Abstract

Subject to Debate

In this article, the author discusses the current debatable issue of single-sex education and coeducation. Recently the case for single-sex education has mostly been made by feminists, who, rightly, note the many ways girls can get pushed to the margins of the coed classroom and who, more questionably, attribute the achievements of single-sex female grads to the single-sex factor. The publicly-funded Citadel military college's arguments included such anomalies as citations from Carol Gilligan and expert testimony from Harvard sociologist David Riesman, who argued that the absence of women allows the Citadel's students to express their "gentler side," and write very contemplative poetry of high aesthetic sensibility. Interestingly, researchers who compared coed and single-sex comprehensive schools in England, where single-sex education is commonplace, found no differences in outcome for girls.