I promised in a comment exchange on yesterday’s post to write about single-sex education, and here it is.
Until 11th grade, I attended mostly public, co-ed schools. I liked school, was a good student, and both because of my success in school and because I was one of the older students in the class, I was often viewed as a leader in my class.
But over the years, I began to notice trends that I didn’t like. I noticed that girls were often much more concerned with what they looked like (hair, make-up, clothes) than they were with their subjects in school. Many wouldn’t raise their hand and participate in class. At the same time, boys were louder, even if they weren’t as smart as the girls in class. Most of the kids who misbehaved and disrupted the class were boys. And it was impossible to ignore that a significant amount of the emotional energy of both boys and girls went into trying to appear favorable in front of the opposite sex. I had friends of both sexes, but often found friendships with boys to be less stressful.
In 11th grade, I opted to try boarding school for my last two years of high school. I was disgusted with the class sizes, budget cuts, and lousy faculty at my local public high school, and my parents were agreeable. I applied to a small co-ed prep school and a slightly larger all-girls prep. I got into both, but because I believed I should cultivate more friendships with other girls, I chose the girls’ school.
I was pleased with my choice. There were girls I had nothing in common with, just as there had been in public school. But in general, there was a greater feeling of comradery among my classmates (though I was given to understand that my class was kinder than average for the school). I loved that there were no boys at the school, so bad-hair days were a source of mirth rather than humiliation. Spirits ran high at the school, and pranks and fun were around every corner. The faculty was of a high caliber, and they were there entirely for us girls. I fell in with a group of girls who were also good students who called themselves the Geek Clique. We were not the prettiest, or the wealthiest, or the most socially elite, but we stuffed the top slots in the class ranks and had a wonderful time.
I had a similar experience in college, where I chose a large state university because it was cheap, and ended up pining for the more intimate, serious atmosphere of a women’s college. (I transferred to a women’s college in the middle of my sophomore year.) And I had similar experiences in Jewish learning and graduate school, starting in co-ed and ultimately choosing all-women’s settings.
Early in our marriage, the Cap’n brought home a book from the library entitled All Girls: Single-sex education and why it matters by Karen Stabiner. It was a fascinating read, and while I was already sold on all-girls’ education, the Cap’n lacked my first-hand experience and learned a good deal about the issue from the book. In the end, we both hoped our girls would have access to that education at some point in their lives.
I know most of the criticisms of all-girls’ education. It’s not the real world. What are boys supposed to do if the girls go off and learn at all-girls’ schools? Aren’t girls from all-girls’ schools at a grave disadvantage when it comes to functioning in the world of men?
First of all, school is about as far from the real world as anything can be, and it doesn’t matter whether boys are there or not. The purpose of school is not to recreate the read world; it’s to do something to prepare children for it. (Or, if you’re really cynical, to keep kids occupied while their parents are at work.) School isn’t like a job; there’s no pay (except grades), no practical skills taught that could help one make a living. In my view, it doesn’t really matter that it’s not the real world; the goal is to create the best environment possible for children to learn. By eliminating some of the factors that distract or interfere with learning (such as the pressures that accompany the presence of the opposite sex), one gives girls the best chance at succeeding in school.
Never fear; there are not nearly enough all-girls schools to siphon off a significant portion of the female population, denying the boys what many claim is the “civilizing factor” that girls provide in co-ed schools. There are enough parents and adults who remain convinced that co-ed school is more like the real world to keep all the girls from fleeing such schools.
And no, girls from all-girls’ schools are not at a disadvantage when functioning in the world of men. Having been nurtured in an environment which is created for them—for their style of communicating, for their needs, for their extra-curriculars, for their ways of learning—they emerge with confidence, strength, and assertiveness. They are accustomed to hearing female voices—voices which are often shouted down in the world of men. They are in a better position to scrutinize the world and if they find it lacking, see where it needs to be improved.
I believe that girls educated in all-girls’ or all-women’s institutions see the world differently. When I began graduate school in a large New England campus, I couldn’t help but notice that a large portion of the campus was dominated by a stadium. And this stadium, I knew from attending women’s colleges that didn’t have them, was two things to the college: a large money-maker for the institution, and a monument to men’s sports (i.e. testosterone). There were sports halls where women’s sports were held, but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. sociologist to notice that the sports most people (especially men) turn out for are played by men. I couldn’t help but think how primitive that is, how gladiator-like.
I have women friends who totally reject the value of girls’ education. If they had the option, they would probably send their girls to co-ed schools all their lives. (Religious education in Israel, however, rarely offers this as an option.) But I believe these women are unusual in their personalities. They are intellectual power-houses, outspoken, and blissfully unaware of some of the pressures girls feel when in school in co-ed environments. They are not typical, in my opinion.
I no more think of myself as putting my daughters at a disadvantage by giving them single-sex educations than I do by changing Bill’s diapers. It is true that in the real world there will be no one to wait on him hand and foot like I am now. But it doesn’t change the fact that he needs this kind of care and nurturing now to prepare him for the challenges of the real world, just as it will be nice when Banana gets to girls’ kindergarten next year and doesn’t answer the question, “How was your day?” with “Good—no one hitted me, no one kicked me, and no one pushed me off a chair.”
Whether we will make the decision to send Bill through an all-boys track, or keep him with girls as long as possible remains to be seen. I imagine it will depend on his personality, how he socializes with other children, and his own desires.
Shimshonit 
Very interesting and thought-provoking. Never having been a woman myself (and bz”h I’ll never be one either!), I’ll have to take your word for what the experience of girls in co-ed environments is.
On the other hand: even though I went to co-ed public schools up through high school, I only very very very infrequently had any friends of the opposite sex (off the top of my head, I can think of two in middle school and one in high school). Perhaps then, we can use me to approximate the product of a non-co-ed school. Now then, I’ve been told by many a person – including an erstwhile date of mine and a rabbi (a student of the illustrious Rabbi Berkovits actually) who says he’s saved countless marriages – that I am hopelessly ignorant of the opposite sex, and that this is no small handicap in any prospective romantic endeavors of mine. What say we to this?
Michael: I don’t think you’re so unusual. In my opinion, most men, no matter what their educational background, are pretty clueless about women. My own advice is to go on lots of dates, ask lots of questions, and listen to what the women have to say. That’s how you’ll learn. (Incidentally, the Reform rabbi who married my parents agreed to do so because he believes that any marriage between a man and a woman is a mixed marriage; this is why he wasn’t bothered by the fact that they belonged to different religions.)
That Reform rabbi’s logic is a great example of misusing terms, of taking a term from two different contexts, and relying on the fact that the same term is used, but ignoring that that the term means two different things in the two different places.
Similarly: Rav Kook explicitly says that Eretz Yisrael is an end unto itself, while Rav Hirsch explicitly says Eretz Yisrael is not an end unto itself. Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook eagerly latches onto this, and pontificates on the grandiose failings of German Orthodoxy.
But he misses that Rav Kook’s context was a polemic against cultural Zionism, speaking of Ahad ha-Am types who wanted a state as a utilitarian cultural beacon for world Diasporic Judaism to rally around (not unlike the Tower of Babel as interpreted by ibn Ezra); Rav Kook said that rather, Eretz Yisrael was its own end unto itself, with a vital and indispensable role in Judaism, and not merely some convenient utilitarian means to unify world Jewry, a means which conceivably a substitute for could be found.
By contrast, Rav Hirsch was speaking of Eretz Yisrael not being its own end, in that we aren’t fascist nationalistic idolaters who allocate the state its own sacrificial altar. In contrast to the builders of the Tower of Babel (as interpreted by Hirsch this time – not ibn Ezra – who basing himself on the midrash of the falling bricks, says the Tower was an example of facist state-worship in which the individual became a cog), we don’t deify the state. Thus, says Rav Hirsch, Eretz Yisrael for us is a means to the end of Judaism, and not its own end unto itself.
Rav Tzvi Yehuda wants to say that Rav Kook and Rav Hirsch disagree, but he can do so only because he latches onto their discussion of Eretz Yisrael being or not being an end, and ignores their greater context of what an “end” means. If Rav Kook and Rav Hirsch disagree, it either means Rav Hirsch was a cultural Zionist (i.e. Rav Kook’s polemical target) or Rav Kook was a Nazi sympathizer (i.e. Rav Hirsch’s polemical target), a rather ridiculous possibility!
While discussing Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook’s misinterpretation of Rav Hirsch, I might parenthetically note another, not relevant to our present context: Rav Hirsch speaks at length on the value of the Diaspora, how we can be a light to the nations even in galut. By contrast, Rav Kook speaks at length at how the galut is a punishment and a terrible blow to Judaism’s mission. Rav Tzvi Yehuda claims there is a contradiction. But Rav Hirsch himself, in the very same location that he speaks of the value of galut, notes that all the same, this value is only a post facto one, that really, ideal Judaism can be kept only in Israel! That is, Rav Hirsch is trying to salvage the galut, and find some good in it. But he speaks at length at how galut is naught but Galut ha-Shekhina, the tragic loss of G-d’s national vehicle for the representation of Judaism and Torah on a national scale. So Rav Hirsch and Rav Kook both agree that galut is a punishment. (What a hiddush!) Rav Kook’s target is rather Hermann Cohen, who held that galut was positive, emancipating us from dreadful parochial nationalism and bringing us to a higher and more Jewish universalism; Cohen would have been appalled that the state of Israel would exist even in the Messianic Era, for in his conception, the Messiah, if anything, would oppose the rise of a Jewish state and kingdom. This is Rav Kook’s target for criticism, not Rav Hirsch.
So this Reform rabbi term erred in confusing two different usages and meanings of “mixed marriage”. All the same, I found this anecdote hilarious, if also pathetic as well.
Actually, in yet another context, Rav Kook also says that the galut is positive! So not only does Rav Hirsch say the galut is a punishment, but Rav Kook says it has a blessing! Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook’s thesis is unsalveagable.
Rav Kook says: even though the galut was a punishment, it has a hidden post-facto blessing: in a world dominated by Roman bloody militaristic nationalism, at least the Jews could comfort themselves knowing that they were the victims and not the rulers.
By the way, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits says almost the exact same thing, in his Towards Historic Judaism, his Between Yesterday and Tomorrow and in his Crisis and Faith. But daringly, Berkovits goes even further than Kook.
Kook said that our lack of rulership was a hidden post-facto blessing, while Berkovits says this blessing was the very reason for our galut in the first place! Berkovits, writing in the middle of the Holocaust (Between Yesterday and Tomorrow especially), ardently argues against Hazal, saying that our sins were not responsible for the galut. He quotes a midrash that Caesaria and Jerusalem cannot stand at once, and he says that in a world with Rome, there can be no Jerusalem, and vice-versa. He says the Jews had two choices: to either Romanize, or to keep Judaism and abandon statehood.
Now, I completely disagree with Berkovits. I think the very purpose of Judaism was to create a righteous state in the midst of a bloody Roman world. But I sympathize with Berkovits; faced with the slaughter of his brethren, he could no longer accept the Hazalic notion that the galut is a punishment from G-d. Perhaps I can side with Hazal against Berkovits only because I was born after 1948, long after the Holocaust ceased to be an issue anymore.
(I think there is only one other place where I ever disagree with Berkovits, and that is when he discusses the source of antisemitism, which he wishes to de-Judaize and explain as just another example of general human racism and intolerance. Actually, there, I partially agree; the Jews are the canary in the coal mine, and as Rav Hirsch says, you can judge any society by how it treats its minorities. Jews just happened to be the minority almost everywhere in the world. But I would add that also, there is – contra Berkovits – a specifically Jewish element to antisemitism: we rejected Islam and Christianity, an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the Muslims and Christians. And as Rabbi Joseph Telushkin remarks, perhaps the Christians hated us, not for killing Jesus, but rather for creating him. As Hitler said, this peculiarly Jewish creation of the conscience must go, if paganism is to be resurrected. My mother loves to remark how the Germans were just pagans with a Christian veneer.)
I mostly agree with you on this issue even though I work in a co-ed state school (but then the sort of school you describe hardly exists in France).
A little late to the conversation, but I’ll put in my two cents anyway. I grew up going to co-ed school (private in elementary school since I was overseas, public for the rest) and I agree with many of your observations about the interaction of the sexes in public school. I was fortunate enough to be in the program for students who were high academic achievers, so I think we saw less of a fear on the part of girls in speaking up in class. I myself was quite shy, although I don’t know if that had much to do with the boys or just not being evaluated by others in general.
I went to a women’s college, although it was probably different from most women’s colleges in that it was part of a consortium of several schools (the rest of which were co-ed). The classes that our school’s students were required to take were all women, and I think that might have helped get me used to speaking up. Other classes on campus could have men from other schools cross-registered, but were majority female. I think being in an all-female environment helped me develop confidence in my own ideas that has carried over into “real world” settings that include men. I wonder whether if I had been in an all-female high school I would have broken out of my shell earlier. Still, I think there was value in having male friends, some of whom I am still close with.
Naamah: Thanks for your two cents. It’s interesting to hear from other women about their experiences in both environments. Actually I had male friends in both settings, so being in an all-girls or all-women’s environment didn’t always affect my social life adversely. (I dated WAY more when I was at a women’s college than I ever did at a large state university. Go figure.)