Boys need girls

Single Sex schools are hindering learning

Boys+need+girls

Every year teachers warn us that the next year will be more challenging, difficult or not like what we’re used to. We grow up being prepared for the next chapter of our lives. Not only do schools teach us how to solve for x, analyze for the tone, and what the nucleus of an atom is, but it teaches us how to interact with all sorts of people. School is the breeding ground of our social behaviors. When you put a bunch of kids from different backgrounds in a  white-walled windowless room they learn to share, to interact, and to be patient. Starting off in Kindergarten the kids all around become their learning tools, so what happens when girls spend seven hours a day with just other girls or boys don’t interact with anyone other than their own gender? Single-sex schools are just limiting the student to beneficial interactions. Unlike analyzing the text in Shakespeare, being able to communicate with members of the opposite sex will help you live a life outside of school.

Normally when somebody says, single-sex school the first thing you would think of is a private religious institute, but times are changing. St. Louis just opened up the first public tuition-free all girls school, Hawthorn Leadership School For Girls.  This school will bring in girls from 15 different zipcodes all around St. Louis into a rigorous academic program that prepares them for college. Hawthorn School starts at sixth grade through senior year. The 2015-2016 enrollment is now open and is on a first come-first-serve bases; with only 80 girls per grade the spots are tight. This school will be a revolution for our city because it will pressure the girls to work hard like a private school but is a free inner city school. Though the girls will be hopefully raise our city school standards, for their own benefits they still would be better off learning in an environment with males.

In this society that we live in many people believe that girls are being treated unfair, that boys have better privileges, so if we separate males and females and teach them differently how will that be equal?  For instance, girls still tend not to opt for technical courses, and boys tend to not to take family and consumer science classes, and that is even when school is co-ed.

Experts say that the reason single sex schools is beneficial for students is because the genders learn much differently than each other which yes is true, but also I learn differently than other girls and the learning differences between the same genders can be so diverse so how is that fair? For example, boys tend to learn with more hands-on activities, exploring and being active, while girls learn more calmly, and can sit for a longer time. When teachers teach girls or boys to their stereotype activities it causes them to grow up not knowing what other options they have.

One well-known all-boys school Christian Brothers College, is a prime example of using generalized stereotype. Their course book doesn’t offer any practical family consumer science classes, no Child Development or Cooking. Instead, they have Business and Computer Science. This is just one example of a single sex school that is limiting their students learning abilities. I have never heard of an all male workplace, even in the military two women just graduated from Army Ranger school, so if there was such a workforce that didn’t allow women there would be an uproar of feminism . Why, why, why do parents send their kids to a single-sex school? Once you walk across that stage and get your diploma, get sent off to college or even worse WORK what will you do now? *Gasp* There is a male sitting next to me, I need to communicate with somebody who is not a woman? I haven’t learned to work with other fellow human beings who don’t share the same chromosome as me. Obviously, it won’t be this dramatic but girls and boys should be working and learning together.