Transcript:
[00:00:05.280] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome back to another episode of English and Beyond. My name is Oliver, I am the host and today with me I have César, my partner, my collaborator. If there's anything that you find difficult to understand, then there is a free transcript available for this and every episode at www.morethanalanguage.com. If you enjoy the episode, please remember to subscribe, follow, share, etc.
[00:00:35.270] - Oliver (Host)
Once again, the idea for this episode has come from my friend Cristina, who is now a frequent listener of the podcast and one of my good friends here in Valencia. I asked her, what are the topics you'd enjoy hearing about? What are the oddities, the strange things that interest you when you think about British culture? And out of literally everything in the country, its culture, its history - everything - she said, the rules of British politeness, and why single-sex education exists in the UK.
[00:01:12.230] - Oliver (Host)
I found these suggestions quite amusing, quite funny, but I actually liked both of these ideas. And so they're going to become the next two episodes and I'm starting today with single-sex education single-sex schools. Well, your first question may be, what is single-sex education? It's the idea, the educational philosophy, that the two sexes, male and female, boys and girls, should be educated separately, that they shouldn't have their school classes together.
[00:01:46.350] - Oliver (Host)
For many European listeners, British schools, if you don't already know about them, will appear very odd at first sight. First, they seem very formal in comparison to their European equivalents. For example, over 90% of primary and secondary schools in the UK require their students to wear uniforms. That means that all the students in the school must wear the same clothes dictated set out by the school. For comparison, apparently, only 18% of Spanish state schools require the use of a uniform.
[00:02:22.390] - Oliver (Host)
In addition, in general, my students never learned my first name. They would never have called me Oliver. It would have been a big problem if they had, and they would have probably ended up with a detention, a punishment, if they seriously tried to call me by that name. This isn't my rule, it's just the way that schools work in the UK. Instead, my students called me sir or Mr. followed by my surname. Since I don't use my surname on the podcast, I guess we'd have to call me Mr. English and Beyond. So English and British schools are already quite different in comparison to their European counterparts, their European versions. In terms of single-sex education, I don't actually know how common Cristina thinks single-sex education is, but it's perhaps not as common as she expects.
[00:03:13.940] - Oliver (Host)
I talk a little bit about private and state schools in Episode 10, an episode about my experiences of studying at the University of Oxford. Today I'm only really going to talk about state schools, that is schools publicly funded by the government. Around 90% of state schools are mixed or co educational up to the age of 16. That means 10% are single-sex. In London, however, almost 25% of students attend a single-sex school, so the number varies considerably over the country. And it may be that it seemed more common to Cristina because she lived in London when she lived in the UK. In today's episode, when discussing this topic, I'm going to assume that many of my listeners will be opposed to single-sex education, finding it old fashioned and bad for children's development. Cristina, for example, just couldn't wrap her head around it. That is, she found the idea incomprehensible; she couldn't understand why anyone would want that for their child. So on that assumption, I'm going to play the devil's advocate. I'm going to make some, though not all, of the arguments that someone who supports single-sex education may make in its defence.
[00:04:33.950] - Oliver (Host)
Despite having taught in a single-sex school, I'm not totally sure how I feel about it. There are undoubtedly positives and negatives. So what are those arguments in favour of single-sex education? Why do 25% of Londoners, 25% of the inhabitants of a modern progressive city choose to educate their children in single-sex schools? And why did I myself choose to teach in a boys' school? Well, taking that last question first, I actually didn't choose to teach in a boys school as such. I trained as a teacher at two schools, one of which was a boys school and one of which was mixed, that is co educational for boys and girls. I had actually wanted to teach at an all girls school as well, but the job that I ended up taking was actually just the first job that came up, the first job that became available that was at a reasonably located school with the kind of department that I wanted to teach in. I didn't necessarily expect to get this job when I sent in my application, so I didn't obsess, I didn't think too much, about whether it was the ideal school for me.
[00:05:45.590] - Oliver (Host)
But the job vacancy came up, I applied and I got it and I ended up teaching there for five years. Now the school that I taught at was all boys, but there was an all girls sister school nearby. A sister school in this context means a school that has a close working relationship with my school. This is frequently the case in the UK for single-sex schools, if for no other reason than it's helpful for parents who have both daughters and sons, the two schools frequently team up for certain things - that might include a school play, that is where the schools put on a theatre production of a play or a musical, sports events, and even some lessons in smaller subjects, like Latin for example. That's because students choose fewer and fewer subjects, as they progress through their education, they become more specialist, so the classes get smaller and smaller in most subjects. So to allow small subjects like Latin to run a class, teachers would teach mixed classes of both boys and girls. So going back to the original question, why would parents send their children to schools that many people would find very old fashioned?
[00:07:01.060] - Oliver (Host)
Well, the very first reason is probably that the children graduate with better grades. That's certainly the perception of many parents and there is some truth to it. Children in single-sex education in the UK do do better at school in terms of their results than children in mixed educational settings. That means that single-sex schools obtain better exam results than co educational schools. However, that's a very simple statement that hides quite a lot of information. It's quite complicated to explore the differences between children's exam results in mixed and single-sex education. It's quite complicated to compare their results. This is partially because children in single-sex education are more likely to have certain characteristics that also contribute to better grades. For example, schools in London in general have better grades than schools outside of the capital. And London is where most single-sex schools are located. Also, religious schools are more likely to be single-sex. And for various other reasons, these schools also achieve better grades on average than non religious schools.
[00:08:12.550] - Oliver (Host)
So if we try to make an effort to remove these differences from the statistics and to examine the impact of only single-sex education, although the difference in exam results is smaller than the data initially suggest, there is an improvement in grades for single-sex schools. Perhaps surprisingly, however, that difference is actually greater for boys, than for girls. The reason for this grade difference may relate to probably the most frequently cited, the most frequently given, reason that parents send their children to single-sex schools: that it provides an education free of the distractions from the other sex. Obviously this attitude is not very 2024, but many parents worry about it. I think in particular the parents of girls worry that the hard-working daughters will get distracted from their all important exams by boys and dating, even though as I just mentioned, it's actually the boys that benefit most from single-sex education in terms of exam achievement.
[00:09:21.330] - Oliver (Host)
It's true that when I trained as a teacher in the mixed school, the younger boys definitely behaved differently from those boys in a single-sex setting, or rather it was like the badly behaved boys were badly behaved in a different way. There was a lot more bravado, a lot more intimidation, a lot more showing off. I think though, that by the time the students got to about 15 or 16 years old, I didn't really notice a difference in how they behaved between mixed and single-sex schools.
[00:09:51.690] - Oliver (Host)
But the difference was quite stark, quite significant for 13 and 14 year olds. And that's a pretty vital age where students start to create the patterns that will define their first set of exam results. Another big reason that the parents of girls give for sending their daughters to single-sex schools is because they worry that it will be bad for their self image and confidence within themselves to be educated with boys. I can't remember exactly how I ended up getting my hands on it, but for some reason I had an audiobook version of Hillary Clinton's autobiography translated into Spanish that she'd written as a US senator in 2003. I came across this audiobook in about 2016, I guess because it had been re promoted as part of her failed presidential campaign against Donald Trump. Anyway, in this book Hillary Clinton noted that she had gone to a single-sex, a woman only college for her university degree. And she told a story about it, that I then heard repeated during a Town Hall event and on many other occasions. She said that what she got out of studying in a single-sex educational institution was the simple idea that at Wellesley College where she studied, women ran everything.
[00:11:14.320] - Oliver (Host)
They ran the student government, they ran the student newspaper, they ran the student societies; that is, they were in all the positions of power. And this taught her the women were capable of running everything just as well as men. Now, you may dislike Hillary Clinton and you may very firmly believe in a truly meritocratic system which means that men and women should compete. But I don't think it's a very controversial statement to say that young women often do feel intimidated by young men. Anecdotally, even as adults, we can see evidence of that in the phenomenon of the very common complaint about mansplaining. In any case, many parents clearly do think that it can be useful to educate the sexes separately during their all important teenage years while students of both sexes build up their confidence. And I think what Hillary Clinton said is a common attitude amongst many parents of girls. A counter-argument to lots of these ideas is that this is just not how the real world works: girls and boys, men and women, will have to compete against each other at university in job applications for promotions, etc. And that is of course true.
[00:12:28.080] - Oliver (Host)
But I also do think that it's beyond doubt that children are psychologically more vulnerable than adults, and therefore there are many realities of life that we protect children from until they're ready to face them. I think it's fair to allow parents the choice to ease that particular transition into adulthood as well.
[00:12:47.800] - Oliver (Host)
And speaking of parental choice and control, a major reason why many parents send their kids to single sex schools is the religious aspect. I am not religious myself. I plan to do an episode on religion because I did go to two religious schools, one where we prayed and sang hymns and listened to Bible lessons every single day of the week and one where we did so twice a week from the age of 13. And I have my own views on religion in general, as I will discuss in that episode. But the reality is that there are many religious families in the UK who consider it seriously important that their children be educated separately from the other sex. I think schools like the one that I taught in, where the majority of lessons take place in a single sex setting, but it's mandatory for some events, some subjects, some training sessions to be shared with boys' and girls' schools, strikes a good balance of allowing these families the freedom to choose their own school system while ensuring that their sons and daughters do spend time with and learn to respect the other sex.
[00:13:54.380] - Oliver (Host)
Because this is undoubtedly the worst aspect for me of single sex education in my experience. I don't know what it's like for girls in all girls schools, but as someone who attended and later taught at a boys-only school, the misogyny, the discrimination against women I encountered was sometimes stark and unsettling - that is very obvious and very worrying. While not universal, there were many instances, both subtle and overt, apparent, of discriminatory attitudes towards women. As a male teacher I noticed that I was usually given more immediate respect by students compared to my female colleagues, even when we were saying the exact same thing. Female teachers would sometimes be ignored or challenged in ways I rarely experienced, and the reasons given by the students for this always felt like a deflection from a deeper issue, whether their excuse was about a teacher's voice not carrying as well or an individual colleague's style and personality not resonating with the students, not being to their taste. Female colleagues often shared with me their frustrations at how often their authority was undermined, with students pushing boundaries or outright refusing to follow instructions. Occasionally students would voice openly sexist beliefs such as suggesting that women shouldn't be teaching boys or even working at all.
[00:15:22.910] - Oliver (Host)
Teaching assistants, who often observed quietly at the back of the classroom also frequently highlighted to me the disparity in how boys interacted with male and female staff members and shared with me some of the things that they whispered to each other where the teacher couldn't hear. And all of this confirmed to me that this wasn't just my isolated perception.
[00:15:46.200] - Oliver (Host)
The difficult truth, however, is that these attitudes weren't created within the school walls. They were brought in from home and reinforced by cultural or family beliefs. Yet single sex environments may have amplified them, they may have increased them, providing little opportunity for boys to build mutual respect and understanding with female peers, with female students. For me, this is the strongest argument for moving towards co educational systems. Not just to address sexism, but to create an environment where boys and girls can learn from and about each other in ways that prepare them better for life beyond school. However, ultimately I believe that it's fundamentally vital, fundamentally very important for individuals to be able to make choices about their own lives and their children's lives. And for this reason, if no other, I think that single sex schools should also exist.
[00:16:46.540] - Oliver (Host)
So César, you went to a mixed school, co educational setting, school. Do you think you would have enjoyed single sex schooling?
[00:16:56.040] - César (Guest)
Not at all. I was actually asking myself many questions while listening to you. One of them was that. I was listening very attentively. Well, firstly, you know, in Spain we don't use that term one sex school, or -.
[00:17:13.990] - Oliver (Host)
Single sex school.
[00:17:15.400] - César (Guest)
Single sex school. We say, if you're in favour of single sex schools, you say differentiated education.
[00:17:21.980] - Oliver (Host)
Differentiated?
[00:17:22.930] - César (Guest)
Yeah. And if you are against it, you say segregated education. Because obviously segregation implies, has a very negative implication.
[00:17:33.800] - Oliver (Host)
Oh, I see. Okay. So you can call it either differentiated or segregated.
[00:17:38.620] - César (Guest)
Yeah. Depending on your views on the topic.
[00:17:41.260] - Oliver (Host)
Okay. Yeah.
[00:17:42.240] - César (Guest)
I'm slightly nervous.
[00:17:44.660] - Oliver (Host)
Why?
[00:17:45.440] - César (Guest)
Well, because I think this topic, every time I talk about something regarding children, education, I feel nervous because I know that every single parent out there wants the best for their, for the children. Yeah. So I feel like who am I to judge?
[00:18:03.800] - Oliver (Host)
So yeah, I think that there is that, that risk that it - I think that having children changes your life, and, it - to me it seems like a huge, I don't want to say burden, but it is a significant emotional burden, isn't it?
[00:18:21.730] - César (Guest)
It's a constant pressure, even when they are old.
[00:18:24.730] - Oliver (Host)
Well, as my mum said in the episode which I, you know, when I interviewed her, one of personally, my favourite episodes, if I do say so myself - but she said that it's like having an Achilles' heel, it's like having more terrible weakness that never goes away. And my sister is, you know, she, she is someone who is a very, she's a perfectionist. She's very hardworking and that extends to her children. I mean, she's very perfectionist because she's trying not to put any pressure on them. You know, she's, she's so perfectionist that she's putting pressure on herself to make their life as good as possible while also trying not to overwhelm them. Right? But you know, she thinks, and she was thinking, as is necessary in London before they were even born, where are they going to go to school? Where are they going to go to nursery? Because you've got to get them on waiting lists, you've got to have a house. If they're going to go to the state school sector, you have to have a house in the area, in the catchment zone of that school.
[00:19:25.120] - César (Guest)
Catchment zone, it's called?
[00:19:26.400] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, where you live kind of close enough to the school that you can get a place there. And for the best schools in the uk, the best state schools, the catchment zone is so small that sometimes, you know, houses two streets away are out of the catchment zone, two short streets away. So it's something you have to really worry about and you have to therefore make these decisions about things like single-sex schools very early.
[00:19:54.450] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:19:55.020] - Oliver (Host)
And I know that my sister definitely was thinking about single-sex education when they lived in London. Now they've moved, so I'm not sure exactly what the situation will be - it might be what we can say in English is a "needs must" situation where you do what is necessary because you don't have the ideal, you know, range of possibilities open to you.
[00:20:19.160] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:20:19.740] - Oliver (Host)
But let's go back to the question because we haven't answered it properly. Do you think you would have enjoyed it? You said no. Why?
[00:20:27.820] - César (Guest)
Not at all? Well, because I think friendship, friendships are always important in any stage of your life. I wouldn't have enjoyed only having male friendships, to be honest. And I think that's one of the things that you get taken away, no, when you are on a single-sex school you only have friends with, with guys or with girls.
[00:20:50.960] - Oliver (Host)
You are only friends with guys or girls or you only have friendships with guys or girls. Yeah, I, well, I don't think that's quite true, but it is true that you have to make more of an effort.
[00:21:02.340] - César (Guest)
Yeah, but me thinking as a very shy guy, boy, little boy, I wasn't the typical child who would have enjoyed doing extra curricular activities where I could meet girls.
[00:21:17.050] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:21:17.530] - César (Guest)
So I'm glad I met boys and girls when I was little. And yeah, it was quite - everything was quite mixed.
[00:21:23.630] - Oliver (Host)
So when I was at school - I actually didn't really talk about it in this episode because, you know, it's always time limited - but I went to a single-sex school until the sixth form. So up until the age of 16 it was single-sex. And then they did the worst possible thing where there were like 120 boys in my year and they added in, when we're 17, like 15 girls.
[00:21:46.790] - César (Guest)
Only 15?
[00:21:47.600] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, 15 or 20 girls. So as you can imagine, that is terrible for those girls, I think, because you're coming in, all of the boys know each other and they wildly outnumber you. So I think that that is a really - I don't know, it's kind of like a horrible, it must have been a horrible experience for lots of those girls. But up until the age of 16, as you implied, I had female friends, definitely, but I got them through extracurricular activities. I used to swim a lot. I used to swim five times a week. And so I would meet the girls at training sessions.
[00:22:22.750] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:22:23.870] - Oliver (Host)
But it's true that I generally, as a teenager and now still probably generally prefer hanging out with girls and women than boys and men. I guess it's a little bit different now that I'm older, but I definitely would have liked to have girls during my education because I enjoyed spending time with them. But I think even in a single sex school you find people that are your friends. I mean, I had two groups of friends basically, which were the gays and the geeks. There was a little bit of overlap, but yeah. So I mean, you find your people like you do in every group.
[00:23:00.350] - César (Guest)
Yeah, of course, of course, yeah. But I mean, I think it's just like as a Spanish person, especially because we come from a dictatorship and - well, it was, I think it was forced, the segregated or single-sex education.
[00:23:15.510] - Oliver (Host)
I was wondering how you were going to connect those.
[00:23:18.110] - César (Guest)
And their curriculum was different as well. So the girls would study things that are very, were very girly, like household course -
[00:23:27.600] - Oliver (Host)
That was -
[00:23:28.210] - César (Guest)
Chores.
[00:23:28.880] - Oliver (Host)
- called Home Economics -
[00:23:30.270] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:23:30.520] - Oliver (Host)
In the UK, but actually -
[00:23:32.300] - César (Guest)
The guys, or the boys would study a different curriculum.
[00:23:37.770] - Oliver (Host)
Probably things like woodwork.
[00:23:39.380] - César (Guest)
Yeah. Or maths.
[00:23:41.020] - Oliver (Host)
Oh, well, that's, that's obviously not ideal, but we had that here too. Without a dictatorship, that the girls would learn Home, Home Economics. But you now you don't get Home Economics taught in school, but instead there's a subject for cooking essentially called Food Technology.
[00:24:01.260] - César (Guest)
It's called Food Technology.
[00:24:02.730] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:24:03.150] - César (Guest)
And they, they are taught how to cook.
[00:24:05.220] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:24:05.900] - César (Guest)
Why that name, though?
[00:24:07.380] - Oliver (Host)
Well, because it's Technology like, well, because I think technology literally, in the Greek, the techno bit means "skill".
[00:24:16.820] - César (Guest)
Okay.
[00:24:17.290] - Oliver (Host)
And logos will be like "word, argument, speech, logic". So it's kind of like learning the skill of cooking.
[00:24:23.860] - César (Guest)
Okay. I think it's quite, you know, splitting hairs, with that name, but -
[00:24:28.170] - Oliver (Host)
I think it's the same as IT stands for Information Technology.
[00:24:31.340] - César (Guest)
Yeah, OK.
[00:24:31.850] - Oliver (Host)
Food Technology.
[00:24:32.670] - César (Guest)
Interesting.
[00:24:33.270] - Oliver (Host)
So they called it Food Tech, but Food Tech, interestingly at my school where I taught was, during the time that I was there, it became the biggest optional subject at school. So it went from being a tiny, tiny subject only a few years ago to becoming the biggest choice because you have to do Maths, you have to do English, you have to do either History or Geography, you have to do Modern Language and then you have certain subjects to choose.
[00:25:04.140] - César (Guest)
Yeah. I guess one of the benefits of a single sex education is with this kind of subjects or modules if you're in a mixed school and if you see that in that group there are 20 girls and only five guys.
[00:25:17.190] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:25:17.530] - César (Guest)
You will feel more embarrassed to join.
[00:25:19.300] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:25:19.560] - César (Guest)
You know, because of all the gender stereotypes. So that's one of the things that, you know, are beneficial from single sex education. I think, you know, after knowing your experience, I can see how there are so many advantages as well.
[00:25:33.200] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I was going to ask you, if you had a child -
[00:25:36.860] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:25:37.440] - Oliver (Host)
- would you send them to a single sex school? Let's say I really wanted to, and would it make a difference to you if you had a son or a daughter?
[00:25:46.000] - César (Guest)
Yeah. I asked myself, while listening to you earlier? Well, you asked me if I were a father, would they send my child to a single sex school? I don't think so. But I would be more willing to do it if I had a girl for the reasons that we talked about. Because I think the girls are still slightly behind in terms of, you know, confidence. I mean, I don't know, newer generations, you're probably what you were in touch with girls.
[00:26:21.270] - Oliver (Host)
But it's weird because I actually think a lot of the time girls are way more developed, aren't they? They grow taller more quickly. And I don't think it's controversial to say that girls generally mature emotionally quicker than boys. Like I think 11 year old girls are more mature than 11 year old boys in terms of how they can respond to class material. You know, you can have a much more serious discussion in a class with girls than with boys, I think, when they're very young. A lot of the time, one of the arguments I heard people saying at school was that we should have mixed education because the girls will be a good influence on the boys. And I always found that, you know, an argument I think is probably true, but I also think why should the girls have to limit themselves potentially for the boys' benefit.
[00:27:11.820] - César (Guest)
Yeah. And lower their, yeah, or lower the average, no? Of what you should be able to achieve.
[00:27:18.230] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:27:18.480] - Oliver (Host)
And just make life more difficult for themselves in school, like have to put up with - well, I mean, it's difficult because the examples I have are from a boys' school where girls sometimes go in, but there would be cat-calling, there would be kind of like shaming about how they dressed or lots of attention put on how they dressed, and the girls would come in and there'd be very few girls there and all of the boys would be staring, in a way that wouldn't happen if there were an equal number of boys and girls, and it was an everyday occurrence. So it's really hard for me from my experience to know what it would be like in a mixed school the whole time because I went to a boys' school where there were very few girls in the sixth form and it was very hard for them, and then I've taught in a boys' school where, when the girls came in to have lessons or to come in for like the school play, that was hard for them as well. And maybe it would be better in a truly mixed environment.
[00:28:17.830] - César (Guest)
Yeah. Because the thing is, now that you were talking about this, I thought, well, what is education? I think there are two different views of education with children and teenagers. You can view it as a way like a system where you get the person and you make them excel and be as educated as possible, or you see it as a process where they learn soft skills and they get ready for life. In the second case, I think mixed education is better. In the first case, it's probably better, single sex education.
[00:28:56.620] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, that's actually, I think, very interesting and probably a good summary of how many people would feel about it, that from a purely academic point of view, because as I said, the kids, when they are in single sex education, they perform better, but it possibly is worse for their soft skills. You know, I'm sure there are loads of studies and we are certainly not going to be able to conclude decisively in a 30 minute podcast. So thank you very much, César.
[00:29:27.940] - César (Guest)
You're welcome.
[00:29:29.440] - Oliver (Host)
And thank you listener for listening. Please give me five stars and share the podcast and I hope that you enjoyed it, Cristina. Thank you very much. Bye bye.
[00:29:39.910] - César (Guest)
Bye.
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