Putting The Arguments On The Table

When teaching classes on education policy, I usually begin with a joke about people’s reaction to finding out that I got my Ph.D. in it.

If I had instead studied biology or history, I posit, I imagine that people would ask me questions about something that was in the news, maybe about an E. Coli outbreak or a statue they saw on vacation.

Instead, I tell my students, the most common response I get when I tell people I study education policy is not a question but rather a statement:

“Well then, let me tell you how we need to fix the education system.”

When people do ask questions, they tend to fall into some predictable patterns. People are curious about standardized testing and teacher salaries and often ask questions about the school calendar or how schools use technology.

Since moving to Ireland, where around 1/3^rd of students attend single-sex schools, one of the most popular is, “What do you think about single-sex education?”

To be honest, I don’t always know how to respond. In most cases, the question “What do you think about single-sex education?” is really asking “Do you support single-sex education?” People expect a yes or no answer. Yes, I think single-sex education is good, or no I think single-sex education is bad.

There are reasonable reasons to fall on either side of that debate. Academic research, ably summarized in this recent paper, points to outcomes that range from no difference between students educated in single-sex versus mixed gender schools to positive benefits for students in single sex-schools. There does not appear to be any evidence that single-sex education harms students who participate in it.

Single-sex schools can remove many of the distractions that confined spaces and teenage hormones combine to create. If we think that girls and boys develop at different rates and yet still enroll them in age-graded classrooms, separating them by sex could help each learn at their appropriate level. In his recent book, Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves goes deep on the academic struggles of boys today, and trying to create educational environments specifically so that they can catch up to their female peers is worth thinking about as well.

At the same time, we live in a co-ed world, and if school is going to prepare students for that world, it might make sense for them to have a co-ed education. As much as boys and girls can have a troublesome influence on each other, they can also have a salutary one. Interacting every day can help dispel stereotypes, give opportunities to learn from each other, and create space to model appropriate behavior and relationships.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question. Let’s look at it from another angle. What if, instead of being asked the question, “What do you think about single-sex education?” You were asked, “What do you think about tables?”

It’s kind of a ridiculous question, right? Tables are good for some things and not good for others. They are great for supporting plates and cups but are not good as a mode of transportation. There are well-built tables and poorly built tables. There are big tables for big families and small tables for small families. Rather than speaking globally about tables, you’d be much more likely to say whether or not you like this table or that table or whether or not a table works in a particular space or to accomplish a particular thing.

Perhaps the same is true of single-sex education. It is good for some people in some places and bad for other people in other places. It can be done well or done poorly. Perhaps there is no blanket answer because the types of single-sex schools that exist, the communities that they serve, and the quality of the program of education they have on offer vary widely.

It isn’t just single-sex education that falls victim to this rhetorical trap. Technology in education, personalization, classical learning, charter schools, religious education, homeschooling, microschooling, online schooling, the list can go on and on. In all of these cases, there are examples where these tools, pedagogical strategies, or school organizations work well and serve students. There are also examples where they do not. And yet, much debate requires one to fall on one side or the other. Do you support online schooling or do you not? It is a needless, forced, binary choice.

Ultimately, the answer to the question is that people should have the choice to send their child to a single-sex school (or a school with more or less technology or a classical or progressive pedagogical philosophy, et cetera et cetera et cetera) if they feel that is the best environment for them. Families should have single-sex and co-ed options available to them and should be free to weigh the pros and cons for themselves and for their own child. If there is demand for more single-sex schools, more should be built. If there is demand for more co-ed schools, more should be built. Each school should be judged on its own merits as to how well it meets the needs of its students.

Maybe this is an unsatisfying answer. Maybe it is more fun to take the position that single-sex education should be banned or mandatory for everyone. But the world just doesn’t work like that.