Aodhán Ó Ríordáin wants to ban single sex schools

This is one of the issues in politics, every TD wants a hobby horse policy they can say they introduced thinking they'll be today's Noël Browne. Whip up a furor about a vaguely topical non issue and away we go.

They see an 'in' and they just go for it.

Sorry but that is far from 'ultra woke', the notion that most of our public secondary schools aren't mixed is archaic and rooted in a Catholic fear of the opposite sex. We need to get with the times a bit here

Finian McGrath tried similar a few years ago against legally held firearms. Thought he was leading some kind of anti gun charge and made a complete show of himself in front of an Oireachtas committee on it making all sorts of claims he couldn't back up. These people are shameless, they'll cast their lines and it there are no bites, sure go again.

Fidelma Healy Eames too, stoking the fires about the evils of the internet a few years ago and when she made a fool of herself pronouncing Wifi as Wiffy, tries to play it off as a French pronunciation. Then when she's rounded on as being clueless 'this is why we need regulation'.

As with most things here, the answer is never allow choice or offer alternatives, it's just 'ban it'. Great.

This is just another inoffensive policy being cast into the water to see if there are any takers, if it succeeds great, if it fails; nobody cared anyway.

As opposed to committing to a policy on health or justice which if it fails could end a career. These politicians want to do just enough to get over the next election hill but don't want to risk sticking their head too far over the parapet.

Why is it "ultra woke"?

Single-sex schools serve no purpose. Why should children be segregated by gender in school when the rest of their life will involve no segregation at all? It's mental when you think about it. Even more mental that anyone would get worked up enough about defending it.

It's probably not the most burning of issues, but seems like a very easy one to sort, so why not. Children who attend mixed sex schools produce better socially-rounded adults. It also provides a lot more opportunities for individual children in terms of study. Many single-sex schools do not offer some subjects because of a lack of demand. Girls' schools often don't offer subjects like physics, applied maths or woodworking, while boys' schools may not offer music or a wide choice of languages.

There's a long-held belief that girls do better in single-sex schools, but modern data is not finding that this actually holds up. Previous studies were probably done in decades where girls in co-ed schools were routinely discriminated against and intimidated in school, resulting in poorer performance.

I think this is one of the rare occasions that I agree with O'Ríordain.

Segregation by sex, in education, is a bizarre concept.

Tbh I have no problem with this and don't get the "wokeness" claims.

Co-ed schools are not new and nobody was calling them woke when I attended one 20 years ago.

'Obviously O Riordan is a massive populist nimby type politician but it doesn’t mean he’s wrong here. Usual boards stick to label something woke when it’s not agreed with.'

Perhaps but I recall O Riordan saying a few years ago that single-sex schools were "barbarism".

There's a difference between saying well co-educational schools are better because x, y and z and framing it as some kind of acrimonious crusade.

O Riordan has also talked bitterly about his own school days. He fell out with the whole school or something like that.

They are hardly paying for double of everything - were the schools to be merged, there wouldnt be massive amount of redundancy. Classrooms and staff are all necessary to cater for the number of students. Thats hardly going to change if you double both the students and the staff.

The same argument could be made for sending children to a single sex school or gaelscoil either. Outright bans just limit people's choice.

satire ? or you really actually had some faith left in alan kelly ?

This is usually the most common reason given for why people prefer same sex schools and it's certainly one of the main reasons the church who were responsible for such institutions decided to segregate based on gender. It's old fashioned and it doesn't even make sense. The world is not segregated by gender and schools are meant to prepare children from the world, segregating them for a representative of 50% of the population makes no sense. It's also massively unfair on the children, flirting and getting distracted by the opposite sex is part of the experience and removing the opposite sex isn't going to act as some form of hormone blocker. I don't think an outright ban is necessary but we should be doing more to decrease the number of same sex schools.

A previous poster talked about how more recent studies have shown that co-ed schools produce better results and more socially-rounded individuals.

thats good enough for me.

i guess everything the right doesn't like is woke now?

and please don't conflate sex and gender as the same thing, cause they're not.

What.

Just something about the right......

Didn't mention the right but hey !

yeah, it's typically conservative people, whether that's socially conservative or fiscally, that complain about any change in society.

surely religious indoctrination can be done outside of school hours or by the parents themselves if it's that important ?

personally, i think schools should not have any religion pushed.