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Single Sex Schools : An Old Time Idea

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Jordan Jackson
04/18/17
Are Single-Sex Schools really the way to go?
ENGL- 10300
Single Sex Schools

VS.
Coed

The issue that is being discussed is whether or not it is more beneficial for high school students to go to single-sex schools or coed schools.
In her essay “ Single-Sex Schools: An Old Time Idea Whose Time Has Come,” Diane Urbina Argues that it would be more beneficial if we had single-sex schools. The myth is debunked is that boys and girls are restricted by nature in relation to what they can learn and how fast. Rather, their brain development is restricted, and so they can only learn so much in a certain time period. Boys learn literacy skills more slowly. Girls have trouble with math. Therefore, boys and girls who attend …show more content…

Later in her same article she shows evidence of why girls do better in single-sex schools. Weil explains, “ The girl 's’ crisis was cited in the 1990s, when the American Association of University Women published ‘Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America,’ which described how girls’ self-esteem plummets during puberty and how girls are subtly discouraged from careers in math and science.” Weil implies that girls would be better off in singleisex schools where their self-esteem is not in danger.
While there are reasons for same-sex schools, there are many more disadvantages. Donald MacLeod states , “Recent research by Professor Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, concluded that although results at single-sex schools were better than average, this was because they were mostly grammar schools and had better-off pupils.” He is implying that they were successful because the students were smart to begin with. In another article MacLeod states, “Flying in the face of a huge amount of parental gut instinct he[Professor Alan Smithers] concludes that 50 years of research ‘has not shown any dramatic or consistent advantages for single-sex education’ for boys or girls.” As he continues on MacLeod basically discusses how there are no true advantages to having single-sex schools. In another article by Philip Beadle in The Guardian, this researcher argues, “My own

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