WASHINGTON: A long-held tradition in public education in the United States is being challenged by organizations and people who believe the education of boys and girls is best done separately.
Since the founding of public education in the United States, both sexes have mostly been taught in the same classroom. Of the estimated 93,000 public schools in the country, only a few dozen separate the students by gender.
Parents seeking separate education for their children have had to turn to expensive private schools.
That's about to change, according to some forecasts, in light of the US government's recent decision to support single sex public education.
While politicians from both parties and many policy makers favour the idea, women's organizations and some educators oppose it.
"This is an attack on women's rights," said Terry O'Neill of the National Organization for Women. "It'll end up with the boys getting a better and more expensive education than the girls."
Previously, public schools had to get a special permit to separate students on the basis of gender. The Bush administration decision signalled a clear change in direction in US education policy.
Co-education was a staple of public education in the US from the time of the one-room prairie school house because it was supposed to make possible a higher level of education for girls.
But gradually, scientists and politicians are arriving at the conclusion that separate classes for boys and girls could be better. Despite election year politics, the idea has received bipartisan support ranging from conservative Republicans to liberal Democrats such as New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Women's groups and civil rights organizations however are bitterly opposed. Not only do they worry it will come at the educational expense of girls, but O'Neill and others also fear that it will make it harder for men to accept women as equal partners in the workplace if they haven't had to compete with them in school.
The results of various studies, including much-watched studies in Britain and Australia, show that at least some boys and girls learn better when they are among their own gender.
"Girls often don't enjoy math or physics as much as they could, as some boys' macho behaviour tends to intimidate them," said Carolyn Callahan, education professor at the University of Virginia.
In some classes, girls who learn without boys around are often more self-confident. Boys can improve their academic performance since they "can focus on learning rather than on impressing the girls", Callahan said.
There's certainly a demand for separate sex schools: about half a million children attend private schools that separate the two, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE), located in Poolesville, Maryland.
"It's time our nation's public school children have the same options as their private school contemporaries," said Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a supporter of the idea.
Tom Carroll, chairman of a school and parent organization in Albany, New York, said after he became convinced of the concept, he spent the last year and a half working to create two of the country's few publicly financed schools that separate boys and girls. In the first 12 months the students test scores doubled in reading and tripled in math, he said.-dpa
