What's the point of an all-boys and all-girls school?

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This is the question my brother brought up when I asked him about our high school, an all-boys one, in its possibility of going co-ed. The reason why it might go co-ed is because a nearby all-girls high school just recently closed where the leadership is thinking of absorbing the school’s students.

My brother further states that a good school has good teachers and due to this the students go on to good schools, rendering single sex schools pointless. True to an extent - that good teaches (usually) produces good students and (usually) they go onto “good” schools, but that doesn’t render single sex environments at obsolete or having no point.

I don’t expect him to come with salient points, though. This is the same person who also said that Boy Scouts, which he was a member of, was pointless (before it went full-retard) and, as I pointed out the all-gender bathroom in my college department’s building said indignantly “Good. As it should be.”
 
There is no ‘point’ that will satisfy an average person. Usually schools like that tend to have a curriculum geared towards that sex. The way they learn differently, the level of discipline, stuff like that. Apparently girls are slightly more ahead in terms of cognitive ability and it is easy for boys to feel left behind. That or I was daydreaming during my lecture. 🙂

For the more ‘superficial’ reasons, they have much more freedom to do whatever. I was in a girls’ school for 11 years and it was awesome because we could openly talk about sex, periods and girl problems without a boy being triggered or anything. Girls in my school could take physics and hockey etc without ever coming across the stupid notion that ______ is for boys. I imagine it is the same for boys with subjects like literature, home economics or dance, etc.
 
Lea101 said:
There is no ‘point’ that will satisfy an average person. Usually schools like that tend to have a curriculum geared towards that sex. The way they learn differently, the level of discipline, stuff like that. Apparently girls are slightly more ahead in terms of cognitive ability and it is easy for boys to feel left behind. That or I was daydreaming during my lecture. 🙂

For the more ‘superficial’ reasons, they have much more freedom to do whatever. I was in a girls’ school for 11 years and it was awesome because we could openly talk about sex, periods and girl problems without a boy being triggered or anything. Girls in my school could take physics and hockey etc without ever coming across the stupid notion that ______ is for boys. I imagine it is the same for boys with subjects like literature, home economics or dance, etc.
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It also means fewer distractions. When I went to an all girls’ school, I didn’t focus on my appearance and impressing boys. The temptation just wasn’t there because they weren’t there.
 
AClaire11 said:
It also means fewer distractions. When I went to an all girls’ school, I didn’t focus on my appearance and impressing boys. The temptation just wasn’t there because they weren’t there.
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If memory serves correctly, this applies more to adolescent girls than to adolescent boys. In adolescence, females are more likely to be shy about speaking up around males and more likely to be distracted by the presence of males in the classroom. Males, apparently, distract each other as much as the girls do, and may even pay more attention in a mixed classroom than in one that is male-only.

In other words, all-girl schools seem by the evidence to be more beneficial to females than all-boy schools are to males. Even the advantage to females is not universal; some females do not have any problem with males in the classroom.
 
Midwest88 said:
This is the question my brother brought up when I asked him about our high school, an all-boys one, in its possibility of going co-ed. The reason why it might go co-ed is because a nearby all-girls high school just recently closed where the leadership is thinking of absorbing the school’s students.

My brother further states that a good school has good teachers and due to this the students go on to good schools, rendering single sex schools pointless. True to an extent - that good teaches (usually) produces good students and (usually) they go onto “good” schools, but that doesn’t render single sex environments at obsolete or having no point.

I don’t expect him to come with salient points, though. This is the same person who also said that Boy Scouts, which he was a member of, was pointless (before it went full-retard) and, as I pointed out the all-gender bathroom in my college department’s building said indignantly “Good. As it should be.”
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Like others have said, such environments can be beneficial in an academic sense because they minimize distractions that are common to co-ed schools.

However…such distractions are going to be present in college/the “real” world, and I believe that learning how to deal with them is a necessary part of growing up. Following along the same vein, I was homeschooled, so I didn’t go through the same “socialization” process as my peers who went to public/private school. It did minimize distractions, but it also stunted my social development somewhat, and I had to learn to socialize with others as a young adult, which was incredibly hard. Thank God I had brothers, or I would probably have been lost when it came to interacting with guys.

TL;DR - Interacting with the opposite sex can be a distraction, but it’s better to learn how to deal with it when you’re younger.
 
The learning environment free from distractions related to flirting and relationships would in itself be a point in favor of such schools.

But that argument won’t fly these days, in fact it won’t even get on the taxiway.

ICXC NIKA
 
  1. Less near occasions of sin, especially for older children.
  2. The ability to form close bonds and friendships with one’s own gender.
  3. The possibility of teaching specifically masculine / feminine qualities and virtues.
  4. Building on (3), the development of appropriate gender distinctions and differentiations.
  5. Modesty, especially when considering sports or gymnastic events.
All this was pretty much official Church teaching until the last Pius. After that, the Shrug of God (“oh, co-education? No problem. 🤷”) took over. 🙂
 
my children went to co-ed catholic high school. two of my brothers picked all-boys and/or all-girls catholic high schools

i am not sure it made all that difference in the outcome of their lives

it is a coin toss
 
I went to all girls schools. I would say the benefits were, no competition with boys in the sciences and maths. It makes an enormous difference academically, according to studies.

Boys are by nature, louder and brasher. So girls can become a little invisible in classes. Or outright shy to speak up. ( probs get a bit of dissent on that comment).

As far as sport goes, it takes the issue of physical competition away, and again modesty or shyness. I am in Australia. We learn to swim, we compete, it is so much more uncomplicated for teens if the pool is unisex.

I cant speak for the guys. But my local boys catholic school turns out great and notable public figures, great sportsmen.
 
AClaire11 said:
It also means fewer distractions. When I went to an all girls’ school, I didn’t focus on my appearance and impressing boys. The temptation just wasn’t there because they weren’t there.
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The girls I know who went to all girls schools were far more likely to try and impress boys outside of school. For example, going outside the school at lunch and rolling g up the waistband of their skirts to make them shorter and standing where the boys from the all boys school would see them. I went to a mixed school and we all just got along. No dressing up, because when you see boys every day they aren’t exotic.

That being said, it really depends on the group of kids in question.
 
(OP, you should never use the term “full retard.”)

All male schools and colleges have almost disappeared in the US because of attacks from modern feminism arguing that they discriminate against girls. All female schools and colleges do continue, in some cases, because of good evidence that girls do better in that environment.
 
RPRPsych said:
  1. Less near occasions of sin, especially for older children.
  2. The ability to form close bonds and friendships with one’s own gender.
  3. The possibility of teaching specifically masculine / feminine qualities and virtues.
  4. Building on (3), the development of appropriate gender distinctions and differentiations.
  5. Modesty, especially when considering sports or gymnastic events.
All this was pretty much official Church teaching until the last Pius. After that, the Shrug of God (“oh, co-education? No problem. 🤷”) took over. 🙂
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1 and 5 is good but the rest do not seem like good enough reasons imo. You can definitely have best friends with people of your own gender in mixed schools and for a lot of people, being with the opposite sex makes them likely to behave like a stereotypical version of their sex. Just my observation. We behaved like tomboys in school (the way we sat and talked for instance) because “we are all girls here”. When boys came over for school events, we were suddenly blushing damsels in distress 🙂 not to mention that single sex schools are an excellent environment to experiment sexually. So many friends of mine were ‘lesbians’ and they would do a lot of stuff in the bathrooms. They were suddenly straight after graduation, though. There are def pros and cons
 
AClaire11 said:
It also means fewer distractions. When I went to an all girls’ school, I didn’t focus on my appearance and impressing boys. The temptation just wasn’t there because they weren’t there.
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I guess that depends. If you were talking about within the school itself, we were not focused on looking pretty for the guys. Bc there are none. However vanity was still a thing. I do remember girls taking years to do their hair in the bathroom and me sneaking off to touch up my no makeup makeup :o

outside of the school we were kind of attention seekers, lol. Majority of us hardly get to interact with boys so we wore immodest clothes for attention and as someone who is in her first year of being in a mixed environment after 11 years of being surrounded by girls, it did take me a while to see guys as ‘friends’ instead of prospective boyfriends or perverts lol!
 
PaulfromIowa said:
(OP, you should never use the term “full retard.”)

All male schools and colleges have almost disappeared in the US because of attacks from modern feminism arguing that they discriminate against girls. All female schools and colleges do continue, in some cases, because of good evidence that girls do better in that environment.
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Funny. I heard the opposite: that girls do better in co end 🤷 it’s probably hard to determine because each school is different in other ways besides being single sex or co end.
 
I can’t answer the question, but I do remember that when I went to the secular University, some of the girls that had come from private Catholic girls’ schools tended to go a little “wild” their freshman year when it came to dating, boys, drinking. I had a roommate who went to a private Catholic girls’ school and quickly became a connoisseur of beer and cigarettes, and others in the dorm would tell us we better keep a watch on her because they had seen her at the local hangout drunk and dancing on a table! But that can happen to anyone from a more restrictive environment, I suppose, as I had another roommate, a Mennonite girl, (yes, Mennonites girls can go to college), who eschewed the prayer cap and had a grand old time in college. She didn’t last past her Freshman year, though. Went home and finished at a branch of the university.
 
My son went to an all boys high school and my niece went to an all girls high school, both Catholic. I think my niece gained a lot of confidence from her experience, as did my son, but who can say how they would have turned out if they had gone coed? I did attend a coed Catholic high school and I got very distracted by the opposite sex 😊. I dare say it changed the course of my life, but again, who can really say for better or worse?
 
I listened to a fascinating lecture from a teacher about this. I wish I could find it, because he used studies. However, I doubt what he had to say would gain much traction due to our cultural mindsets. The typical classroom environment we encounter today favors the way girls learn, but not boys.

This teacher applied what he learned from these studies to his own classrooms, with success. He had an admin who was willing to be flexible and let him try his ideas. Really simple stuff.

These studies showed that girls have a lower threshold for hearing. Also that boys have more of a certain kind of visual cell in their eyes that are more sensitive to motion than girls. (See, this would never fly with feminism.) There were a lot of other things, but these are what I remember. Temperature thresholds were different too.

He separated his class by sex. Girls in one, boys in another. All he did was change tactics. With the girls, he did the usual lecture we’re accustomed to. With boys, he talked louder, used more motion in his lecture (occasionally hitting a desk to emphasize a point, waving arms more, etc.), and he let them sit however they were most comfortable. Some boys sat normally, other boys fidgeted. Some stood, some paced. A few sat under their desks like a fort.

Long and short, test scores dramatically improved, for both boys and girls. Apparently these kinds of tactics have met with some success in schools that were struggling. But this is all based on the idea that there are actual physiological differences between boys and girls. So the takeaway is that there’s more to the picture than simple sex division. The teacher said that if it isn’t possible to separate the sexes, then put the boys up front and the girls in back.
 
If you look at school league tables in UK single sex schools always do better than mixed especially in all boys schools.
 
The teacher said that if it isn’t possible to separate the sexes, then put the boys up front and the girls in back.
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But even that would be a choking point for the postmodern feminist society, non?

Isn’t is strange how differences in perception, when they favor females, are recognized and welcomed (we all know that women have stronger noses, and that some can see four primary colors), but differences in perception unique to males must be ignored?

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
But even that would be a choking point for the postmodern feminist society, non?

Isn’t is strange how differences in perception, when they favor females, are recognized and welcomed (we all know that women have stronger noses, and that some can see four primary colors), but differences in perception unique to males must be ignored?

ICXC NIKA
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Right. A lot of these studies had implications for girls, too. In his experience, the classroom setting is, generally, already more amenable to the way girls learn, hence his talking points on boys.

I actually watched this in case I homeschool.
 
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