Mixed-sex education
Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation, is a system of education where female and male students are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to the 19th century, mixed-sex education has since become standard in many cultures, particularly in western countries. Single-sex education remains prevalent in many Muslim countries. The relative merits of both systems have been the subject of debate.
The world's oldest co-educational school is thought to be Archbishop Tenison's Church of England High School, Croydon, established in 1714 in the United Kingdom, which admitted boys and girls from its opening onwards. This has always been a day school only.
The world's oldest co-educational both day and boarding school is Dollar Academy, a junior and senior school for female and male students from ages 5 to 18 in Scotland, United Kingdom. From its opening in 1818, the school admitted both boys and girls of the parish of Dollar and the surrounding area. The school continues in existence to the present day with around 1,250 pupils.
The first co-educational college to be founded was Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Oberlin, Ohio. It opened on 3 December 1833, with 44 students, including 29 men and 15 women. Fully equal status for women did not arrive until 1837, and the first three women to graduate with bachelor's degrees did so in 1840. By the late 20th century, many institutions of higher learning that had been exclusively for men or women had become coeducational.
History
In early civilizations, people were typically educated informally: primarily within the household. As time progressed, education became more structured and formal. Women often had very few rights when education started to become a more important aspect of civilization. Efforts of the ancient Greek and Chinese societies focused primarily on the education of boys and men. In ancient Rome, the availability of education was gradually extended to women, but they were taught separately from men. The early Christians and medieval Europeans continued this trend, and single-sex schools for the privileged classes prevailed through the Reformation period. The early periods of this century included many religious schools and the first major public schools in the country had been established for female and male students.In sharp contrast, in the Muslim world, women played prominent roles in education from the beginning of Islamic history. The wife of Muhammad, Aisha, turned her home into a center of learning where both genders flocked to for classes. Umm al-Darda in the 7th century used to study in both men's and women's circles and then became a prominent teacher herself, even teaching at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan was her student. Many prominent historic Muslim jurists were educated by female scholars, including the famed imam Al-Shafi'i by Sayyida Nafisa. The book Al-Wafa bi Asma al-Nisa is devoted to female hadith scholars alone, and covers over 10,000 women in Islamic history. The various halaqas in the Muslim world through the centuries were often open to both genders, and their stories are visible in numerous historic records. Two examples are Shaykhah Umm Al-Khayr Fatimah bint Ibrahim and her contemporary Sitt Al-Wuzara who taught both men and women in prominent mosques in the 14th century CE. However, as the centuries passed, an interesting phenomenon is observed--the slowly diminishing role of women in education as the empires spread and absorbed non-Muslim cultures, such as the Byzantines and Sassanians and more, whose pre-Islamic cultures had a long history of patriarchy and were sometimes reticent to adjust to the new Islamic norms. Nonetheless, women's roles in education were, still yet, incomparably pronounced compared to any other premodern civilization in human history by a massive margin.
In the 16th century, at the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic church reinforced the establishment of free elementary schools for children of all classes. The concept of universal elementary education, regardless of sex, had been created. After the Reformation, coeducation was introduced in Western Europe, when certain Protestant groups urged that boys and girls should be taught to read the Bible. The practice became very popular in northern England, Scotland, and colonial New England, where young children, both male and female, attended dame schools. In the late 18th century, girls gradually were admitted to town schools. The Society of Friends in England, as well as in the United States, pioneered coeducation as they did universal education, and in Quaker settlements in the British colonies, boys and girls commonly attended school together. The new free public elementary, or common schools, which after the American Revolution supplanted church institutions, were almost always coeducational, and by 1900 most public high schools were coeducational as well. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coeducation grew much more widely accepted. In Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, the education of boys and girls in the same classes became an approved practice.
Australia
In Australia, there is a trend towards increased coeducational schooling with new coeducational schools opening, few new single-sex schools opening and existing single-sex schools combining or opening their doors to the opposite gender.China
The first mixed-sex institution of higher learning in China was the Nanjing Higher Normal Institute, which was renamed National Central University and Nanjing University. For millennia in China, public schools, especially public higher learning schools, were for men. Generally, only schools established by zōng zú were for both female and male students. Some schools, such as Li Zhi's school during the Ming dynasty and Yuan Mei's school during the Qing Dynasty, enrolled both female and male students. In the 1910s, women's universities were established, such as Ginling Women's University and Peking Girls' Higher Normal School, but there was no coeducation in higher learning schools.Tao Xingzhi, the Chinese advocator of mixed-sex education, proposed The Audit Law for Women Students at the meeting of Nanjing Higher Normal School held on 7 December 1919. He also proposed that the university recruit female students. The idea was supported by the president Kuo Ping-Wen, academic director Liu Boming, and such famous professors as Lu Zhiwei and Yang Xingfo, but opposed by many famous men of the time. The meeting passed the law and decided to recruit women students next year. Nanjing Higher Normal School enrolled eight Chinese female students in 1920. In the same year Peking University also began to allow women students to audit classes. One of the most notable female students of that time was Chien-Shiung Wu.
In 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded. The Chinese government pursued a policy of moving towards co-education and nearly all schools and universities have become mixed-sex. In recent years, some female or single-sex schools have again emerged for special vocational training needs, but equal rights for education still applies to all citizens.
Indigenous Muslim populations in China, the Hui and Salars, find coeducation to be controversial, owing to Islamic ideas on gender roles. On the other hand, the Muslim Uyghurs have not historically objected to coeducation.
France
Admission to the Sorbonne was opened to women in 1860. The baccalauréat became gender-blind in 1924, giving equal chances to all girls in applying to any universities. Mixed-sex education became mandatory for primary schools in 1957 and for all universities in 1975.Hong Kong
was the first mixed-sex secondary school in Hong Kong. It was founded in 1915 as St. Paul's Girls' College. At the end of World War II, it was temporarily merged with St. Paul's College, which is a boys' school. When classes at the campus of St. Paul's College were resumed, it continued to be mixed and changed to its present name. Some other renowned mixed-sex secondary schools in town include Hong Kong Pui Ching Middle School, Queen Elizabeth School, and Tsuen Wan Government Secondary School. Most Hong Kong primary and secondary schools are mixed-sex, including government public schools, charter schools, and private schools.Mongolia
Mongolia's first co-educational school, named Third School, opened in Ulaanbaatar on November 2, 1921. Subsequent schools have been co-educational and there are no longer any single-sex schools in Mongolia.Pakistan
is one of the many Muslim countries where most schools and colleges are single-gender although some schools and colleges, and most universities are coeducational. In schools that offer O levels and A levels, co-education is quite prevalent. After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, most universities were coeducational but the proportion of women was less than 5%. After the Islamization policies in the early 1980s, the government established Women's colleges and Women's universities to promote education among women who were hesitant to study in a mixed-sex environment. Today, however, most universities and a large number of schools in urban areas are co-educational.United Kingdom
Schools
In the United Kingdom the official term is mixed, and today most schools are mixed. A number of Quaker co-educational boarding schools were established before the 19th century.The world's oldest co-educational school is thought to be Archbishop Tenison's Church of England High School, Croydon, established in 1714 in the United Kingdom, which admitted 10 boys and 10 girls from its opening, and remained co-educational thereafter. This is a day school only and still in existence.
The Scottish Dollar Academy was the first mixed-sex both day and boarding school in the UK. Founded in 1818, it is the oldest both boarding and day mixed-sex educational institution in the world still in existence. In England, the first non-Quaker mixed-sex public boarding school was Bedales School, founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley and becoming mixed in 1898. The first non-denominational co-educational day school in England was The King Alfred School, in North West London, which was officially opened by Millicent Garrett Fawcett on 24 June 1898. Ruckleigh School in Solihull was founded by Cathleen Cartland in 1909 as a non-denominational co-educational preparatory school many decades before others followed. Many previously single-sex schools have begun to accept both sexes in the past few decades: for example, Clifton College began to accept girls in 1987.