Separate Education
Coeducation is taken for granted as the best educational model by the West. However, segregated education was the international standard before the turn of the century. Coeducation was adopted more widely and rapidly in the United States than in Europe because of tradition. It became a trend in the US with the expansion of public education between 1830 and 1845. The great distance between the schools in the Western region of the United States and the small number of pupils caused the elementary schools to admit girls. After the recognition of public education following the Civil War, coeducation gradually spread to the secondary schools. The schools were at first "common schools" in which boys and girls sat in separate sections of the same classroom. By 1882 coeducation had become virtually universal in the USA. By 1900 the majority of high schools also became coeducational. Common schools became an accepted practice in Britain and Germany in the early 20th century. Since 1960, almost all single-sex colleges in the US have adopted the idea of coeducation. The only institutions which remain single-sex are historic women's schools and men's seminaries.
Men and women are raised separately in Muslim society in order to protect females from abuse and harm. Educational institutions reflect the values of the society as such, in a Muslim state, children will be separated in schools from the age of ten. Prophet Muhammad said, "Teach your children formal prayer at the age of seven and spank them for it at the age of ten. And separate them in their beds. The separation is to prevent sexual abuse as children began to develop a consciousness around the age of ten. Recently, an eleven-year-old girl was put on the list of sex-offenders for abusing some 6 and 7 year old boys, and in Florida, an eleven year old boy was accused of molesting his younger sister, in a much publicized case.
Recent experiments by teachers in Murrita, California, have shown that girls learn better when educated separately from boys. Consequently, a number of Western educators have recently called for the revival of single-sex schools. Julian Souter, senior director (deputy head) at George Dixon school is convinced of the advantages of segregation, listing the benefits observed so far as "better concentration in class, better behavior, higher achievement, improved teacher attention". Since the sixties co-education has been seen as the progressive, enlightened choice. However, in the seventies and eighties, feminist educators began to draw attention to the question of girls' under achievement in areas such as physics and math's, it was noticed that their exam results were much better in single-sex schools. Recent reports, The Gender Divide, states: "Girls' schools are generally found to perform best.'
Not only should the separation be maintained in Islamic institutions of higher learning, but even the courses offered need to be tailored according to the society's needs. Young men and women should be channeled into appropriate streams of education. For example, young men should not be encouraged to specialize in gynecology. That field should be left for women to specialize in. In a society which holds chastity and virtue at a premium, it makes no sense to have a man spend his working day looking at and touching the private parts of naked females. Similarly it would be pointless for a female to specialize in male urinary tract infections in urology which would require her to look at male genitalia.
