Though I grew up in a single-sex school, I think a coed school is probably better for my children, at least just to keep up with times.
Recently I read about an idea that might change my mind. By putting boys and girls together, it affects the learning process because they learn differently.
Girls learn with a “me too” mentality. When a girl answers a question, other girls will try to join in the discussion, doesn’t matter whether they know the answers or not. It’s a community process.
Boys learn with a “I’m better than you” mentality. When a boy answers a question, he establishes a sort of status by his mental aptitude. If a boy knows the answer, he would brag and compete. However if a boy doesn’t know the answer, he will withdraw and stay quiet. It’s a competition.
This is not trivial for the learning process. It’s pretty established that girls and boys grasp different concepts at different speeds. By putting them together, a boy who doesn’t know the topic will be unwilling to join in the discussion process because his ego is hurt while a girl who doesn’t know the topic will be dumbfounded by the looking down and bragging from the guys. As a result, boys speed ahead at the topics they’re generally good at while lacking behind at other topics. Vice versa.
In fact, this might even be the reason why some profession are so gender biased. In US, 25% of engineers are female. In Germany, it’s even worse at 10%.
All these need to be studied more carefully before it can be seen as common wisdom. Coed education has its many advantages that can’t be ignored. It’ll be interesting whether a way can be found to combine the best of both worlds.
Hi bro, you are ahead lar… haven’t married already thinking about children — which is at least… 7-9 years away? =) For us, we are on different spectrum — heavily influenced by the schools we go to. So, no conclusion yet — in SG, like MY, the single-sex schools are doing better — so, logically speaking, they will be preferred. Where to find the balance? Well, church / home / other social groups — so that they don’t grow up totally not knowing how to behave in front of the opposite sex … both you and sis are much better than me … bcos you had the chance to mingle with others in church … what say you?