Modern-day education is primarily co-educational, but many single-sex educational institutions exist, and single-sex education is undergoing a rebirth of popularity.
Coeducation in History
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.
Coeducation Within Primary and Secondary Schools
In many countries, schools were historically for boys only. Where girls were allowed to attend school, they rarely continued past primary schools. In western Europe, coeducation was first introduced at the urging of Protestantgroups who wanted both girls and boys to be able to read the Bible. The Quakers helped to promote coeducation in the British colonies.Scandinavian countries were some of the first to embrace coeducation; Danish schools were coeducational in the eighteenth century, and Norwegian schools became coeducational by law in 1896. Other countries were slower to embrace coeducation; Germany did not provide hardly any secondary schooling for girls until the end of the nineteenth century. When separate girls' secondary schools were introduced, they were vastly inferior to boys' schools.[2]
Coeducation is less prevalent in the Middle East, where religious and cultural values restrict the interaction of males and females. While some primary schools are coeducational, most are separated by gender. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, most primary and all secondary schools are not coeducational
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