The advantages of single-sex education for girls fall into three categories: 1) expanded educational opportunity, 2) custom-tailored learning and instruction; and 3) greater autonomy, especially in heterosexual relationships. Let's look at each of these categories.
Expanded educational opportunity
The single greatest benefit of girls-only education is the greater educational opportunity girls enjoy in the all-girls classroom. At every age, girls in girls-only classroom are more likely to explore "non-traditional" subjects such as computer science, math, physics, woodworking, etc. This finding is extraordinarily robust, having been replicated in every age group from kindergarten through college, and in every country where researchers have examined this question, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Jamaica, Iceland, and Kenya.
OK. Girls are more likely to explore non-traditional subjects in girls-only classrooms. What's the explanation for that finding?
Several explanations have been suggested. Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir is an Icelandic educator who introduced single-sex kindergarten to Iceland in 1989. She makes this common-sense observation: "Both sexes seek tasks they know. They select behavior they know and consider appropriate for their sex. In mixed [i.e. coed] schools, each sex monopolizes its sex-stereotyped tasks and behavior so the sex that really needs to practice new things never gets the opportunity. Thus, mixed-sex schools support and increase the old traditional roles." Ólafsdóttir has developed a technique in the girls section of her single-sex kindergarten which she calls "dare training", i.e. training girls to take risks. She puts mattresses on the floor, and "dares" the girls to jump from a table on to the mattress. She also encourages the girls to yell as loud as they can as they do their jump. (That's certainly one way to help girls "find their voice," à la Carol Gilligan.)
Source: Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir, "Kids are both girls and boys in Iceland," Women's Studies International Forum, volume 19, number 4, pages 357-369, 1996.
One explanation for the fact that girls at single-sex schools are more likely to explore non-traditional subjects, then, might be that the single-sex classroom encourages girls to be daring, to try things that they might otherwise not try. Another explanation is that girls in the girls-only setting have more freedom to explore non-traditional subjects. Imagine that you're an 8th-grade girl, trying to decide what courses to sign up for in 9th grade. You're choosing between an advanced Spanish class and a computer programming class. You visit both classes. The Spanish class is very familiar: basically the same thing you've been doing for that past several years. The computer programming class at the coed high school, you notice, has 18 boys and one girl. The boys are loudly boasting about how much they know and how proficient they are at computer programming. Which class will you choose?
Most teenagers, female and male alike, will choose something they know they're good at rather than risking embarrassment -- and a bad grade on their transcript -- in a subject with which they have little experience. And, few girls want to be the only girl in a class of 20 boys. It's just not a real comfortable situation. So, you sign up for Spanish class.
But, if you have the opportunity to sit in on an all-girls computer programming class, you might come away with a very different attitude. In such a class, you'd see other girls whose background is similar to yours, and who are doing very well in the class. Isn't it more likely that you'd be willing to give it a try?
This example leads to another explanation for the fact that girls at single-sex schools are more likely to explore non-traditional courses. Girls at single-sex schools have more diverse role models of their own sex. In an all-girls school, the most amazing "computer geek" is a girl, the student council president is a girl, the top scorer on the math exam is always a girl, the best athletes are all girls, etc. That experience tells younger girls, it's OK to excel in math, sports, and girls can be really smart with computers, too.
Jean and Geoffrey Underwood have published a series of scholarly papers over the past 12 years, demonstrating the extraordinary advantages of single-sex classrooms for girls. In one of their studies, published in 1997, the Underwoods gave 31 pairs of 8-year-olds a computer-based language task. Children were randomly assigned either to girl-girl, girl-boy, or boy-boy pairs. Each child within a pair was matched with the other for reading ability. The Underwoods found a dramatic difference in story recall, depending on the gender composition of the pair. Boys in boy-boy pairs performed least well, while girls assigned to girl-girl pairs obtained the highest scores. The most striking finding, however, was that girls in girl-boy pairs performed almost as badly as the boys did. Just putting a girl with a boy degraded her performance by roughly 50% on this computer-based task. This effect was highly significant (p < 0.001). You can learn more about the Underwoods' studies, and about other scholarly papers demonstrating the unique effectiveness of single-sex classrooms for girls, by reading this scholarly paper about teaching math and science to girls.
Inductive exercises are a variation on role-playing exercises. In an inductive exercise, you ask the girl to imagine herself in the role of a character in the story. For instance, if you're teaching War and Peace, you might ask your student, "How would you feel if you were 17 years old and engaged to be married, and then your sweetheart announces that he's going away for a year -- just because his father told him to?" (the situation Natasha faces after accepting Andrey's proposal). Girls like a challenge in this exercise, so don't hesitate to do cross-gender inductive exercises. For example, from Steinbeck's East of Eden, you might ask: "How would you feel if you were Cal, and you discovered that your mother wasn't dead, but had abandoned you as a child? Would you want to go see her?"
Some of the biggest difference in how girls and boys learn derives from the fact that girls mature so much faster than boys do. If you've read about the biologically-programmed differences in the BRAINS of girls and boys, then you already know that girls are way ahead of boys in terms of brain development. On an MRI scan, the brain of a 17-year-old boy looks like the brain of an 11-year-old girl. So, while the 17-year-old girl is ready to tackle Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, the 17-year-old boy still wants to read his World Wide Wrestling magazine. In single-sex schools, teachers are (or should be) free to choose materials that fit the interests of their students. In coed schools, the girls are often held back or held down to the abilities and interests of the boys.
Greater autonomy, especially in heterosexual relationships
Let's start with one of the most basic facts about single-sex education at the middle school and high school level: girls in single-sex schools are much less likely to experience unwanted pregnancies than are girls at coed schools. What's the explanation for that fact? The most common explanation put forward is that girls at single-sex schools are less likely to be involved in heterosexual relationships than are girls at coed schools. But is that a true statement?
Katherine Sanders and Neville Bruce recently tested the hypothesis that girls at single-sex schools have fewer heterosexual relationships than do girls at coed schools. To their surprise, they found no evidence to support this hypothesis. They acknowledged that they "had expected that single-sex schooling might inhibit incidence of romances, at least during the school years. But this view was supported by only two of eight possible comparisons and the trend in four of the comparisons was in the opposite direction" (i.e. students at single-sex schools were more likely to be involved in romantic relationships). "Thus, it would seem that students from single-sex schools are not noticeably thwarted by any lack of opportunity or experience in the single-sex school system from experiencing romantic episodes, either at school or later in their early university years."
Source: Neville Bruce and Katherine Sanders, "Incidence and duration of romantic attraction in students progressing from secondary to tertiary education," Journal of Biosocial Sciences, volume 33, pages 173-184, 2002.
All right. If girls at single-sex schools are involved in just as many heterosexual relationships as girls at coed schools, how come girls at single-sex schools are so much less likely to experience an unwanted pregnancy? Studies demonstrate that when 15- and 16-year-olds at coed schools form romantic relationships, they do so less on the basis of individual characteristics and more on the basis of where the teenager stands in the clique. The most popular boy in the group goes out with the most popular girl, the second most popular boy goes out with the second most popular girl, and on down the line, with the least popular boy paired with the least popular girl. Sexual relationships in this age group, far from involving intimate personal connection, instead appear to be more of an exercise in role-playing. Sources: Anthony Pellegrini, "Bullying, victimization, and sexual harassment during the transition to middle school," Educational Psychologist, volume 37, number 3, pages 151-163, 2002; also Bukowski, Sipploa, & Newcomb, "Variations in patterns of attraction to same-and other-sex peers during early adolescence," Developmental Psychology, volume 36, pages 147-154, 2000.
At a coed school, your boyfriend is part of your circle of friends, the people you hang out with. Your boyfriend is part of who you are. Your boyfriend's friends are likely to be your friends too. You all do stuff together, go places together. If your boyfriend dumps you, your whole social network is put at risk. So, if the other girls in your group are having sex with their boyfriends, it's hard for you to say no. Saying no to your boyfriend has the potential not only to jeopardize your relationship with your boyfriend, it jeopardizes your entire social standing at school.
It should come as no surprise, then, that teenage sex and unwanted teenage pregnancy are much more common at coed schools than at single-sex schools. The most obvious and undisputed advantage of single-sex education is the dramatically lower risk of getting pregnant in middle school or high school. To understand how important that single benefit is, you need to understand how common teenage pregnancy continues to be. Teenage pregnancy hasn't been in the news much in recent years, because the rate of teenage pregnancy is no longer rising. But the United States continues to have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and the highest rate of teenage births in the industrialized world. And, the percentage of young girls having intercourse is rising. What's really happened over the past 20 years is that more young girls are having sex, but a smaller percentage of young girls are having babies as a result. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the number of girls under 15 who have had intercourse increased from 11 percent to 19 percent between 1991 and 2000. In other words, almost one out of every five 14-year-old girls nationwide now has had intercourse. Nearly four in 10 young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20, and 80% of those pregnancies are unintended.
At a single-sex school, though, even if you do have a boyfriend, your social network at school is likely to be separate from your boyfriend's group of friends. So, it's easier to say no. You have more autonomy over your sexual decision-making. It's easier to contemplate life without the boyfriend.
Bottom line: girls at single-sex schools have just as many heterosexual relationships as girls at coed schools. But girls in single-sex schools are more in control, have more autonomy in those relationships, and -- as one result -- are much less likely to experience an unwanted pregnancy.
If you'd like to get a different perspective on the advantages of single-sex education for girls, you might want to read a thoughtful essay by Whitney Ransome and Meg Milne Moulton, executive directors of the National Coalition of Girls' Schools (NCGS). Or, you might want to check out the NCGS timeline, a brief history of girls-only education in the United States and abroad. The NCGS also provides a directory of their member schools, including over 100 girls' schools in the United States, plus links to like-minded organizations overseas.
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