Single sex schooling: friend or foe?

I'm new to this business but, as far as I can see, blogging is usually about offering an informed opinion, well argued, to readers. On the topic of single-sex schooling, I have no informed opinions whatsoever – but I'd like to express some ideas and concerns in the hope that better informed people will be prompted to also share theirs!

Recent media discussions of boys' academic 'under-achievement' have led to renewed defences of boys' school. Boys are portrayed as victims of a feminised education system which tries to suppress their maleness: loud, physical, competitive, boisterous and reluctant to express their emotions verbally, boys should be allowed to be boys.

My problems with this reasoning are so numerous that I hardly know where to begin. What of the boys who don't fit this profile – the quiet ones; the ones who would rather read a book or play a musical instrument; the ones who don't mind talking or working cooperatively; the ones who are, heaven forbid, gay? Are these boys somehow defective? Do we want to turn out young men into the workforce, and into family and other relationships, telling them that blokes are competitive – read: individualistic – and not inclined to collaborate with or be concerned about others? (The principal of a boys' school recently argued both that boys are more competitive than girls, but should be schooled separately because they get demoralised when girls do better than them. Was he saying that boys like to compete only when they're assured of 'winning'?) And in a society in which young men may resort to violence, alcohol abuse and self-harm more readily than admitting to depression, is it smart to remind boys that talking and emotions are for chicks?

Celebrating immature, potentially self-harming stereotypical behaviour as essentially masculine does boys and men a great disservice. Imagine encouraging the equivalent stereotypical female behaviour. Let's not discriminate against girls by encouraging them to learn mature social conduct. The curriculum should allow them to giggle, form divisive social cliques, gossip about their less fashionably dressed peers and solve disputes by scratching one another's eyes out. It's only natural, after all.

Clearly, I've got some reservations about boys' schools. When it comes to girls' schools, however, I'm not so sure. My immediate reaction is one of unease: life isn't segregated by sex (most of the time, at least), so why should schools be? We've all got to get along with one another, and schools ought to promote the skills we need to do this. And yet, for many women, girls' schools seem to have provided an environment in which feminist ideas were promoted, and pupils were encouraged to take pride in their identities as young women. One friend of mine recalled her time at a girls' school as one of fierce academic competition and segregation between high achievers and others; but most women I've spoken to on the subject have had few negative comments about their girls' school experiences.

My own secondary school was a co-educational Catholic college in Invercargill. Even allowing for the Church's less than progressive teachings on issues affecting women, there was scant attention paid to offering girls positive role models or teaching empowering ideas. I can't hold the school entirely responsible for it, but I left school with few personal ambitions, and a vague idea that I would kill time at university until finding a husband. Yet there were also many positive aspects to my Catholic co-educational experience, and these contributed to my later feminist beliefs. Social justice was a strong theme of my secondary schooling: anti-poverty and anti-racist themes were often repeated, and girls and boys alike were called on and expected to show moral courage and concern for others.

In this educational environment, boys were unremarkable things which made noise but were more or less harmless. I didn't see why one would be sufficiently concerned about boys to try to avoid them through girls' only schooling. I imagined girls' schools as a sort of elite environment where young women with loud voices and irritatingly high levels of self-confidence blathered on about Kate Shepherd.

In the hindsight I've gained during several years and a chronic bout of feminism, I've come to see the point of women's-only forums. Women's political gains have been instigated by women's own consciousness raising and political activity. But it seems that the reasons girls might choose to be educated apart from boys differ from the reasons boys might wish to be schooled separately from girls.

Girls' and boys' schools have different relationships to the status quo. At its best, girls' schooling equips pupils with consciousness of gender inequality, and perhaps some of the skills and gumption to stand up to it. Boys' schooling, at its worst, seems to be a sort of Enid Blyton-style adventure where social change can be resisted just a little longer. Compromises with those demanding schools inclusive of girls, safe for queer pupils, and embracing of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds can be avoided.

Perhaps, irrespective of the benefits to girls of single sex schooling, the best thing girls can do for themselves and their male counterparts is to go to school alongside the boys. After all, women have a stake in the social learning boys experience during their schooling. As feminists, we surely must want boys to take humane attitudes into their adult lives as partners, co-workers, friends and dads.