The latest issue of Newsweek has a column by a reader who extols the virtues of her sixteen years of "all girls" education. The debate is very old and I don’t know if we will ever have the right answer. I myself went to a girls’ school and my children to integrated public schools. Although the social pressures we faced were different, I am not sure that the quality of education was related to the presence or absence of the opposite sex. I know from experience that there are many social pressures in an all-girls school which can be just as stressful as having an obnoxious (or very cute) boy sitting next to you. If stress is created by having to share a classroom with the opposite sex, can the same not be said about mixing of race, class, religion and other social and biological attributes? I would like to hear the opinions of readers- those who went to schools with a homogenous (sex,religion, ethnicity) student body and wished for a more diverse experience and vice-versa . And is being comfortable the only predictor of success in school?
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Accidental Blogger 
2 responses to “Sameness, Same As Success?”
Can anyone say that the social skills they developed in K-12 were useful or related to reality?
It doesn’t matter who is there as much as that it is hundreds of children who are the same age together for 6 or so hours a day. Small rooms with too many kids. It is insane.
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Agreed. There are several other factors – class size, quality of teachers and curriculum, discipline in the classroom and parental involvement which are far better predictors of how well a child will learn, than who is sitting at the next desk.
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