Key Vocabulary List. co-education, standardized collegiate co-education

co-education, standardized collegiate co-education

types of schooling: single-sex schools/ segregated schools, mixed schools

religious schools

streaming

timetable, rigid timetable

socially divisive institution

equality

to scatter

core values

gender, gender issues, gender-fair instruction, gender-aware terms, to cater for both genders

to be flawed

to be sidelined by smb

counterparts

harassment, sexual harassment, to harass smb

career ambition

self-confidence

under-achievement

rigorous subjects

intake, to increase intake

academic results, academic ability, academic performance, academic competition

aptitude tests, to score higher in aptitude tests

domination, male-dominated teachers

to jump the queue

to gain access to smth

computer facilities

to the detriment of smth

implicit contradiction

sexism (the belief that men and women should be treated in a different way and are suited to different types of jobs and different positions in society)

inclination

formative years

to tend (to, towards)

aptitude tests

to gravitate towards their own sex

Text A

 

Co-education: A High Price to Pay

Research carried out in the Eighties indicated strongly that co-education was generally better for boys than for girls. The dangers of single-sex education for boys have often been stated, and there has long been an assumption that girls benefit from co-education in the same way. Recent research tells us that this assumption is wrong. Girls studying in co-educational schools can, it seems, pay a high price in diminished career ambition, poor self-confidence and under-achievement in subjects such as science and mathematics.

Girls’ schools are working hard to compete with the independent boys’ schools that are currently increasing their intake. Malborough, the pioneer, has increased its number of girls and begun admitting them at 13. The battle for girl pupils is growing fiercer all the time. Averil Burgess, head teacher of South Hampstead High School, believes parents need to consider the effect of mixed classroom learning on reinforcing gender “stereotypes”. She believes that in the halfway house type of co-education favoured by independent boys’ schools, men become “macho” and girls are forced to be inarticulate and passive. This is inevitable, she says, when the school is still run by the male-dominated senior teachers with little insight into gender education issues. She points to a study by professor Hoyle of London University showing how boys were allowed to jump the queue to gain access to limited computer facilities. As a result girl’s choice of career of computing suffers.

The recent introduction of co-education by Oxbridge colleges seems to have had the same harmful effect on girls’ academic performance as identified in schools. In 1958, 8,1 per cent of men and 7,9 of women won firsts. In 1973, the corresponding figures were 12 and 12,1 per cent. Since the mid-Eighties, when both men and women’s colleges have admitted members of the opposite sex, 16.1 per cent of men have gained firsts, but only 9,8 per cent of women. As Averil Burgess argues: “Maybe the girls fall too readily into the sock-washing and meal-providing mode for the benefit of male colleagues and to the detriment of their work. At least a single sex institution offers the freedom not to behave as a woman.”

No one is suggesting that boys should be restricted to single-sex education; co-education is here to stay. But boys’ schools with a minority of girls should take care to protect the latter from social domination by the boys. Parents should consider a single-sex school as a first option for their daughters, even if they choose co-education for their son. Maybe the implicit contradiction in that statement will only be resolved when girls’ schools admit boys on gender-aware terms.

Text B

Choose the School – not the Sex

The perennial debate over the relative merits of single-sex and co-education will not be stilled by yesterday’s report from a group of independent co-educational schools.

As it somewhat reluctantly admits, there is simply no hard evidence for or against the many prejudices surrounding the issue. What is needed is a comparative study over time of the fortunes of large numbers of pupils of similar ability in both types of school. No such study has been done. Instead the report offers earnest assurance that girls do not suffer academically from being taught in a co-educational environment. The approach – largely ignoring the position of boys in single-sex schools – is instructive. Girls, it makes clear, are the battleground.

One reason is the common, if statistically awkward, belief that girls do better in single-sex schools while boys are better off in co-educational ones.

Another is the fact that most independent co-educational schools are former boys’ schools that began admitting girls to keep up their numbers – and urgently need to keep on doing so for their survival.

That pressure, combined with the oft-repeated refrain that girls have a “civilizing” influence on boys (never the other way round), is enough to make many parents more than a little suspicious about co-educational schools’ interest in their daughters.

Add to that periodic reports suggesting that boys in mixed schools demand and receive disproportionate attention in class and that girls, particularly in maths and science lessons, are liable to be sidelined by the more aggressive sex, and parental worries multiply.

So seriously do some co-educational schools take such concerns that they even teach the sexes separately.

Against that, the report argues: “In single-sex and co-education a number of academic and social factors come into play, but there is no evidence that one type of schooling is more effective than the other in exam terms.”

In the absence, in truth, of any evidence one way or the other, one is forced to fall back on the admittedly bland formula of “horses for courses”.

A good school is a good school, whether single-sex or co-educational. The best school is that one that best suits a particular child’s academic ability, personality and inclinations.

Text C

The secondary school I went to was a direct grant grammar school. It was single sex, boys only, and it was a religious school: Roman Catholic.

The whole aim of the school seemed to be to prepare people for university entrance. So there were three streams in each year, but you got a very clear impression that the pupils who mattered for the staff were those in the top stream who were going to go on to university.

It’s interesting that there was actually no careers specialist on the staff. If you were going to leave at sixteen after your “O” levels then you left at sixteen, and people just – the staff just said goodbye and that was it. They were mainly interested as I say in those who were going on to university. In that sense they were successful, and had a very high rate of successful university applications, but I can’t say that I look back on my time there with any sense of love at all. It was a very strict school, very rigid timetable, very rigid teaching methods.

The fact that it was single sex I now see was a big disadvantage and the fact that it was a religious school in a sense was a disadvantage as well. I think it was actually a socially divisive institution in many ways.

It helped me get into university. I suppose I’m gratefulto it for that, but when it came to thinking about schools for my own children there were two basic criteria that my wife and I applied. One was that we would not send our children to single-sex schools and secondly we would not send them to religious schools. They both in fact attended state comprehensive schools, the nearest secondary school to where we live, and I think they had much more enjoyable times at school than I did. And my wife feels the same. She went to a similar school to mine, a Catholic religious school for girls.

As I say, it helped me get into university, but that is what it set out to do. It gave us no training for life, shall we say, no advice at all on careers, so we were left entirely to think of that for ourselves.