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Stephen Darling

Professor Fielding

WRTC 103 Section 46

3 October 2017

Why Single-Sex Schooling is not Beneficial to Education

Today, researchers and neuroscientists spend a great amount of time trying to improve

society as a whole, specifically education. One suggestion is the implementation of single-sex

schooling to help boys and girls learn more effectively. In The Case Against Single-Sex

Schooling, author Valerie Strauss condenses Rebecca Bigler and Lise Eliots argument against

single-sex schooling. Although this article makes a number of strong and intelligent claims, it

does not provide strong enough evidence to fully support the thesis.

According to the two authors, hundreds of high schools across the nation are splitting up

girls and boys and putting them in single-sex classrooms. Researchers believe highly distorted

claims that say girls and boys brains and mental skills are influenced negatively if they have

class with the opposite gender, and this fact is simply untrue. A huge problem is that people

are making absurd claims, and neuroscientists know it is not true. However, parents, teachers,

and school boards believe it. The biggest influencer on the students is the teacher, and dividing

classes up based on gender would take away important opportunities for young students.

The two authors support the American Civil Liberties Union, but other than that they do

not give any specific sources to support the claims made. However, the two authors give the

name for one school that implements single-sex schooling called Franklin Academy, and they

use this example to show many misconceptions when talking about how children learn. Based
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on the simple word choice and easy-to-understand terms, the article is for parents, teachers,

schools, and anyone else wondering if single-sex schools are a good idea.

The only ethos stated in the article happens at the beginning of the article. Bigler is a

professor of psychology and womens and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin,

and Eliot is an associate professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School of Rosalind

Franklin University. The two professors co-wrote The pseudoscience of single-sex schooling,

which was published in the journal, Science. The authors are definitely credible, but their article

itself loses its credibility because it does not have specific examples of their sources. As a result,

this article cannot be entirely trustworthy.

In the article, the two authors provide multiple examples of research to improve their

articles logos. For example, the authors state that rigorous educational research (P. 8) or

decades of research (P. 7) has found single-sex schooling to not be beneficial to students. In a

way, including these phrases makes the claims more believable, but they do not provide enough

information about the research itself. If the authors were more specific when citing the research,

then their points and claims would hold more weight.

Bigler and Eliot mainly use pathos to make their article more impactful and persuasive.

Near the beginning of the article, the authors draw emotion from the audience by stating that

schools are ignoring important research that disproves the effectiveness of single-sex

schooling (P. 3). Instead, a number of schools implement single-sex schooling and the effects

may be harmful to children (P. 3). The reader is meant to feel concerned for the well being of

their children. Another instance of pathos comes near the end of the article. In the last two

paragraphs, the authors spend time focusing on how single-sex schooling will impact the

important developmental time of a young student (P. 12). Their goal in doing this is to get
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parents to realize that this way of learning does not benefit their children despite what some

people may say. The last example of pathos comes when the authors talk about how teachers

labeling and segregating increases stereotyping and prejudice in students (P. 11). Then, they

continue to compare this to separating black students and white students. This is meant to anger

the reader, and show that single-sex schooling is a form of segregation. Whether this

comparison is accurate or not, it draws emotion from the reader.

This article presents information to the reader in a simple format with words that

everyone can understand. This topic is important because as society tries to improve education,

it needs to see what works and what does not. This is an example of a practice that does not

work. Although the article gives a thorough argument against single-sex schooling, it does not

cite enough specific sources to fully persuade the reader into believing single-sex schooling

impairs learning. If the authors named the people and places that did the research to support

their claims, then the articles logos would have proved their point better. The authors have a

decent argument, but the lack of specific sources causes this argument to lose credibility.
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Works Cited

Strauss, Valerie. The Case Against Single-Sex Schooling. The Washington Post, WP

Company, 4 June 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-case-against-

single-sex-schooling/2012/06/03/gJQA75DNCV_blog.html?utm_term=.8b979f8801dc.