to be nervous about a Single Sex school

[fruitstick]

DS has opportunity to choose between two great schools.

One is large co-ed and the other is a smaller boys' school.

The boys' school has a better reputation but instinctively I think DS would prefer mixed.

I went to a single sex school and loved it so I'm very confused.

I'm not sure whether my feminist principles are getting in the way.

He says he wants the mixed school too but I'm conscious they change an awful lot between year 6 and year 13!

I've heard some pretty dreadful story's about the things the girls from a local extremely high achieving girls school get upto at parties so it's certainly not sheltered from them

Yeah the thing is (was) with the all girls school I went to was that once we DID get around boys, we didn't know how to be "normal" around them and it was all about sex, that was the only way most of us knew how to relate to boys. and the teen pregnancy rate at my single sex school was higher than at any of the co-eds.

I was in awe of my co-ed going girlfriends who had the confidence to hang out with boys in normal jumpers and jeans (not all covered in slap and high heels like us if we were going anywhere where there'ld be boys) and how they could just be normal/friends around them while all we know how to do was kinda pout and pose and giggle!

I find single sex schools a strange concept, there is a continuous plight within society for men and women to be given the same equal rights and yet there is still a feeling that it can be more beneficial for them to be educated separately as children. I would find it difficult to explain to my DS why I wanted him to go to a single sex school without it sounding in some way detrimental to the opposite sex.

I feel with my girls (who will probably have to go single sex due to lack of choice if you're not catholic round here ) I will have to work really hard to give them opportunities to develop platonic relationships with boys: scouting etc, because if they just see boys socially and not in any context where they're working together then I worry it'll be like my school where we didn't really build platonic relationships with boys, we just socialised with them in a flirty/sexual way, and into adult hood I struggle with platonic relationships with men.

I find myself keeping male aquantances at a friendly arms length because I feel like any closeness will = flirty/sexual.

So I have no close male friends, I do blame that on single sex schooling. I don't really know how to get on with men if not in a flirty way so I tend to probably be a bit offish so as not to "give the wrong impression".

Which is a shame because I do know some really lovely men, who would be great friend material.

Single sex schools are weird in our day an age. Its not Saudi Arabia

Single sex! Less distractions! And he will still meet girls and interact with them.

I would have hated the local all-boys school if I had gone there- used the excuse that I did not like rugby or Saturday morning school to persuade my parents not to apply for a place there. However, for girls a single sex school seems to offer advantages. You cannot have mixed for boys and single sex for girls though.