Back to the Future
The case for gender segregation in schools

BY ANDREW NIKIFORUK
FROM OWL CANADIAN FAMILY

The transformation of Montreal’s James Lyng High School is a saga about sex. Or to be more accurate, desexing.

Six years ago, the school started to separate the sexes for some Grade 7 classes. While girls went off to study cultural trends in social studies, for example, boys explored the same material, but focused on conflict. At year’s end, teachers and students liked the improved test scores and social atmosphere so much that single-sex studies were introduced for grades 8 and 9.

Today, 95 percent of the school’s classes are gender segregated. “Most of the kids would never go back to the mixed type,” says Wayne Commeford, Lyng’s principal. The percentage of students passing final exams has jumped from 65 percent to 87 percent; and the proportion advancing to university preparation, from 17 percent to 30 percent. Discipline problems are down, and absenteeism has dropped from 20 percent to seven percent. “By segregating the sexes, we are going backward and making progress,” quips Commeford. Although the introduction of single-gender classrooms wasn’t the only factor, he credits it as a major catalyst in the school’s turnaround.

Lyng’s success should come as no surprise. By the 1960s, the coeducational movement was firmly entrenched in Canada even though there was little research to support its superiority to gender-segregated schooling. But recent studies on the effectiveness of separating the genders for schooling have prompted a few critics to question the status quo.

In 2000 the Australian Council for Educational Research published a six-year investigation comparing the academic performance of 270,000 Grade 12 students. It found that boys and girls taught in single-sex classrooms ranked 15 to 22 percentiles higher in academic performance on state tests than their coeducated peers. Furthermore, the students behaved better and enjoyed learning more.

Research indicates that segregated institutions promote freer thinking among students: Boys can explore their interests in drama, biology and languages without losing face with girls; girls can shine on the debating team and in math and science, areas often dominated by boys in coed schools.

Part of the success of single-sex education may be due to its accommodation of differences in how girls and boys learn. In recent years, studies in neuroscience, endocrinology and psychology have found that not all is equal in the classroom. Boys, studies note, have areas of the brain involved in language, spatial memory, motor co-ordination and in getting along with other people that develop in a different order, time and rate than in girls. Loud, mobile, in-your-face instruction can be highly effective with them, yet intimidating for girls. Boys need to move around the classroom more than girls do. Role-playing exercises work well for girls, while boys prefer objective and fact-based exercises.

“ Having single-gender classrooms without making corresponding changes in how you teach boys and girls doesn’t make sense,” notes Ron Wallace, headmaster of Calgary’s Clear Water Academy. As his classrooms go single-gender, boys have opportunities to solidify scientific theories with hands-on activities; girls get time to talk over experiments.

And boys, whose energy levels demand more variety and activity in their lessons, also get needed breaks to dissipate their restlessness. “Are ten-year-old boys who act out after three hours of seat work really attention-deficit-disordered or are they more the products of dysfunctional schooling?” Wallace asks.

Learning differences aside, single-sex education also offers a counterbalance to the hypersexualized culture in which kids are being raised. Suggestive messages from music, movies and TV can prematurely magnify a young person’s awareness of sexuality, especially in the coeducational context. The pressure on Grade 5 girls to dress like models or on Grade 5 boys to strut like rappers distracts from academic concentration, notes Dr. Lynn Bosetti, a University of Calgary education professor and mother of two.

At James Lyng, students agree that segregation puts a lid on sexual distraction and harassment. Notes one 14-year-old boy in a Globe and Mail article: “When it’s just boys in the class, you work all the time, your marks go up, and you stay focused.” Adds a girl, 16: “I don’t have to worry about what boys think, so I can think better.”

Two other Montreal schools are now experimenting with Commeford’s segregated-classroom model, and a Hamilton junior high is following suit. Increasingly, educators and parents are asking the question Wayne Commeford posed when he attended an August 2003 conference on single-sex learning: How can we acknowledge that males and females are so different, yet the moment they enter a classroom expect them to be so alike?

The annual ranking of Quebec high schools published by the newsmagazine “L’actualité” showed impressive improvement at James Lyng High School: From its 358th spot (out of more than 450) in 2002, the school moved up 156 slots to reach number 202 in 2003.

Would separating the sexes at school help students to learn?

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