When on June 1, a photo of girls in black and white uniforms entering the coveted Loyola School in Thiruvananthapuram appeared on the papers, a few old boys of the school whined, sulked, and said all was lost. But many others said: finally, good for them. Loyola, a prestigious boys’ only school in the capital, had finally allowed girls in classes 11 and 12 this year. By mid-June, the old SMV School in the city, another renowned boys’ only, also welcomed girls in a few of its classes. The changes appear to be in line with the recommendations made by the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights a year ago, to make all the schools in the state co-educational.
Thirty single-gender schools have been converted into mixed ones in the last seven years, Kerala’s Education Minister V Sivankutty said two weeks ago. All the schools in the state are still not co-ed like the Commission asked for, but steps to make it so are in place. A lot of questions naturally arise, one of the most prominent being, are single-gender schools a good idea any longer?
Former students of girls’ only schools are divided in their opinion about single-gender schools, so are old pupils of boys’ only institutions. Some are vehemently against it (“I went to an all girls’ convent. I wouldn’t do that to my children”), others very much in favour (“I loved it, wouldn't change it for anything”). Men who graduated high school decades ago are still not pleased with the idea of their alma mater turning even partially co-ed.
Deepa Pillai, who taught for 16 years at the Loyola School, says two of her former students who were visiting her shook their heads and said the idea was no good, letting girls into the school. The teacher herself does not believe single-gender schools are a good idea, though she speaks fondly of the bonds the boys in Loyola build, spending many formative years together.
Courtesy - Twitter / LoyolaSchool
“I think children grow better – in the sense they become all-round well-adjusted persons in life – when they go to a coed school. They will grow up looking at the other sex as something natural. In my experience at the school, many boys come from homes with no sisters and they grow up without closely interacting with cousins who are girls. They would not be sensitive to the differences between genders. So when it comes to dealing with the female sex, they are just awkward. They either clam up totally or they go all out and generally get misjudged,” Deepa says.
Men who went to boys’ school often admit to having had difficulties in interacting with another gender as grownups. Most of the time they grow out of it in a year or two, they say.
Vishnu, a former student of Loyola who approves of the school’s decision to allow girls, says he felt quite out of place when he joined a technical university as a social science student after school. “However, that feeling did not last long, as we started to make the place ours as well,” he says.
Another former pupil, Vinay, says it would have been easier and more organic if the integration happened in lower classes (as opposed to just the +2 classes as it did now). “I wouldn't find the prospect of being a near-adult girl in a school full of boys appealing. On the other hand, as near-adults, maybe 16-18 year old girls are more equipped to navigate such a school environment,” he says.
Women who graduated from girls’ only schools face similar issues as they go to colleges and meet men. “I really didn’t know how to react around boys initially. It felt strange and awkward and took me a while to feel comfortable around them, and even to see how friendships could form between two genders. I found it difficult to understand that some boys just wanted to be friends and didn’t have any romantic notions attached to their conversations,” says a woman who attended a girls’ only school in Kerala.
Rep image for all-girls school / pxhere / public domain
Another woman, who went to a convent and declared that she wouldn’t do that to her children, says her experience at the girls’ only school was defined by limited interactions, gossip about imagined transgressions, and a lot of judgement. “Basically there was no other metre to compare our interactions with boys. I went to all girls institutions from kindergarten right through to MA, and the atmosphere was always the same — restrictive and strangling," says Sunita Gladston.
It is between the 1960s and 80s that Kerala saw a proliferation of convent schools and a corresponding number of boys’ only schools, says social scientist and historian Rajan Gurukkal. In 1964, the Hansa Mehta Commission, appointed by the National Council for Women Education, recommended co-education at the elementary stage but also said that separate primary and middle schools for girls could be provided where it was necessary. For the secondary schools, the Commission left it to the choice of the parents and the management to have separate units for girls.
“Eventually more private schools brought on this separation than government schools. Convent schools sprang up across the state, and in parallel, boys’ only schools were also launched. Social conditioning happened in these schools. The kids who grew up in these decades would grow up and send their children to such schools too,” Rajan Gurukkal says.
Even in the co-ed schools that came up, the concept of co-education was not properly understood, he says. The idea was that all roles and positions should be open to all the kids, regardless of gender. The Kothari Commission of 1964, set up by the Government of India to analyse the education system, recommended equalisation of educational opportunity among other suggestions. But this did not happen even in co-ed schools, Rajan says. “Girls and boys doing well do not get to enjoy the same benefits. Ideally, whoever is resourceful should be able to take on whichever role that suits them. This concept of co-education has disappeared and instead we have narrow-minded mixed schools, which are as good as separated institutionally.”
When Chala school in Thiruvananthapuram welcomed girls last year
Girls' only school graduates narrate examples of such preferential treatment of boys. Sanneeta Wilfred who went to a co-ed only for her pre-degree years (Class 12 equivalent) says, “When I pursued engineering in a girls’ only college. it brought out the best in me. I took the lead in arranging symposiums, trips, funding for yearbooks, sports, and so much more. If I had studied in a coed, I bet I would be wearing some pretty costumes and standing to welcome the guests for symposiums, and for trips going to places the boys decided on.”
This is one reason parents sometimes send their children to boys’ only or girls’ only schools, even if they have experienced the disadvantages of a single-gender school. Indu Lakshmi, a filmmaker who went to a girls’ only school and had a difficult time interacting with men in her college years, just enrolled her two children in a boys’ only and a girls’ only school respectively. “There was this independence in my convent school, where we did everything on our own. We didn’t wait for boys to do the hard work, lift heavy things, or anything like that. And that is a quality I still carry. In my film set or other jobs, I never depend on another person to do the heavy lifting. I am hoping my children get that too,” Indu says.
Menstruation is another reason many women still vote for the girls’ only schools they studied in. “It was never a taboo in my girls' school. No problem if we bleed through the dress. Just change. We didn’t have to hide the pads. No one told me that menstruation should be all hush hush. Almost all teachers were also female, so there was a safe space during the growing teenage years, with all the hair and changing body morphology,” says Ashy Suresh, who went to a co-ed school in Class 12, after attending a girls’ only till Class 10. She adds that with no guys to worry about, and no one to compare them with, it didn’t even occur to her what all these changes meant in the actual world.
Rep image for girls school / Credit - Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose / Wiki / CCBYSA2
Anjana Nair, an IT professional at Technopark, agrees. “In a girls’ school, you are just carefree. For instance, your dress might not be in place and we were not bothered about it. Once I was in college, this was a big problem. I was given all kinds of names in college. At first it was disturbing. After a point, I didn’t give two hoots about it. But this can affect someone else differently.”
Then there is the closeness that single-gender schools bring. Both Vishnu and Vinay, former Loyola boys, admit to being unusually close to their classmates, a trait that their teacher Deepa Pillai noticed among all her batches of students. “There is definitely something to be said about the uncomplicated nature of single-sex schools. Exposure to the other sex, especially at the ages when one's sexuality is beginning to blossom can bring with it a certain degree of pressure. I think boys will be allowed an extended period of ‘innocence’ in such an environment. They will be able to take their time to grow up and find their own definitions of masculinity without a fear of judgement,” Vinay says.
Children in such schools grow up with a lot of freedom, not always being aware and conscious, and that can be healthy in a certain way, Deepa says.
Anjana, with all her bad experiences at a co-ed, still prefers a mixed school for her daughter. “It is good that different genders can mingle from a very young age. I believe it helps them in many ways as there is so much to learn from one another. It takes away the awkwardness and teaches students to be respectful,” she says.
Vishnu has similar thoughts. “Given the rising tide of misogyny in our world, I do think it becomes more and more important that co-ed schools become the norm. In a place like Kerala, where there’s a veneer of liberalism hiding deeply conservative tendencies, co-ed schools would be an avenue to ensure that young people interact and grow with a little more diversity.”
Credit - Biswarup Ganguly / Wiki / CCBYSA3
Another big problem with going to a single-gender school is that you may grow up with a very wrong idea about other genders, says Manu Radhakrishnan, actor and filmmaker who went to a boys’ only school. “Your idea about girls is formed from the conversations you have with the other boys at school. It can be very immature and problematic. We’d go and stand outside the girls’ school nearby and watch them like they were some kind of fancy objects. When you grow up with girls, you wouldn’t think this way,” he says.
It was only when he finished school and began making friends with girls that he got to know them better, Manu says. But this does not always happen to boys who go to a boys’ only school. Instead, they may go on living with their very skewed ideas about the other genders. For his little girl, he and his partner would definitely opt co-ed schools, he says.
“We have to allow girls and boys to mingle freely for a better gender-related society. It is important for healthy relationships. Boys should see and treat girls as their equals, all children should be given gender education, and teachers should not do moral policing,” says TK Anandi, consultant gender counsel for Kerala government.
Deepa Pillai also strongly speaks against the policing of teachers, which would take away the spirit of a co-ed school. Several co-ed schools segregate boys and girls so strictly that they don’t allow them to sit together or interact for longer than they think necessary, even putting up separate staircases for them.
But policing can happen even in a single-gender school. Journalist Asha Prakash who went to a girls’ only school shares how the students were not allowed to stand and watch the school ground from the balconies during recess because you could also see the road ahead from there. “It was established very early that good girls don't look towards the outside world because that would mean they're looking at boys. The general idea was to ensure that every girl remained untainted until they got married, and many parents encouraged all these senseless restrictions. It was a safe environment, but also kind of humiliating as well. Besides, you grew up without knowing how to be safe or to speak/fight back in the real world,” Asha says.
As Dee Kumar who studied partly in a girls’ only school says, “Single sex education is a very outdated concept perpetuated by people who couldn’t be bothered to teach healthy relationships with the opposite sex. The world is not single-sex, so it’s high time the system moved on.”
This integration should also be practised at home, at an early age, Rajan Gurukkal says. At some point in their growing up years, most girls would have heard the statement “but you are a girl” used in a disparaging way, he says. To discourage them from seeking higher studies, playing sports, or doing things stereotypically associated with boys, or also to accuse them of not cooking or cleaning or doing other tasks stereotypically associated with girls.
“The message given to children in these cases is dangerous. They will grow up thinking ‘I am a boy, I am supposed to be all this’, or ‘I am a girl, I should not be doing all this’. Girls may pick up reading and begin thinking critically to overcome these barriers and understand these as patriarchal gender roles. But boys do not have such barriers, they wouldn’t feel the need to read or begin critical thinking to unlearn these things,” Rajan says.
He agrees that girls’ only schools may have and still help girls procure an education that may be otherwise denied to them by conservative families. “But what do you gain out of education when you are not taught the concept of equality?”