Separating the Sexes

Could single sex education be the key to improve learning?

by: Athanasia Diamantis

The stereotypes that girls mature faster than boys, and tend to excel in language and verbal skills over their male counterparts, may not only prove to be true, but could also lead the way to better teaching practices.  

While the differences in the male and female brain make it difficult for the sexes to understand each other, they may also make it nearly impossible for both genders to learn the same material in the same way. Studies conducted in the United States and around the world suggest that separating boys and girls into single-sex classrooms, leads to greater learning and improved standardized test scores. Only during class are the sexes separated; the school is co-ed during breaks and lunch.

“In the last 10 years, there has been an avalanche of research showing that boys and girls do learn differently,” Leonard Sax, director of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, said. “That is a driving force behind the new interest in single-sex public schools.”

Sax’s recently released book, “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences,” combines research and strategies for parents and teachers to help children learn more effectively.

Sax first started his research and interest in sex differences about 10 years ago. He noticed that many of his 6- and 7-year-old male patients came to his office with letters from school, asking that he evaluate them for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Most of the letters asked if medication would be beneficial, he said. But after he evaluated the boys, he realized that in some cases, the problem wasn’t with the child, but with the school, which failed to recognize the differences in how boys and girls learn and develop.

Researchers at Manchester University investigated five diverse public schools and arranged for the students to be placed in either single-sex or coed classrooms. Single-sex education proved a tremendous advantage. Of the boys who participated, 68 percent passed a standardized test of language skills in the single-sex classroom compared to 33 percent of those in coed classrooms. For girls, 48 percent passed the test in a coed setting and 89 percent in single-sex classes.  But, it is still debated whether biological differences between males and females account for the differences in test scores.

The National Academy of Sciences issued a report in April 2001 outlining differences between sexes that go far beyond the genitals. For example, some parts of girls’ brains develop faster and remain more mature than boys’ brains throughout adolescence. Men do not catch up with women until they hit their 30s, according to research conducted by neuroscientists at Harvard University .

Harriet Hanlon and her associates at Virginia Tech conducted an experiment and found that while the areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys, the areas of the brain involved in targeting and spatial memory mature about four years earlier in boys.

According to a report released by The Australian Council for Educational Research, teenage boys and girls are “out-of-synch with each other because of differences in physiology and cognitive development.”

“One of the most consistent findings in education research is the different reading preferences of boys and girls,” Sax said. “Girls prefer short stories and novels; boys are more likely to choose factual accounts of real events or pictures of how things really work.”

Research has shown that differences in the male and female brain begin in the womb. Neuroscientists Reuwen Achiron and Anat Achiron recently compared brain tissue of young girls and boys and found differences evident to the naked eye.

Development in the brain is also different. For girls, the part of the brain that learns language skills develops before the part that learns geometry. But the opposite is true for boys. If teachers are not aware of that fact, his teaching methods can produce boys who do not write well and girls who have a hard time understanding math.

According Sax’s studies, for girls, emotion is processed in the same area of the brain that language is. That explains why a young girl can often express herself better than a young boy. For boys, the region where language skills develop is different than emotion, which is why boys have a harder time expressing themselves and the hardest question for many boys to answer is, “How do you feel?”

Girls’ also have more sensitive hearing than boys; it is seven times more acute, Sax said. This may be why many girls are soft spoken and often perceive a boy’s “normal” tone of voice as yelling.

Stress is also dealt with differently in males and females, according to Sax. Stress hinders a female from learning, whereas it enhances a male’s learning process.

Sax said single-sex education is just as beneficial in college as all the other grades. He said women who attend single-sex colleges perform better in math and computer science. Studies have also shown that women who attend all-female colleges are more likely to choose traditionally male disciplines—like the sciences—as their majors. They are also three times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics and 50 percent more likely to earn degrees in life sciences, physical sciences and mathematics than women who attend a coeducational institution.

“While they are still in their formative years, young women at women’s colleges spend those four years in an environment that fuels them with sufficient self-confidence to last for the rest of their lives,” James L. Fisher, former president of Towson State University, a coed school in Maryland, said. “In whatever they do, they are strong, self-sufficient, well-adjusted people.”

Attending a single-sex institution can have social implications as well.

“Boys and girls that attend co-educational high school and colleges don’t date a whole lot they just ‘hook up,’” Sax said. “But those who attend single-sex institutions do still date. The boy calls up the girl and they go out to dinner. Now it’s an open question which is better for social development—a culture of hooking up or a culture of dating—but I don’t think it’s self-evident that hooking up is going to give rise to a more mature individual.”

Still, Sax says, single-sex education has not been an easy sell. Many groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, National Parent-Teacher Association and National Education Association are against single-sex classes. They claim separating male and female students will ultimately promote stereotypes, lead to discrimination and unequal resources. Opponents consider it illegal in public schools, according to Title IX of the Education Amendments, the federal law barring sex-segregated education.

Before Title IX was passed in 1972, it was not uncommon for a qualified female professor in the U.S. to be denied tenure because of her gender, Sax said. Even girls’ sports teams were not deemed worthy of investment: the bulk of a high school or college’s athletic budget was put into the boys’ sports.

When the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act was signed, it gave parents and schools more flexibility, including the option of same-sex classes. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.) and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) were responsible for the Hutchinson Amendment that made single-sex education unambiguously legal and eligible for up to $450 million a year in federal funding.

Sax founded the National Association of Single Sex Education (NASSPE) in January 2002. The first conference that NASSPE held was in August 2003 in Washington, D.C. The organization recognized three principals who have led the most successful conversions of public schools to single-sex academics. The next conference is scheduled to take place in New Orleans, Oct. 8 to 10.