of the posters on page one (I've forgotten who, sorry) made an interesting point about her brother going to an all boys school, loving it but turning out a bit of a chauvinist. It's a point worth considering - an all girls school might be best for your daughters, but is it best for your sons?

I went to a small co-ed boarding school, but it had only recently started accepting girls - in fact my year group was the first one to have girls the whole way through. It was interesting comparing our behaviour with those of the boys in the older years:

• my year group was less predatory. While the boys in the years above went out with girls younger than them (sometimes much younger) and were quite predatory in their approach, in our year group and the years that followed us this was really rare and any boys that did were thoroughly mocked for doing so.

• we were less brutal. When I first arrived at the school aged 12 the boys in the older years were extremely physically violent towards us at the slightest provocation, and there were various "hazings" for new students. While I'm not suggesting we were in any way a bunch of angels, by the time we got to 6th form this kind of behaviour was far less common and the "hazings" had vanished.

• there was a lot less bragging about sexual conquests. Maybe it just because we didn't have as many, but the boys in my year group were far more discreet and respectful than those in the years above who hadn't grown up with girls in the class, who often bragged about girls they had "had" in highly disrespectful terms.

So what's my point? Well I guess I'm saying that boys can be told "treat girls as equals and respect them", but if they don't come into contact with girls on a regular basis it's hard for them to put this into practice.

wednesday I don't have any children so can't practise anything yet, but we are both still allowed opinions! :)

I knew some girls at mixed schools who got on better with boys, often because they were less stereotypically 'girly' themselves. They might not have been so happy at girls' schools.

Wednesday - why do you think you wouldn't have done the science A levels at a girls' school? Statistically girls are more likely to take those subjects at a single sex school, aren't they?

Best to choose the school that suits your child in the end. Some will breeze through life, some will need a bit more support in their environment.

I'm sure I'd have loved to go to an all girls school, the more traditional the better, but I doubt I'd have come out with my science A levels and the friends of both sexes and all walks of life which I gained from going to mixed comprehensives. I don't think segregation can be the way to equality - but then I don't have daughters so I can't practise what I preach.

You get nasty schools with bullying and peer pressure in single-sex and mixed varieties, the bullying and peerpressure may be of a slightly different flavour but that doesn't mean it's not there.

I agree with seeker, some (though by no means all) girls schools are dreadful for that. Friends of mine went to a performing arts/ballet biassed school .... apparently it was quite as bad as you'd imagine.

My dd goes to an all girls school - and there is still huge emphasis on appearance, I'm sorry to say. And therte anve been instances of bullying because someone doesn;t look "right". So even with no boys to impress, girls judge each other this way.

i haven't yet read all of this fascinating thread but will add my views:
i went to all girls grammar (all schools in 1960s in my town were single sex). We had loads to do with the boys' school and by the age of 14 all had boy 'mates' then boyfriends via brothers, school dances and youth clubs. At junior school we had a boys' playground and a girls' playground and sep entrances too! We were still mates with the boys in our classes. I have 3 sisters and no brothers but never ever felt like i didn't know how to deal with boys. My experience was broadly positive and I like the fact that in lessons there were no distractions at secondary level.

Now my two dds go to mixed schools and each have different experiences. The eldest is fine lots of friends of both sexes (but no more than me at that age tbh) BUT I hate the fact that she spends an hour getting ready in the morning, make up, hair straightners,and, imo, ridiculous choice of clothes (in 6th form) which are variously low cut, high hemmed etc. There are also lots of problems i hear about when x breaks u with y!

the youngest hates school, hates the fact that she can't be friends with any boy without being taunted that he is her 'boyfriend' , is really unhappy at not being a 'cool' and being laughed at for having the wrong length hair/fringe/skirt/wrong jumper. She is also very bright and gets taunted for this too. I feel very strongly that if there were no boys there these idiotically behave girls wouldn't be behaving like this.

I want to move her to a single sex school for which we will either have to move county (no single sex here) or pay for private education. I think she'd be best in a single sex school with a caring ethos and no far too early sexually charged competition. (she is 12)

Danger of false positives in MRI

This has some interesting points -www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/edt/eofb/subs/sub130.pdf

Differences in neural firing have been shown in live MRI scans when boys and girls are reading. These results from dyslexia research have been extrapolated into a whole series of assumptions that were neither the focus of, nor are they supported by, this research.

Why do people believe in that do you think? It seems so counter-intuitive to me.

Lots of people do seem to believe in male brains and female brains.

Even if the two exist (which having just read Delusions of Gender I am rather less convinced about), some girls will have "boy brains", some boys will have "girl brains" and so it's better for them to be in a classrom where things are being taught in more than one way.

If the two don't exist, but teachers think they do, then obviously there'll be an even bigger proportion of people who are not having theri individual learning style catered to.

Meant to put "IME on here" at the end there! Got distracted by children.