News
Time to re-think about single-sex schools?
Should the decades long single-sex schools put an end to this practice?
Many of us have studied in all girls/boys school. And we all remember the fear of walking up to the other gender or the fear of getting caught while talking to them. Single-sex education (teaching boys and girls in separate classrooms or schools) has been existing from a very long time. Even in co-ed schools, some amount of fears, which feel irrelevant now, kept us from talking to each other.
Vineetha Saikumar went to Balalok Matriculation, a co-ed school in Chennai which practiced strict segregation between boys and girls. Now at 21 years of age, she recounts how awkward she felt around boys because of the restrictive environment.
“I thought that if someone saw me talking to a boy, they would think I am an undisciplined child. I was so awkward around them.”
She wasn't sure if she could have male friends. “I was scared to bring home boys who were my friends from outside school,” she says, “But then I spoke to my parents about it and they said it was alright to have boys as friends.”
It was only after reassurance from her parents, Vineetha says, that she was able to interact with the opposite sex without guilt.
Single-sex schools have been restricting children to become gender sensitive. And this restriction has such a major impact in the later life of children that even after the school ends, the connectivity between the opposite sex becomes very hard to establish.
According to Baladevan Rangaraju, education policy expert and director of the India Institute in Delhi, segregation has been happening from times when educating girls was considered a taboo. When it finally came to be accepted, parents were worried about their daughters interacting with boys. “It was like choosing the lesser of the evils. They needed to have access to education, hence the separation was introduced,” he says.
But the question arises- now that girls’ education has become more mainstream, why do some educational institutes still practice this segregation?
“From a policy point of view, private schools are catering to the demand because some parents still prefer to send their kids to all-girls or all-boys schools. As for government schools (which still have segregation), I think it’s simply because it’s been there for a very long time and also because in some places, parents are still wary of their children mingling with the opposite sex,” explains Prashant Narang, senior manager of iJustice, a public interest law initiative by the Center for Civil Society.
“What about say, the transgenders? Between girls’ schools and boys’ schools, where does this child go? There should be equitable access with equitable opportunity in education,” Another question which is also a very sensitive topic, asks Gajendra.
Some of the parents fear that that their adolescent children will get into romantic relationships and hence, prefer to send them to all-boys or all-girls schools and colleges once they hit puberty. However, Rangaraju maintains that restricting them is futile as it does not control their physiological development.
“By restricting them from sitting next to the opposite sex, you cannot control their hormones. The only thing it restricts is wholesome development,” he says.
S. Indumati who works at the Resource Center at Azim Premji University, says “Due to their stunted interaction with the opposite sex, they may not know how to respond in a situation where they may be bullied or abused too,” she warns.
Image Courtesy: Google