Aodhán Ó Ríordáin wants to ban single sex schools

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610217#Comment_118610217

You are guaranteed freedom of education and freedom of religion - but that doesn't impky that you have to be guaranteed a religious education.

Communion and confirmation being a thing is not really what posters are wondering, its the use of school time to do so. And while there are people who may want that thing, people object to it being done in a secular school.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610374#Comment_118610374

And whose fault is that? Especially in rural Ireland, the majority dont want change, and theres many a Diosese more than willing to hand over to non-religious, but the locals dont want it. All the religious emblems ( Crufixes, pictures , statues etc) that were very visible in my schooldays are now all gone. So whats left? Classes for preparation for Holy Communion and Confirmation?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610479#Comment_118610479

You are guaranteed freedom of education and freedom of religion - but that doesn't impky that you have to be guaranteed a religious education.

I had to laugh at this one.. you are guaranteed freedom of education and freedom of religion... while religious run education is being systematically destroyed in this country. So, you're entitled to freedom of education, as long as it matches the approved one.

And "people" object to communion/confirmation regardless of whether the school is religious or not. There is this rampant desire by many in this country to remove religion completely from our society, and the interests/rights of believers in that religion, are not going to be allowed to stand in the way of that.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610247#Comment_118610247

Yes, and your stats prove that there is complete freedom in terms of religion in todays Ireland. Then you go on to mention historical abuse, and you are right, and I'm a product of CBS education, so I and others of my generation don'n need telling or educatng about Church abuse. Then the slur that the Grannies ( and by definition Granddad's) Indoctrinating their kids into an abusive organisation. Do you think that todays Church is an abusive organisation? Or do you think that todays kids would be influenced by an older generation....do you have kids yourself, by any chance? Kids today question everything.....and it starts early. And now, last line from me, do you think that what wrongs have been done historically, ( and there were many ) and the people who did them, were Christians? Or corrupt people who used the cloak of religion to cover their wrong doing?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610578#Comment_118610578

So, you're entitled to freedom of education, as long as it matches the approved one.

Isn;t this the whole point of a syllabus?

And "people" object to communion/confirmation regardless of whether the school is religious or not.

I've yet to meet ANYONE who objects to communication/confirmation. The only time I've ever seen seen it suggested was by facists.

Not is there are "rampant desire.... to remove religion completely from out soceity"!! Put away the victim cards, Klaz!

downtheroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610599#Comment_118610599

To be honest I've no idea who carried out the wrongs or why they did so, all I know is they were carried out by leaders of the catholic church, and had that been a company or a school the sanctions would have been far more severe.

I do have a child and I hope that by the time she starts school there will be zero time waste in the weekly curriculum for the advancement of an organisation that is dying on its knees in a country that has decided in its masses that times have changed and it is time to move on. If others want to do communion and confirmation then power to them, do it on your own time and not on school time. And any parents who complain about this are showing their true colours, they have no interest in being involved. They want the school to do the heavy lifting, then the parents will arrange the bouncy castle and envelope collection on the big day.

If the church would stop openly discriminating against women and homosexuals they may be more deserving of people's attention. But an organisation that treats paedophiles in higher regard than gay people...not so much.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610366#Comment_118610366

The "data" is going to be fairly weak here, short of doing an unethical twins study there will be any number of confounding variables. If the effects were that obvious, parents wouldnt send their kids to them.

Utimately the heat this issue creates is idiological, not a particular consideration for the kids well being

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118609581#Comment_118609581

My own thoughts.

Maybe they’ll next want to make the colours of traffic lights different… more inclusive, representative,

people have been calling for an end to single sex wards in hospitals a couple of years ago…considering the difference in anatomy… you could be a guy going in with a herniated disc and end up with a hystericalrectomy…..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610366#Comment_118610366

The data is there showing students in mixed school have better social outcomes than those in single-sex school.

No, there are claims of that being the case. The data does no such thing, unless you're going to provide me with links to the research proving it?

I never dismissed the suggestion that academic outcomes were better, I merely pointed out that it isn't an absolute - mixed-sex schools with an appropriate ethos can improve their academic outcomes with social changes. Whereas single-sex schools cannot resolve the issue of social outcomes because it caused entirely by the single-sex ethos.

There is never going to be an absolute when it comes to schools, because they're all operated differently, and the influence of teachers themselves is going to be extremely varied.

There is no proof that single-sex schools have issues with regards to social outcomes.. Unless you're going to provide some evidence of that claim? Society has problems with regards to social issues, and it's being blamed on single-sex schools, absent the evidence to support that belief. There is a gaping pit for evidence and research to back up those claims... I've done multiple searches and have found only a few pieces of research that support it, and they still come across of pushing assumptions rather than proving that it's the case. Interesting that you made the claim that there was a bias in supporting single-sex schools, but can't seem to see a bias in pushing the co-ed schooling, when there doesn't seem to be much actual evidence to support such assumptions.

I would also label academic outcomes as "largely irrelevant", since the difference is relatively small anyway (<= 10% for the highest achievers) and doesn't offset the long term implications of social issues.

Whereas as someone who struggled in schooling, and failed to achieve the Cao points needed for what I originally wanted... I'd say that such outcomes are of vital importance to many people. It's of particular importance to those people who want to study abroad after school, because such considerations are incredibly important in most other countries other than Ireland, and who is to say that Ireland will remain that way in the future?

In effect, choosing to send children to a single-sex school, knowing the difference, is choosing a short-term gain (academic achievement), for a long-term loss (psychosocial development).

In effect, sending your kids to single-sex schools provide a greater chance at educational achievements, and no realistic loss in social interactions, since those are easily accommodated through extra curricular activities, or simply that the school has it's own policy of sharing activities with other single-sex schools in the area.

As for psychosocial development... that can go both ways. There's quite a bit of research showing the pressures that boys/girls experience by being together in a learning environment, especially when aspects like peer pressure comes into play. There's going to be positives and negatives to both systems from a psychosocial pov.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610671#Comment_118610671

Isn;t this the whole point of a syllabus?

A syllabus can be shared between religious and non-religious schools. You dodged the point.

As for the victim comment, I'm agnostic. Oh! I used to be extremely religious when I was a teenager but lost my faith as an adult. And there is a decidedly strong agenda by many people to demolish religion in this country.

Throwing the victim card at me is simply a sign of your intolerance. See? I can do it too.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610790#Comment_118610790

There maybe a fringe minority that want to abolish religion, but it's hardly "rampant". Most Irish people don't give a **** of you practice religion or not as long as you do it on your own time. You know that as well at I do.

And If I've misunderstood you, please elaborate on what you then mean by "entitled to freedom of education, as long as it matches the approved one" of not a referring to a syllabus? Solely from an educational standpoint as we are taking about schools here.

One eyed Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118609734#Comment_118609734

You appear to have overlooked the main highlight of the paper you linked to -

While the above findings are useful, the number of studies is small and the research is limited in different ways, such as assessing only restricted aspects of interpersonal outcomes (e.g., marriage outcomes) based on single-item retrospective reports [11,41,42], and failure to control for any demographic variable of single-sex and coeducational school students [43]. While a few studies touched upon other aspects of mixed-gender relationships (e.g., heterosocial adjustment) and suggested poorer outcomes associated with single-sex schooling, they are usually unpublished (e.g., [44]), dated (e.g., [44,45]), or uncontrolled (e.g., [44]).

Like I say, anyone who puts academic outcomes at the top of the list in choosing a school is probably some kind of sociopath. I would rather a child come out with a very poor academic education, but highly confident and well-rounded socially. We already know that academic performance is a very weak indicator of future success anyway.

It appears to be just you is saying that though, that anyone who puts academic outcomes at the top of a list in choosing a school is probably some kind of sociopath. It’s an opinion that has about the same level of legitimacy in relation to education in Ireland as a small scale study on gender salience and anxiety from Hong Kong!

It’s also nothing more than a false equivalence to suggest that anyone has to choose between their children being highly confident, well-rounded poor academic achievers, and high academic achievers with low confidence who are likely to become divorced in later life, if they don’t turn out to be sociopaths of course 😒

Economics101

It has already been said above that identifying the effect of single versus co-ed schools on educational outcomes is difficult. There seems scant evidence of actual harm being caused by single-sex schools. I wonder if there was evidence that single-sex schools were educationally beneficial would A O'R seek to ban co-ed schools on the grounds of inferior outcomes?

Liberalism is about maximising individual choices, subject to others not being harmed by them. On that basis A O'R should have no case. I wonder do some people who want to ban single-sex schools also argue against vaccine mandates? The contrast centres on the question of one's choices causing harm to others.

jolivmmx

I don’t get why people need to inflict their views on other people. Surely, if people don’t agree with single-sex schools, then they should not send their children to these schools. People can vote with their feet. Ditto, if people don’t like religious schools, then send them to a non-denominational school.

Why must people determine the choice of others is beyond me. Not only do they want to prevent their kids going to single-sex schools (perfectly acceptable), they do not want the right for any other kids. People should have the right to decide.

America is a country with predominantly mixed high-schools. They are hardly worlds ahead of us in terms of attitudes towards females.

Rather than Aoghán going after the low-hanging fruit, that probably makes zero difference to gender equality, why can he not go after extreme porn, sexualisation of kids and unfettered social media access? Surely they are more obvious?

Mebuntu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610366#Comment_118610366

I'm afraid your comments show disrespect to the many thousands of students who have gone through single-sex schools over the years.

The data is there showing students in mixed school have better social outcomes than those in single-sex school.

This is nonsense. There is no way of proving this one way or the other.

I never dismissed the suggestion that academic outcomes were better, I merely pointed out that it isn't an absolute - mixed-sex schools with an appropriate ethos can improve their academic outcomes with social changes. Whereas single-sex schools cannot resolve the issue of social outcomes because it caused entirely by the single-sex ethos.

More nonsense and for the same reason.

So what is actually to be gained from single-sex schooling? Better results? For what? What does that achieve?

If parents and/or their children believe single-sex schooling gets better results or is even just their preferred choices then they should not have anyone telling them they are wrong or be proposing to exclude them from having a choice.

You make it all sound like girls have no other opportunities to mix with boys and vice versa outside of school. Girls mix with boys and vice versa in any number of social situations outside school.

A neighbour of mine has twins, a boy and girl, just started secondary school in September and both insisted on going to single sex schools having done all primary education in the same mixed school. In the boy's case no less than 11 of his 6th class also go to his new secondary school.

Your expressed opinion condemns them to finish up less socially adequate which is presumptious on your part.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion and to express it.

downtheroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610951#Comment_118610951

The numbers don't stack up. There aren't enough non denominational schools in the country.

https://jrnl.ie/5463812

jolivmmx

I don’t really understand your point? You are saying that there are too many non-religious schools in Ireland?

spurious

The old wisdom when I was in the teaching business (probably based on quite old data now) was that girls did better academically in single sex schools, boys did better academically in mixed.

Regardless of that though, it is much healthier socially for children to be educated together.

The issue of the under-performance of boys in our current system is a curricular and assessment issue which the Department are well aware of and have a dedicated section to try tackle it.

seamus

I don’t get why people need to inflict their views on other people. Surely, if people don’t agree with single-sex schools, then they should not send their children to these schools. People can vote with their feet. Ditto, if people don’t like religious schools, then send them to a non-denominational school.

Nobody's proposing anything different. Same-sex schools will not be banned. They just won't receive state funding.

Aside from the other myriad of benefits, the state should not be sanctioning sex-based segregation just because there's a minority of people who feel like it's what they want to do.

As a country we don't have a sex segregation ethos, so why should institutions which have one, be provided with state assistance?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118610851#Comment_118610851

There maybe a fringe minority that want to abolish religion, but it's hardly "rampant". Most Irish people don't give a **** of you practice religion or not as long as you do it on your own time. You know that as well at I do.

While boards is rarely representative of Irish society, all you have to do is look at the thread with the range of objections about single-sex schools and religion, which aren't based on learning effectiveness, but simply objections that they exist. Also, there is an agenda being played out regarding religious run schools, which can be seen by the focus they get in the media and by politicians.

And I didn't say that Irish people cared what religion you practiced... this is the third time you've done this. Claiming something that wasn't previously suggested and running with it. It's getting a bit tiresome at this stage.

And If I've misunderstood you, please elaborate on what you then mean by "entitled to freedom of education, as long as it matches the approved one" of not a referring to a syllabus? Solely from an educational standpoint as we are taking about schools here.

When there's only non-religious schools remaining, your right to freedom of education and/or religion, won't mean much, will it? Only the school systems approved by others will be available. What happens to those who want their children to be raised in a religious environment?

That's why I was laughing. You have the right to education and religious expression, but if the options are removed (since the options exist right now), then your rights (in terms of religious led education) are of limited value.

seamus

What happens to those who want their children to be raised in a religious environment?

Nobody's stopping them. Why should the state pay for their religious instruction?

Surely the correct approach is to provide everyone with the same kind of education, and if parents wish to supplement that with instruction of their choice; be that GAA, ballet, piano or religion, then they can go that on their own time and with their own money.

jolivmmx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611280#Comment_118611280

Healthier is a value judgement that you have place upon the topic. It is not borne out by evidence. We only have to look at the countries with predominantly mixed education, and we see that they are not ahead of us in terms of gender equality.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611401#Comment_118611401

Would you say that countries with the highest levels of single-sex education are forward-thinking societies with humanitarianism and equality high on their agenda?

jolivmmx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611343#Comment_118611343

Put it to a referendum. You make assertions on other people’s behalf with utter conviction. Let the people decide. There is no convincing evidence that same-sex schools harm kids. I have no problem with my money going to a decent school, same sex or mixed

jolivmmx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611416#Comment_118611416

But why this strong desire to force the “right” way on people. Removing state-funding is essentially tantamount to banning. Why can the people not just decide to send their children to a mixed school. Why must there be a repression of the right to pick a same-sex?

Tombo2001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058232172/aodhan-o-riordain-wants-to-ban-single-sex-schools

Thread is a joke.

Its ostensibly about a topic faced by thousands and thousands of parents and school children, many many many of whom would have a strong view that mixed gender schools are better than single sex schools for reasons so obvious that they go without even saying.

And yet it cant even be **** debated without 'ultra woke ideas' being flung at it.

This should be in the Parenting Section or the Education Section, but no lets have it in the cesspit that is Current Affairs/IMHO.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611420#Comment_118611420

You don't put ridiculous questions like this to referendum. Doing so cheapens the power of the referendum. We elect politicians to make minor decisions like these on our behalf. If you're going to hold referenda to ask people what they want for breakfast, why bother with politicians at all.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611433#Comment_118611433

Not answering the question then. If a state-funded school is high-performing, then do you think it is morally OK for that school to be permitted to refuse to enroll students based on sex? Surely if the state is footing the bill all students should have equity of access? If you feel this is morally OK, then why not other state-funded institutions? Should public hospitals be permitted to be women-only? Women-only busses? Men-only departments in the civil service?

One eyed Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611343#Comment_118611343

Nobody's proposing anything different. Same-sex schools will not be banned. They just won't receive state funding.

There isn’t a hope of that happening. The State in any case has an obligation to provide for education, and the DOE has no inclination to cut its nose off to spite its face, in spite of the tiny minority of people who wish they would.

I can’t even imagine what you mean by “the country doesn’t have a sex segregation ethos” or why it should mean that single-sex educational institutions should be deprived of funding. Segregation implies that they accommodate both sexes while keeping them separate, but single-sex schools don’t do that, they provide education according to their own ethos.

State schools would be a different matter entirely, according to your preferred ethos, but it would have no impact on single-sex schools - generally speaking parents will favour education that is most similar to their own experiences, and a small number who did not have a good experience of education will be determined to avoid a similar experience for their children.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611416#Comment_118611416

its not causative though, or are North Korea and Russia models of forward thinking as they have high mixed education, china too I assume

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118611499#Comment_118611499

Yup. The vast majority of schools in China are mixed. A few private ones are single-sex, although usually they would be private finishing schools (or those aimed at the military) but all State schools are mixed. Dunno about the other countries.