Coeducation in History

Coeducation is the integrated education of males and females at the same school facilities. The term "Co-ed" is a shortened version of "co-educational," and is also sometimes used as an informal and increasingly archaic reference to a female college student, particularly in the United States. Before the 1960s, many private institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to a single sex. Indeed, most institutions of higher education, both public and private, restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history.
Modern-day education is primarily co-educational, but many single-sex educational institutions exist, and single-sex education is undergoing a rebirth of popularity.

World history shows a clear preference for the education of boys over girls; the education of girls, when it existed, was usually informal and at home. In most ancient societies, such as Greece, India, and Egypt, organized educational systems were for boys only. The education of women in general was rare; coeducation even more so.Sparta, a Greek city-state, was one of the few places in the ancient world with organized schooling for girls as well as boys. Although the two were separate, many historians believe that both schools were very similar in nature. Most education in Sparta was of a physical nature; the goal of a Spartan education was to create ideal soldiers and strong young women who would bear strong babies.[1]

Before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most schools were single-sex. In cases like one room schoolhouses in frontier America, coeducation was necessary from a practical standpoint; a single teacher was responsible for the education of all children in a given area, and separation by age or sex was impractical. In England, the first public boarding school to become coeducational was Bedales School founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and coeducational since 1898. TheScottish Dollar Academy claims to be the first coeducational boarding school in the UK (in 1818). In the 1960s, many Western countries shifted to coeducation. Not only was coeducation a less expensive way of schooling children, but it also supported the thrust towards gender equality. In 1972, U.S. schools made coeducation mandatory in public schools.

Institutions of higher education have also been historically for men only. In most countries, when women were given the option of a higher education, their only choice was to attend an all-female college.