Argument: Supporting an Assertion
In the following prompt, the writer is asked to take a side in the debate over single-sex education.
In “Fee-Paying Parents Lose Faith in Single Sex Education,” an article filed on telegraph.co.uk, the online version of an English newspaper, John Clare covers the debate about single-sex schools, citing examples of formerly single-sex private schools that have become, or are planning to become, coeducational. Read the excerpt from the article below, and then choose one side of the argument to defend in an essay.
The head teachers of co-educational schools say that girls’ parents are increasingly rejecting the arguments of those such as Brenda Despontin, this year’s president of the Girls’ Student Association (GSA), who maintains that “girls’ brains are wired differently; it follows that adolescents need to be taught differently.”
Girls, insists Dr. Despontin, the head of Haberdashers’, Monmouth, are “short-changed” in co-ed classrooms. “Boys dominate teacher time, organising themselves quickly to the task, often with a degree of ruthlessness, while girls sharing a classroom with boys hold back, through shyness or a desire to cooperate,” she says.
“Oh, no they don’t,” chorus co-educational school heads. “They learn how to succeed in a co-ed world.” Boys’ parents, they add, recognise and welcome the “civilising” influence of the opposite sex.
Brian Tannenbaum, an eleventh-grade student, argues for coeducation in his response. Read his essay, and consider its strengths and weaknesses. Then answer the questions about how Brian develops his argument.
Coeducational Schools
Brian Tannenbaum
“In a world that taught them how to think, she showed them how to live.” This is the tagline from Mona Lisa Smile, a movie set in 1953 when freethinking art-history teacher Katherine Watson came to teach at Wellesley College, arguably at that time the best women’s college in the nation, and one of the top colleges in the world. From the beginning of the movie, it is evident that the Wellesley women are both intelligent and competitive. As Ms. Watson discovers in her very first class, every single student had read the art-history textbook before being given any assignments. Would these women have read the textbook if they were at Yale, Harvard, or Princeton? Is it imaginable that these brilliant thinkers would take a secondary position to their male counterparts at coeducational universities? Why should women be separated from men in learning environments? Single-sex schools are both discriminatory and do not prepare their students for the real adult world where both males and females live mutually.
Segregation existed throughout the South until the 1950s, when Brown v. Board of Education argued that segregation of black children in the public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Is being denied admission to a school because of race any different from being denied because of sex? It seems unconstitutional that a college, such as Wellesley, has a right to deny a potential student because the applicant is a male. A person is born with both a sex and a race, and since denying someone of the black race is unconstitutional, denying someone of the male sex must be also. How would the world react if a university only admitted white students?
Advocates of single-sex education argue that males distract females and vice versa in coeducational schools. If only one sex is taught in a school, they believe, there will be no distractions and the students can focus on their studies. Although this position may seem logical, there is one major flaw. The workforce is composed of both males and females. If men and women are not able to interact as adolescents, how can they possibly interact as adults? Boys and girls must be exposed to each other so they can learn how to coexist and cooperate. Our world is based on the fundamental relationship between a man and a female. This relationship must be formed from the beginning so our world can continue to function. If the sexes are considered a distraction to each other in elementary and secondary schools, imagine the disturbance if they are first introduced to each other in the working world.
Dr. Brenda Despontin believes that “girls’ brains are wired differently” and “boys dominate teacher time” in coeducational schools. Dr. Despontin sets the male brain as the standard norm and, therefore, declares the female brain to be a deviation. Ironically, this female scholar is reverting to ancient times when women were considered inferior to men. I happen to know, firsthand, that female students are outspoken in the classroom and realize they must assert their beliefs in front of males to ensure that they will not be considered the inferior sex. Young girls must be around young boys to develop the social and emotional skills that will prepare them for the coeducational world. And on the other end of the spectrum, young boys must be around young girls to guarantee healthy relationships between males and females.
The second part of the Mona Lisa Smile tagline says that Ms. Watson taught the Wellesley women another way of living, helping them become more than what my mother declares herself to be—a domestic engineer. Males and females must interact at a young age to ensure proper relationships between the sexes. Perhaps what is most wrong with single-sex schools is the loss of diversity. Should anyone go to school with people who are just the same as they are?