LeCastor...

I can understand a little of your suspicion of single-sex education, because I felt the same way for a very long time. And I think your question - why do women grow more confident in a single-sex atmosphere? - is a valid one. I don't know the answer to that, but I've seen it happen over and over again (I work at a single-sex school). One of our high school students went on to an aeronautical college that's approximately 85% male. She's the only woman in most of her classes, and never once has that bothered her. I know it seems counterintuitive to claim that single-sex education actually prepares women *better* for a male-dominated environment, but it's true. There's a reason that the majority of female Fortune 500 excecutives are products of single-sex education. And, as a previous poster pointed out, students at women's colleges report being more engaged, socially and academically, than students at co-ed schools. It's got less to do with not having the "distractions" of men (because, believe me, there are still plenty) and more to do with being in an environment where a woman's competance is seen as a given. It changes you.

-- Sara B

I guess i'm asking because

(1) I've always been at co-ed schools. Public school thru high school, then university, and grad schools 1 & 2 are all co-ed. So i really don't know what a single-sex environment is like, except...

(2) My BA is in Comp Sci, my MA is in finance, so I am used to being the only female in a class, and mastering male-dominated fields. Which was de facto single sex, except it was male, not female.

And i did this without any single-sex education. The thing I think that supported and motivated me more than anything is having grandmothers who had master's degrees in technical fields, who worked outside the home, and my mother doing the same. my mother never stayed at home, and she has a successful career, with an MA in chemicanl engineering. I think things like that (female role models) are much more important than single-sex classrooms -- i think single-sex classrooms maybe useful for those women who didn't have female role models, to tease out confidence in a "non-threatening" environment. But if more women worked outside the home and had technical degrees, in short, if there were many more empowered female role models, i really don't know if single-sex education for women would be necessary, because their competence would be a given everywhere.

Your thoughts?

As of late, the most popular article (in terms of # of letters) has been the one about coding in BASIC. Which is ...oh so telling about the readership... :)

particularly in giving women space to develop interpersonal and leadership skills apart from the pressure of male-female dynamics, while still providing the rich depth of faculty and library resources that the combinations can yield.

Can someone explain to me why women are alleged to be adversely affected by the "pressure of male-female dynamics," but no one is claiming that men are?

It's this language of special treatment, language of weakness, of special-ness in a negative sense, language of fragility and language of "women, to be successful, need to be sequestered away from men" that I find so bewildering. How are women going to keep fighting for equal opportunity, against the glass ceiling, etc. if they keep justifying women's colleges with this kind of discourse? If women keep insisting on needing special, kid-gloves, "cooperative," etc. treatment? You are just using the same language that was used to keep women out of the workplace, to keep women at home, to keep women out of higher education.

It doesn't help anyone to keep insisting that women need softer treatment to be as educated as men.

"oh so telling about the readership"

LC,

What the flock is that supposed to mean? I've got the vague feeling that you are slandering men there somehow, or perhaps engineers, but was it really worth it?

-- VB

I'm a woman, i'm a computer geek, kind of. So, if i'm slandering anyone, it's people like myself.