For the sake of fully understanding my point, I’m going to ask you to place yourself into a scenario.

Imagine    you    are    about 9-years-old, sitting in a third grade classroom. The teacher is  asking  various  questions regarding    your    multiplication tables. The teacher calls on you and you feel perfectly comfortable    answering    the question, even in front of 20 or so peers. Do you have the image  in  your  head?  Now go back in and change all of your peers to whatever gender you associate as. In many schools throughout the world, this is a reality. If you are unfamiliar  with  single-gender education, this may come as a shock to you. I, on the other hand, am quite familiar with this  way  of  educating  students. When I was in eighth grade, I made the decision to attend an all-girl high school. If you are like most people I encounter, you will probably be wondering why on Earth anyone would ever want to subject themselves to that sort of  torture?  Well,  after  four years  of  academics,  social events  and  extracurriculars, I am luckily able to confirm that single-gender education is not torture; it is beneficial in every way.

Rather than the drama that everyone    told    me    would come with an all-girl school, I experienced a feeling of sisterhood     and     togetherness. With no boys to argue about, we focused on helping each other succeed and becoming friends  with  everyone.  My high school was the definition of “Empowered women em– power women.”

My experience is not a unique one. Studies show that single- gender education helps educators  target  specific  learn– ing styles,  address  learning gaps early on and enable students to be more active and confident participants in the classroom. It is a known fact that boys and girls learn in different ways, so why have we been educating them exactly  the  same  for  such  a long  time?  Girls  oftentimes learn more effectively when they  are  given  assignments that require cooperation and collaboration,  whereas  boys tend to learn more effectively when given tasks that enable them to compete  with their peers. Another benefit of single-gender education is that in  all  organizations,  teams and leadership roles, the students are one gender. I often found it empowering to see that our student body president, star athletes, musicians, math team and fan  section were all comprised of females. Likewise,  at  the  all-boy  high school nearby, the performers, artists, athletes, broadcasters and leaders were all males.

In either situation, stereotypical gender roles were shattered. If no boys sang in the choir, there would be no choir. If girls did not step into the leadership roles, there would be no leaders. The benefits are clearly visible when you take a look at SAT scores and college acceptance rates in terms of all-girl high schools and co- ed schools; the girls at all-girl high schools score around 30 points better and almost 100 percent of them go on to college. It’s really simple to see that  students  thrive  when placed in a single-gender environment. The future looks bright for single-gender education and for the success of students everywhere.