Educationists and parents have diverse personal views when it comes to single sex schooling. This Buzzle article tries to list out the pros and cons of single gender schools to help you derive your own personal opinion about this education system.
I am sure that this article has been viewed by several young parents who are in the process of searching the best schools for their first child. Choosing an appropriate school might be a dilemma for some of you, but trust me, this problem is quite common all around the world. Parents generally choose co-ed schools or single gender schools based on the nature of their own schooling or their social upbringing. If you are looking for the pros and cons of single gender schools, then you have landed on just the perfect article.
Pros of Single Sex Schools
As a general observation, girls are seen to excel better in languages, arts and social sciences, while boys are more inclined towards mathematics and sciences. With a few exceptions, this observation is valid in majority of cases. This inclination to excellence in a particular field is on account of differences in brain development, ways of mental processing and responses to senses between the two sexes. Single gender schools can help children of a particular gender to excel in their key strong points.
It is observed that girl students from gender specific schools excel better in sports activities while boys excel in arts and dramatics if they learn in an environment without fear of ridicule from the opposite gender.
Single gender schools generally appoint teaching faculty of the same gender as that of students, viz. Girls schools usually have female teaching staff while boys schools usually have male teaching staff. This helps to enhance comfort level and increase interaction between students and teaching staff.
Single gender schools may help young students to look out for careers beyond the gender specific stereotypical professions. With exposure to different career options in a single gender education environment, students can freely choose their dream profession without any genetic bias.
There are certain soft skills and leadership skills that are generally associated with female students only. However, such skills can be equally developed by students of both genders in a single gender education system.
One really important advantage of single gender schools is that it allows the desired level of privacy and confidentiality that students crave for around the puberty stage of their lives.
It is easier for students to cope with pressures of studies, if classes are tailor-made to suit their gender.
Cons of Single Sex Schools
Drawing from the principles general child psychology, there is a general attraction between children of opposite sexes once they are at the onset of puberty. For girls, puberty generally starts by age 10 and ends by 17 while for boys, it starts by age 12 and ends by 18. Studies show that children enrolled in single gender schools, tend to become more aggressive towards the opposite sex as adults. Students from single gender schools tend to be ignorant about the opposite gender, and are said to be poor social performers.
Single gender schools negate the chances of flow of ideas and studying technique between both the genders. During higher education, students from single gender schools find it difficult to study in work groups designed to comprise both the genders. This is not on account of shyness but personal discomfort for free interaction with the opposite gender. In a way, single gender schools do not help the students to prepare for real life.
Such schools do not allow healthy academic competition between both the genders. Students may feel stressed with sudden academic competition from the opposite gender once they graduate from schools for higher education.
Single gender schools are capable of creating a gender disparity in minds of students from a young age.
As parents, you will need to understand your own preferences after you go through both the sides of this dilemma. I know, it will not be an easy choice as we tend to doubt our own decisions sometimes. If you do happen to enroll your child in single sex schools then all you need to do is ensure that you help your child in bridging the gap to help achieve what is lacking in his/her education system.
