Single Gender Schools are Bad for Students

Do you truly think single-gender education is helpful for students? Single-gender education is the practice of having a classroom or school full of one gender. It has been a conversational topic spreading around about whether or not it is good for students. Single gender schools are not good for students because it denies students the right of learning how to be properly social with the opposite gender, takes away experiences, and neither of the genders will be able to learn personal skills or traits that the other does.

When students grow up, they are going to have to socialize and work with the opposite gender. How will that work out though if the students spent eighteen years not having to work alongside or talk to that gender? Students will have to face reality sooner or later and will have to work side by side with their opposite gender (Stanberry). What is worse is that students will not have any early practice of conversing with the other gender and that’ll make things harder then they have to be (Single-Sex Schools: The Pros And Cons). Diane Halpern, past president of the American Psychological Association, was being interviewed by Elle Hunt, a writer for The Guardian. In the interview, Diane pointed out that kids will work side to side with each other and will have to learn how to embrace the idea of the opposite gender out doing them (Hunt). It will be hard to grasp the idea of a group of people that you haven’t socialized with for most of your life to outdo you. It could cause issues between the sexes and conflicts between others around the issue.

If you think about it, most experiences come from being in school. Your first kiss most likely happened because you met the person at school and your first real bond could have been with someone of the opposite gender. All of that could be taken away or pushed off if you go to a single-sex school. As mentioned before, students may not have the chance to meet their future best friend because of their gender meaning that they’d be missing a huge part of their life (Single-Sex Schools: The Pros And Cons). Psychologist and educationalists have recognized that girls who are enrolled in an all-girls school have more of a negative attitude towards school (Harris). We all know that having a bad attitude towards something never is a good experience. Students will be working with or for the opposite gender when they get older and not having any practice of interacting with the other sex will make forming any bond or relationship with the person harder (The Guardian).

We all have that one skill or trait that we developed because of someone else. Without the sexes being able to interact, how will any of the students learn masculine or feminine traits and skills that could become handy in the future? Valerie Strauss, an author for The Washington Post, mentioned how boys who hang out tend to become more hostile who hang out together will have an increased amount of feminine (Strauss). Increased aggression is unhealthy for boys and their loved ones and girls being too feminine might cause people to take advantage of them. Notice that when girls and boys are together in a room for around eight hours for five days, they start to rub off on each other. Both genders will exchange ideas, thoughts, feelings, skills, traits, and more. That would be a great thing but only for kids in mixed gender schools (Strauss). Since students won’t be able to give out other traits and skills, that makes it harder to have a significant amount of skills. Children who attend single-gender schools and have the same sex peers have been proven to have more of a narrow set of skills (Strauss). Kids won’t be able to be more advanced or unique if they don’t have as many traits.

I understand that the other side may favor single-gender schools because there are less behavioral issues. Lisa Roose is a teacher of a single gender classroom. She has mentioned how her class has minimum behavior problems because they aren’t focused on one another but are instead focused on their work. That is great but why do students enrolled in single-gender schools show signs of sexism? Being sexist is a very big behavioral problem. Lynn S. Liben, Professor of Psychology, Human Development and Family Studies, claimed to notice kids in single-gender schools to radiate major signs of sexism (Saunder).

Single-sex education may not be beneficial to every student and could possibly ruin their future. Students that attend a single gender school will most likely be awkward around the opposite gender, have chances and opportunities snatched away, and won’t have as many of the same skills and traits as the opposite gender does. Schools that allow only one gender are harmful to most kids and their future.

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