Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to the 19th century, mixed-sex education has since become standard in many cultures, particularly in western countries. Single-sex education remains prevalent in many Muslim countries. The relative merits of both systems have been the subject of debate.
The world's oldest co-educational school is thought to be Archbishop Tenison's Church of England High School, Croydon, established in 1714 in the United Kingdom, which admitted boys and girls from its opening onwards. [1] This has always been a day school only.
The world's oldest co-educational both day and boarding school is Dollar Academy, a junior and senior school for males and females from ages 5 to 18 in Scotland, United Kingdom. From its opening in 1818, the school admitted both boys and girls of the parish of Dollar and the surrounding area. The school continues in existence to the present day with around 1,250 pupils. [2]
The first co-educational college to be founded was Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Oberlin, Ohio. It opened on 3 December 1833, with 44 students, including 29 men and 15 women. Fully equal status for women did not arrive until 1837, and the first three women to graduate with bachelor's degrees did so in 1840. [3] By the late 20th century, many institutions of higher learning that had been exclusively for men or women had become coeducational.
In early civilizations, people were typically educated informally: primarily within the household. As time progressed, education became more structured and formal. Women often had very few rights when education started to become a more important aspect of civilization. Efforts of the ancient Greek and Chinese societies focused primarily on the education of males. In ancient Rome, the availability of education was gradually extended to women, but they were taught separately from men. The early Christians and medieval Europeans continued this trend, and single-sex schools for the privileged classes prevailed through the Reformation period. The early periods of this century included many religious schools and the first major public schools in the country had been established for males and females.
In the 16th century, at the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic church reinforced the establishment of free elementary schools for children of all classes. The concept of universal elementary education, regardless of sex, had been created. [4] After the Reformation, coeducation was introduced in Western Europe, when certain Protestant groups urged that boys and girls should be taught to read the Bible. The practice became very popular in northern England, Scotland, and colonial New England, where young children, both male and female, attended dame schools. In the late 18th century, girls gradually were admitted to town schools. The Society of Friends in England, as well as in the United States, pioneered coeducation as they did universal education, and in Quaker settlements in the British colonies, boys and girls commonly attended school together. The new free public elementary, or common schools, which after the American Revolution supplanted church institutions, were almost always coeducational, and by 1900 most public high schools were coeducational as well. [5] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coeducation grew much more widely accepted. In Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, the education of girls and boys in the same classes became an approved practice.
In Australia, there is a trend towards increased coeducational schooling with new coeducational schools opening, few new single-sex schools opening and existing single-sex schools combining or opening their doors to the opposite gender. [6]
The first mixed-sex institution of higher learning in China was the Nanjing Higher Normal Institute, which was renamed National Central University and Nanjing University. For millennia in China, public schools, especially public higher learning schools, were for men. Generally, only schools established by zōng zú (宗族, gens) were for both male and female students. Some schools, such as Li Zhi's school during the Ming dynasty and Yuan Mei's school during the Qing Dynasty, enrolled both male and female students. In the 1910s, women's universities were established, such as Ginling Women's University and Peking Girls' Higher Normal School, but there was no coeducation in higher learning schools.
Tao Xingzhi, the Chinese advocator of mixed-sex education, proposed The Audit Law for Women Students (規定女子旁聽法案, Guī Dìng Nǚ Zi Páng Tīng Fǎ Àn) at the meeting of Nanjing Higher Normal School held on December seventh, 1919. He also proposed that the university recruit female students. The idea was supported by the president Kuo Ping-Wen, academic director Liu Boming, and such famous professors as Lu Zhiwei and Yang Xingfo, but opposed by many famous men of the time. The meeting passed the law and decided to recruit women students next year. Nanjing Higher Normal School enrolled eight Chinese female students in 1920. In the same year Peking University also began to allow women students to audit classes. One of the most notable female students of that time was Chien-Shiung Wu.
In 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded. The Chinese government pursued a policy of moving towards co-education and nearly all schools and universities have become mixed-sex. [7] In recent years, some female or single-sex schools have again emerged for special vocational training needs, but equal rights for education still applies to all citizens.
Indigenous Muslim populations in China, the Hui and Salars, find coeducation to be controversial, owing to Islamic ideas on gender roles. On the other hand, the Muslim Uyghurs have not historically objected to coeducation. [8]
Admission to the Sorbonne was opened to girls in 1860. [9] The baccalauréat became gender-blind in 1924, giving equal chances to all girls in applying to any universities. Mixed-sex education became mandatory for primary schools in 1957 and for all universities in 1975. [10]
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St. Paul's Co-educational College was the first mixed-sex secondary school in Hong Kong. It was founded in 1915 as St. Paul's Girls' College. At the end of World War II, it was temporarily merged with St. Paul's College, which is a boys' school. When classes at the campus of St. Paul's College were resumed, it continued to be mixed and changed to its present name. Some other renowned mixed-sex secondary schools in town include Hong Kong Pui Ching Middle School, Queen Elizabeth School, and Tsuen Wan Government Secondary School. Most Hong Kong primary and secondary schools are mixed-sex, including government public schools, charter schools, and private schools.
Mongolia's first co-educational school, named Third School, opened in Ulaanbaatar on November 2, 1921. [11] Subsequent schools have been co-educational and there are no longer any single-sex schools in Mongolia.
Pakistan is one of the many Muslim countries where most schools and colleges are single-gender although some schools and colleges, and most universities are coeducational. In schools that offer O levels and A levels, co-education is quite prevalent. After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, most universities were coeducational but the proportion of women was less than 5%. After the Islamization policies in the early 1980s, the government established Women's colleges and Women's universities to promote education among women who were hesitant to study in mixed-sex environment. Today, however, most universities and a large number of schools in urban areas are co-educational.
In the United Kingdom the official term is mixed, [12] and today most schools are mixed. A number of Quaker co-educational boarding schools were established before the 19th century.
The world's oldest co-educational school is thought to be Archbishop Tenison's Church of England High School, Croydon, established in 1714 in the United Kingdom, which admitted 10 boys and 10 girls from its opening, and remained co-educational thereafter. [1] This is a day school only and still in existence.
The Scottish Dollar Academy was the first mixed-sex both day and boarding school in the UK. Founded in 1818, it is the oldest both boarding and day mixed-sex educational institution in the world still in existence. In England, the first non-Quaker mixed-sex public boarding school was Bedales School, founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and becoming mixed in 1898. Ruckleigh School in Solihull was founded by Cathleen Cartland in 1909 as a non-denominational co-educational preparatory school many decades before others followed. Many previously single-sex schools have begun to accept both sexes in the past few decades: for example, Clifton College began to accept girls in 1987. [13]
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The first higher-education institution in the United Kingdom to allow women and men to enter on equal terms, and hence be admitted to academic degrees, was the University of Bristol (then established as University College, Bristol) in 1876. [14]
Given their dual role as both boarding house and educational establishment, individual colleges at Oxford and Cambridge remained segregated for much longer. The first Oxford college to house both men and women was the graduate-only Nuffield College in 1937; the first five undergraduate colleges (Brasenose, Hertford, Jesus, St Catherine's, and Wadham) became mixed in 1974. The first mixed Cambridge college was the graduate-only Darwin from its foundation in 1964. Churchill, Clare, and King's Colleges were the first previously all-male colleges of the University of Cambridge to admit female undergraduates in 1972. Magdalene was the last all-male college to become mixed in 1988. [15]
The last women's college in Oxford, St Hilda's, became mixed as of Michaelmas term 2008. Two colleges remain single-sex (women-only) at Cambridge: Murray Edwards (New Hall) and Newnham.
The oldest extant mixed-sex institute of higher education in the United States is Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, which was established in 1833. Mixed-sex classes were admitted to the preparatory department at Oberlin in 1833 and the college department in 1837. [16] [17] The first four women to receive bachelor's degrees in the United States earned them at Oberlin in 1841. Later, in 1862, the first black woman to receive a bachelor's degree (Mary Jane Patterson) also earned it from Oberlin College. Beginning in 1844, Hillsdale College became the next college to admit mixed-sex classes to four-year degree programs. [18]
The University of Iowa became the first coeducational public or state university in the United States in 1855, [19] [20] and for much of the next century, public universities, and land grant universities in particular, would lead the way in mixed-sex higher education. There were also many private coeducational universities founded in the 19th century, especially west of the Mississippi River. East of the Mississippi, Wheaton College (Illinois) graduated its first female student in 1862. [21] Bates College in Maine was open to women from its founding in 1855, and graduated its first female student in 1869. [22] Cornell University [23] and the University of Michigan [24] each admitted their first female students in 1870.
Around the same time, single-sex women's colleges were also appearing. According to Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra: "women's colleges were founded during the mid- and late-19th century in response to a need for advanced education for women at a time when they were not admitted to most institutions of higher education." [25] Notable examples include the Seven Sisters colleges, of which Vassar College is now coeducational and Radcliffe College has merged with Harvard University. Other notable women's colleges that have become coeducational include Wheaton College in Massachusetts, Ohio Wesleyan Female College in Ohio, Skidmore College, Wells College, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York state, Pitzer College in California, Goucher College in Maryland and Connecticut College.
By 1900 the Briton Frederic Harrison said after visiting the United States that "The whole educational machinery of America ... open to women must be at least twentyfold greater than with us, and it is rapidly advancing to meet that of men both in numbers and quality". [26] Where most of the history of coeducation in this period is a list of those moving toward the accommodation of both men and women at one campus, the state of Florida was an exception. In 1905, the Buckman Act was one of consolidation in governance and funding but separation in race and gender, with Florida State College for Women (since 1947, Florida State University) established to serve white females during this era, the campus that became what is now the University of Florida serving white males, and coeducation stipulated only for the campus serving black students at the site of what is now Florida A&M University. Florida did not return to coeducation at UF and FSU until after World War II, prompted by the drastically increased demands placed on the higher education system by veterans studying via GI Bill programs following World War II. The Buckman arrangements officially ended with new legislation guidelines passed in 1947.
Several early primary and secondary schools in the United States were single-sex. Examples include Collegiate School, a boys' school operating in New York by 1638 (which remains a single-sex institution); and Boston Latin School, founded in 1635 (which did not become coeducational until 1972).
Nonetheless, mixed-sex education existed at the lower levels in the U.S. long before it extended to colleges. For example, in 1787, the predecessor to Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, opened as a mixed-sex secondary school. [27] [28] Its first enrollment class consisted of 78 male and 36 female students. Among the latter was Rebecca Gratz who would become an educator and philanthropist. However, the school soon began having financial problems and it reopened as an all-male institution. Westford Academy in Westford, Massachusetts has operated as mixed-sex secondary school since its founding in 1792, making it the oldest continuously operating coed school in America. [29] The oldest continuously operating coed boarding school in the United States is Westtown School, founded in 1799. [30]
A minister and a missionary founded Oberlin in 1833. Rev. John Jay Shipherd (minister) and Philo P. Stewart (missionary) became friends while spending the summer of 1832 together in nearby Elyria. They discovered a mutual disenchantment with what they saw as the lack of strong Christian principles among the settlers of the American West. They decided to establish a college and a colony based on their religious beliefs, "where they would train teachers and other Christian leaders for the boundless most desolate fields in the West". [3]
Oberlin College and the surrounding community were dedicated to progressive causes and social justice. Though it did reluctantly what every other college refused to do at all, it was the first college to admit both women and African Americans as students. Women were not admitted to the baccalaureate program, which granted bachelor's degrees, until 1837; prior to that, they received diplomas from what was called the Ladies' Course. The initial 1837 students were Caroline Mary Rudd, Elizabeth Prall, Mary Hosford, and Mary Fletcher Kellogg. [31]
The early success and achievement of women at Oberlin College persuaded many early women's rights leaders that coeducation would soon be accepted throughout the country. However, for quite a while, women sometimes were treated rudely by their male classmates. The prejudice of some male professors proved more unsettling. Many professors disapproved of the admission of women into their classes, citing studies that claimed that women were mentally unsuited for higher education, and because most would "just get married", they were using resources that, they believed, male students would use better. Some professors simply ignored the women students. [32]
By the end of the 19th century 70% of American colleges were coeducational,[ citation needed ] although the state of Florida was a notable exception; the Buckman Act of 1905 imposed gender-separated white higher education at the University of Florida (men) and Florida State College for Women. (As there was only one state college for blacks, the future Florida A&M University, it admitted both men and women.) The white Florida campuses returned to coeducation in 1947, when the women's college became Florida State University and the University of Florida became coeducational. [33] In the late 20th century, many institutions of higher learning that had been exclusively for people of one sex became coeducational.
A number of Greek-letter student societies have either been established (locally or nationally) or expanded as co-ed fraternities.
In American colloquial language, "coed" or "co-ed" is used to refer to a mixed school. The word is also often used to describe a situation in which both sexes are integrated in any form (e.g., "The team is coed"). Less common in the 21st century is the noun use of word "coed", which traditionally referred to a female student in a mixed gender school. [34] The noun use is considered by many to be sexist and unprofessional, the argument being that applying the term solely to women implies that "normal" education is exclusively male: [35] [36] technically both male and female students at a coeducational institution should be considered "coeds". [37] Writing for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development in 2017, author and educator Barbara Boroson described the noun use as "unfortunate", observing that "Although coeducation means 'the education of both sexes together at the same time,' women were considered to be the physical manifestations of the coeducation movement. While men were called students, women were called coeds. The message was that women . . . were not really students." [38] Numerous professional organizations require that the gender-neutral term "student" be used instead of "coed" or, when gender is relevant to the context, that the term "female student" be substituted. [39] [40] [41] [42]
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If the sexes were educated together, we should have the healthy, moral and intellectual stimulus of sex ever quickening and refining all the faculties, without the undue excitement of senses that results from novelty in the present system of isolation.
For years, a question many educators, parents, and researchers have been asking is whether it is academically beneficial to teach boys and girls together or separately at school. [43] Some argue that coeducation has primarily social benefits by allowing males and females of all ages to become more prepared for real-world situations and that students familiar with a single-sex setting could be less prepared, nervous, or uneasy.
However, some argue that at certain ages, students may be more distracted by the opposite sex in a coeducational setting, but others point to this being based on an assumption that all students are heterosexual. There is evidence that girls may perform less well in traditionally male-dominated subjects such as the sciences when in a class with boys, but other research suggests that when the previous attainment is taken into account, that difference falls away. [44] [45] According to advocates of coeducation, without classmates of the opposite sex, students have social issues that may impact adolescent development. They argue that the absence of the opposite sex creates an unrealistic environment not duplicated in the real world. [46] Some studies show that in classes that are separated by gender, male and female students work and learn on the same level as their peers, the stereotypical mentality of the teacher is removed, and girls are likely to have more confidence in the classroom than they would in a coeducational class. [47] In a 2022 study published in the British Educational Research Journal which examined the Irish educational system, the authors stated that the existing "empirical evidence is somewhat ambiguous, with some studies finding a positive impact of single-sex schooling on education achievement [...] but others finding average null effects"; [48] they concluded that after controlling for "individual, parental and school-level factors [...] on average, there is no significant difference in performance for girls or boys who attend single-sex schools compared to their mixed-school peers in science, mathematics or reading." [48]
Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. This is Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235, codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688.
The Seven Sisters are a group of seven private liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Wellesley College are still women's colleges. Vassar College became coeducational in 1969 and Radcliffe College was absorbed in 1999 by Harvard College and now offers programs in advanced study.
A college-preparatory school is a type of secondary school. The term refers to public, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for higher education.
Sex segregation, sex separation, sex partition,gender segregation,gender separation, or gender partition is the physical, legal, or cultural separation of people according to their biological sex or gender at any age. Sex segregation can refer simply to the physical and spatial separation by sex without any connotation of illegal discrimination. In other circumstances, sex segregation can be controversial. Depending on the circumstances, it can be a violation of capabilities and human rights and can create economic inefficiencies; on the other hand, some supporters argue that it is central to certain religious laws and social and cultural histories and traditions.
Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male students to their graduate schools or in smaller numbers to undergraduate programs, but all serve a primarily female student body.
Achievement gaps in the United States are observed, persistent disparities in measures of educational performance among subgroups of U.S. students, especially groups defined by socioeconomic status (SES), race/ethnicity and gender. The achievement gap can be observed through a variety of measures, including standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates, college enrollment, and college completion rates. The gap in achievement between lower income students and higher income students exists in all nations and it has been studied extensively in the U.S. and other countries, including the U.K. Various other gaps between groups exist around the globe as well.
Single-sex education, also known as single-gender education and gender-isolated education, is the practice of conducting education with male and female students attending separate classes, perhaps in separate buildings or schools. The practice of single-sex schooling was common before the 20th century, particularly in secondary and higher education.
Clayfield College is an independent, Uniting Church and Presbyterian, day and boarding school, located in Clayfield, an inner-northern suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The College is owned and governed by the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association.
The following is a timeline of women's colleges in the United States. These are institutions of higher education in the United States whose student population comprises exclusively, or almost exclusively, women. They are often liberal arts colleges. There are approximately 35 active women's colleges in the U.S. as of 2021.
Women's colleges in the Southern United States refers to undergraduate, bachelor's degree–granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations consist exclusively or almost exclusively of women, located in the Southern United States. Many started first as girls' seminaries or academies. Salem College is the oldest female educational institution in the South and Wesleyan College is the first that was established specifically as a college for women, closely followed by Judson College in 1838. Some schools, such as Salem College, offer coeducational courses at the graduate level.
Women's colleges in the United States are private single-sex U.S. institutions of higher education that only admit female students. They are often liberal arts colleges. There are approximately 26 active women's colleges in the United States in 2024, down from a peak of 281 such colleges in the 1960s.
Female education is a catch-all term for a complex set of issues and debates surrounding education for girls and women. It is frequently called girls' education or women's education. It includes areas of gender equality and access to education. The education of women and girls is important for the alleviation of poverty. Broader related topics include single-sex education and religious education for women, in which education is divided along gender lines.
Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, decided 5–4, which ruled that the single-sex admissions policy of the Mississippi University for Women violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Sex differences in education are a type of sex discrimination in the education system affecting both men and women during and after their educational experiences. Men are more likely to be literate on a global average, although higher literacy scores for women are prevalent in many countries. Women are more likely to achieve a tertiary education degree compared to men of the same age. Men tended to receive more education than women in the past, but the gender gap in education has reversed in recent decades in most Western countries and many non-Western countries.
Battin High School was a public high school in Elizabeth, in Union County, New Jersey, United States, which operated as part of the Elizabeth Public Schools. The school opened in 1889 as a coeducational institution. After converting to a girls-only school in 1929, it operated on a single-sex basis for 48 years until the end of the 1976–77 school year, ending its status as one half of the state's only pair of public high schools operated separately for male and female students.
In the early colonial history of the United States, higher education was designed for men only. Since the 1800s, women's positions and opportunities in the educational sphere have increased. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, women have surpassed men in number of bachelor's degrees and master's degrees conferred annually in the United States and women have continuously been the growing majority ever since, with men comprising a continuously lower minority in earning either degree. The same asymmetry has occurred with Doctorate degrees since 2005 with women being the continuously growing majority and men a continuously lower minority.
A female seminary is a private educational institution for women, popular especially in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when opportunities in educational institutions for women were scarce. The movement was a significant part of a remarkable transformation in American education in the period 1820–1850. Supporting academic education for women, the seminaries were part of a large and growing trend toward women's equality. Some trace its roots to 1815, and characterize it as at the confluence of various liberation movements. Some of the seminaries gradually developed as four-year colleges.
Women's education in Pakistan is a fundamental right of every female citizen, according to article thirty-seven of the Constitution of Pakistan, but gender discrepancies still exist in the educational sector. According to the 2011 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program, approximately twice as many males as females receive a secondary education in Pakistan, and public expenditures on education amount to only 2.7% of the GDP of the country. The unemployment rate of female graduates in Pakistan is approximately 3.8 times higher than that of their male counterparts.
Coeducation at Princeton University refers to the transition of Princeton University from being a single-sex education university which only admitted males to being a mixed-sex education university.
Sex differences in education in the United States refers to the specific issues, such as gender-based discrimination related to coursework and use of disciplinary action, that American students of all genders encounter. Furthermore, while sex differences in education explains the prevalence of gender-based differences in education on a global scale, the American education system includes specific forms of gender discrimination dissimilar to other countries.
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