Single-gender education is more beneficial
March 22, 2019
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.