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Today, he observed, that is no longer the case and women are expected to have productive careers no less than men. As the old rational began to crumble in the 1960s, so did single sex schools. The only other argument for their existence had been that having boys and girls together in classes distracted them from their studies.
It was not until the 1980s, said Sax, that people began to understand that girls and boys develop differently. “They hear differently, they see differently, their sense of smell is different,” he said. “And they learn differently.” (Scientific studies on this were detailed in the first-two installments of Dr. Sax’s presentation in the Feb. 17 and March 3 issues of Today’s Catholic.)
These 1980s studies began to show as well that the math ability of girls in all-girl schools did not drop at puberty, refuting the old “estrogen poisons the brain” theory. Girls in single sex schools also did not “lose their voice.” “Girls in coed schools,” said Sax, “stop raising their hands; they stop interrupting in particular.”
Boys in boys’ schools, he noted, are twice as likely to take subjects like art, music, drama and foreign languages, as compared to boys in coed schools. Such schools make an effort to see that extracurricular activities in sports and the arts are not competing time-wise. “In a well-run boys’ school,” said Sax, “you don’t have to choose between being a jock or a geek.”
Likewise, girls in single sex schools are much more likely to be involved in competitive sports. (They are also much less likely to become pregnant than girls in coed schools.)
Sax told of a Catholic school in Canada that switched from coed to becoming a dual academy in 2002, with boys and girls taking separate classes in separate wings. This included band, where previously only boys had played the trumpet and only girls the flute. With the change, girls were asked to volunteer for the trumpet and some discovered they were far better on this instrument than they had been on the flute. It was the same for boys who began taking up flute, with one boy turning out to be an exceptional flutist of professional caliber.
“If the school had been coed,” said Sax, “he would never have played the flute.” He added, “School should be about more than grades and test scores. School should be about finding out who you are, what is your passion, what do you really want to do with your life.”
He noted one of the biggest changes in society over the past 50 years, and impacting education, is the transfer of authority from parent to child. “Fifty years ago,” said Sax, “if a mother and father said, ‘Son, this fall you’re going to Central Catholic,’ he was going. His consent was not required!” Today he sees parents as being uncertain and insecure about asserting authority. This also surfaces in the increase of obese children today, with Sax recalling a mother who brought in a child with a strange rash. It turned out to be the result of a B-12 deficiency, with the girl refusing to eat anything but pizza, pancakes and French fries and the mother going along with this.
Noting that single sex education broadens horizons for both boys and girls, Sax referred to a study in Belfast, Ireland, on girl students’ self-esteem. Belfast has a unique educational system with both single sex and coed public schools, to which students are randomly assigned if no parental preference is made.
Girls here were queried on their grades, school activities, how they perceived their looks, and parental affluence. For girls in coed schools, the only factor bestowing high self-esteem was whether or not they considered themselves “pretty,” because looks determine the pecking order in coed schools
While some may say that single sex schools don’t accurately prepare for the real world, Sax believes it is far more accurate than coed schooling, pointing out that in the real world it is not how you look, but who you are that counts, with the important criteria being such things as showing up for work on time, keeping promises and making the right decisions rather than how “cute” you are. “At a girls’ school, a girl can be overweight and with pimples and still be the most popular girl,” said Sax. “That’s never true at coed schools.”
He further noted that a large coed public high school that became a dual academy six years ago saw a dramatic drop in teen pregnancies, going from 20 to 25 a year down to zero to two per year. “It’s not because girls don’t see boys,” said Sax, who pointed out students in single sex schools are more likely to date than in coed schools, where the norm is now “hooking up.” What “hooking up” means, said Sax, is going out as a group, with the most popular girl expected to be physically intimate with the most popular boy.
“Who you’re intimate with depends on your rank order in popularity,” he said. “The next most popular girl is intimate with the next most popular boy.” There is an explicit understanding that no relationship is involved and that the following week you could “hook up” with somebody else. This “hooking up” phenomenon means that a girl feels more pressured to give in to a boy’s sexual advances, because she has to interact with him at school and as part of her group. A girl in a single sex school has more autonomy in her decision-making in this respect and is also more likely to be involved in a dating relationship, rather than a “hook up.”
Sax noted dating is much healthier because “in this country, the most common form of sexual activity among teenagers is now oral sex — the girl on her knees servicing the boy.” This is not good for either, he said, as it sends the message that sex is something girls provide for boys. He added that not only do girls in single sex schools make better grades and test scores, “they are 10 times less likely to get pregnant, and that is just as important.” They are also less likely to use drugs.
“Adolescent culture is going the wrong way,” said Sax, “and parents have to assert their authority to keep their daughters from following the herd. The best possible thing you can do to help your daughter is to get her into a girls’ school.”
Cultures that endure, he related, are those that have men, as a community, teaching boys what it means to be a man and a community of women teaching girls what it means to be a woman. Our society seems to have abandoned this, leaving boys with the impression, said Sax, that being “a real man means playing a video game with a hyper-feminine cartoon image with big breasts and long legs who does not talk back, or having big muscles, or driving a car 100 miles-per-hour on a city street, or getting drunk or making a girl pregnant.”
Girls today are similarly floundering as to the true meaning of being a woman. Girls’ diaries from the 1890s showed them making resolutions to be more charitable, patient and generous. The diaries of teen girls today show their resolutions revolving around looks, with there being a notable increase in eating disorders and addictive cutting behaviors.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Sax, “in the 1890s, many, many of their schools were single sex high schools.”
Today he sees a need to celebrate and recognize the differences between boys and girls, helping every child be who they were meant to be, “so that we can have more men who are kindergarten counselors or psychotherapists ... and more women who are neurosurgeons or engineers or whatever they’re meant to be, what their passion is.”
For the past 30 years, he noted, people have believed the best way to erase the gender gap was to pretend it did not exist and teach boys and girls together the same subjects in the same sequence. This is not working, he said, and a change is called for.
Boys need to be taught that becoming a man means “using your strength in the service of others,” said Sax, and girls need to learn that becoming a woman means “caring about the needs of others.” Single sex schools are geared to deliver this. “What I think we have learned and what all this research demonstrates,” he said, “is the way to get there, the way to get men who are nurturing and caring and women who are strong and assertive is, first of all, to help girls to become women and boys to become men.” |