Sex-Segregated Schools: Enough Evidence To

There is great debate in society today in regards to whether our school systems should reintegrate a gender segregated education system. In the article “If Girls Can Succeed Only at the Expense of Boys, Maybe We Need Segregated Schools,” Link Byfield proposes that by reintroducing segregation into our educational structure it could eliminate the declining performance of male students and allow both sexes to achieve greater scholastic success. Although Byfield presents some valid points to support his argument, upon close examination many biases become evident which weaken his case. These generalizations of why girls are achieving higher success opposed to boys fail to persuade the reader to accept his standpoint.

Byfield reports that according to research gathered by the national School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP), in conjunction with Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education, girls are accomplishing the same level of knowledge in math and sciences as boys as well as exhibiting even higher achievement in reading and writing. However, Byfield fails to present further research or actual numbers of these statistics in order to support his claim and he openly admits the fact that “while the information is useful it is far from conclusive” (Byfield). Furthermore many would say this is a great progression for females as there has been past experience of a much more male dominated level of educational achievement.

The assumption that there is a shift within the public school system towards accommodating and designing the curriculums towards the female student more so than the male students is blasphemous, and he presents no evidence in order to prove this theory. Where is this shift? The manner in which he concludes that “boys are more competitive, risk-oriented and dominant... [And] intuitive, co-operative and circuitous...female mind” (Byfield) is simply unjustly alleged. There still remain the same amount of maths, sciences and technology courses available to students in today’s public schools as there are family studies courses. In fact, there remain more opportunities for so-called “male-dominated” studies versus “women-dominated” studies in our public high schools (http://www.brits2bc.com/school-curriculum.htm). There are definitely signs of progression from how the school curriculum was organized 50 years ago however, the possibility of integrating more women’s studies into