Recently, I read an article in Newsweek espousing single-sex education. The following week, the magazine published a slew of letters arguing for or against single-sex education. The original article itself and all the subsequent published letters all missed two major reasons it’s dumb to argue about whether schools should be single-sex or co-ed:
1. Arguments about whether students get distracted by the opposite sex don’t make any sense and are heteronormative. As a former teacher (of five years) who taught in both public and private schools, I can’t remember a single instance in which I noticed a student not paying attention in class because she or he was distracted by the attractiveness of the other gender. People tend to get embarrassed about that sort of leering being noticeable—young student or adult, in an educational setting or any other setting. People get distracted by their own friends, regardless of gender. They get distracted because they want to whisper to each other and write notes to each other. They get distracted because they’re bored.
More importantly, LGBT students feel marginalized enough as it is. We can’t even acknowledge that, in a single-sex environment, they might be subject to these same theoretical “distracting” longings for the objects of their affection? The argument about whether or not single-sex or co-ed environments distract people has no bearing on practical pedagogy. I’ve sat in far more faculty meetings than I would have liked to, and not once did we talk about a co-ed environment distracting students. We did talk about dress code, but I didn’t see any violations of that dress code actually distract a single student in class. Dressing inappropriately reeks of unprofessionalism and doesn’t suit any school environment—co-ed or single-sex.
2. Arguments about single-sex and co-ed schools tend to make the assumption that it’s either one or the other. Whatever happened to “To each her own”? Can’t we say that some people would better thrive at single-sex schools? Can’t we also say that other people would better thrive at co-ed schools? Arguing single-sex v. co-ed is about as dumb as arguing about whether people should have cats or dogs. Let some people have dogs. Let others have cats.