Why do people self-segregate a lot by gender in Ireland?

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 07:33PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

No it isn’t? It’s classified as “Existence of single-sex education programmes in public schools”, and I wouldn’t just pick out one school as evidence of a whole lot? So what? There’s plenty of international evidence to suggest that Sweden’s education system has been in decline for years -

Education In Sweden

This is exactly why I’m not depending upon your own experience of education in Slovenia or any other European countries for that matter. By that standard the only co-ed I came across is what we used call “The Tec”, and they were considered by some people to be schools for academic underachievers. I don’t adhere to that belief though because I know they’re simply a different type of education. The fact that the top 10 schools in Ireland are dominated by single-sex schools is measured by a different standard.

In case you want evidence for that too -

The Top Secondary Schools in Ireland Have Been Revealed

The question is where you got stats that 30% schools Europe are single sex. You are writting novels and linking maps. The only thing you didn't supply is the source of information on basis of which you claim 30% of schools in Europe are single sex. All I can conclude from your posts is that you are presenting bs you invent as fact.

I have no intention discussing merits of Swedish school system with you. And I'm certain you will also claim you know more about Slovenian school system than me.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 07:33PM

The % of fee paying schools on that list is enormously high, yet the focus is on how they're single sex?!

Basically, all that list shows is that if you've a barrier fee, you get better results as your mix of students is not as broad.

I mean what do Pres (PBC) and Scoil Mhuire in Cork have in common? Other than many of the kids who go to them are from exactly the same kind of demographic background - upper middle class Cork City.

In Ireland the majority of mixed schools are modern community schools. Also results wise, I don't know if they do any worse - they just have a much broader range of students and ranges of subjects that go from academic to practical.

You'd have to do a far more in-depth study actually looking at how similar profiles of students perform to get a real comparison. Otherwise you're just comparing one demographic with a different demographic that's on average from a wealthier background. It's a pretty pointless league table tbh.

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 07:43PM

There is plenty of research that doesn't support single sex schools are beneficial and there is plenty of research that claims the opposite. The only reason why we are discussing academic achievements in different schools is because One eyed Jack can't provide source for 30% of European schools being single sex. It's diversion.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 07:51PM

30% of European schools aren't single sex. 30% of Irish ones are. I'd be surprised if 2% were in most European countries except for Ireland and Britian.
The majority of schools in Ireland are coeducational, except in the cities where you've more traditional schools.

If you grew up in post 1970s rural or suburban Ireland you likely encountered modern public coeducational schools.

If you grew up in an older suburb or one of the cities, you likely see single sex education as normal as that's what you'd have been familiar with.

02-04-2019 07:55PM

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

How many close female friends would an average married guy have? Not that many, or none.

I have one. Almost had a second but she moved away last year. I'd be typical of married men in their mid 40s, and I'd say many have no female friends. Some would have no friends at all other than work acquaintances and husbands of their wife's friends.

One eyed Jack · 02-04-2019 07:57PM

meeeeh wrote: »

The question is where you got stats that 30% schools Europe are single sex. You are writting novels and linking maps. The only thing you didn't supply is the source of information on basis of which you claim 30% of schools in Europe are single sex. All I can conclude from your posts is that you are presenting bs you invent as fact.

I have no intention discussing merits of Swedish school system with you. And I'm certain you will also claim you know more about Slovenian school system than me.

I provided a source for the fact that Ireland is not in any way weird or abnormal because in many European countries 30% of their schools are single-sex, and internationally there are countries with a far greater representation of single-sex schools in their education system. I had no intention of discussing the merits or otherwise of either the Swedish or Slovenian school systems with you until you brought them up specifically, and I can’t claim to know more about the Slovenian education system than you do, simply because I don’t know how much you know about the Slovenian education system.

My point was simply that I wouldn’t base my opinions of any education system solely on the experiences of either one individual, one school, or one country, and I certainly wouldn’t import an education system wholesale from another country and think I could apply it to Ireland under the pretence of giving people more choices for their children’s education that they simply aren’t interested in.

02-04-2019 08:04PM

noubliezjamais wrote:

I have to agree with them. Even though we are friendly, there's still can be a barrier between men and women who are friends that you don't see in other nations. Is it the Catholicism?

I believe its because we get separated at school. I was in a mixed class for infants and high infants. For primary & secondary school we were separated. I don't believe this is the best way to go

One eyed Jack · 02-04-2019 08:05PM

meeeeh wrote: »

There is plenty of research that doesn't support single sex schools are beneficial and there is plenty of research that claims the opposite. The only reason why we are discussing academic achievements in different schools is because One eyed Jack can't provide source for 30% of European schools being single sex. It's diversion.

The reason we are discussing academic achievement in schools is because some parents care more about academic achievement than politics and philosophy. That’s why as long as they’ve been around, ET schools haven’t really been very successful in this country.

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 08:08PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

The reason we are discussing academic achievement in schools is because some parents care more about academic achievement than politics and philosophy. That’s why as long as they’ve been around, ET schools haven’t really been very successful in this country.

You still didn't reply which countries are among 'many in Europe that have 30% single sex education'.

One eyed Jack · 02-04-2019 08:18PM

meeeeh wrote: »

You still didn't reply which countries are among 'many in Europe that have 30% single sex education'.

I did provide you with a source for what I said, and you chose to dismiss it as wishful thinking in favour of your own individual experience. Fair enough like, but you can’t say a source wasn’t provided as evidence that what I said was fact.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 08:19PM

I was just looking through the details of the Slovenian education system (looked at OECD and EU reports) and it seems that it would have its origins in a more soviet influenced era. It's 100% secular (if publicly funded which about 99% of schools are ) and there's actually no evidence that there are any single-sex schools at all.

From what I can see, you couldn't have picked a worse example of a place with gender-segregated schools.

To quote the department of education here itself :

In assessing subject take up by gender in Irish education, it is worth remembering that approximately 36 per cent of second-level pupils in Ireland today attend single-sex schools. In a majority of European countries, there are no single sex schools and only a very small minority of pupils attend single sex education in the remaining countries. Unfortunately, internationally comparable data on gender differences in subject take-up at second level do not yet exist. It would be interesting to develop international data in this area because of Ireland’s distinctiveness among European countries in having such a significant proportion of single-sex schools.

https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Statistics/Se-Si-Gender-in-Irish-Education-Introduction-to-Chapter-9.pdf

I've lived on the continent (in several countries in Western Europe) and single sex education is very much a peculiarity of Britain and Ireland and much more so Ireland than Britain. It's practically unheard of in France for example and considered really weird.

The topic doesn't even tend to come up much as it's pretty much taken as a given that EU countries have mixed schools. I mean it would be like doing a report on single-sex universities. You'd get a look of disbelief that such a thing could even exist by many people.

We're very much the outlier on this topic.

The Irish and British fixation on school uniforms is also quite weird by international standards. It's something almost exclusively associated with former British colonies and the islamic world.

Irish education is quite strange by international norms as it's basically full of quite traditionalist religious schools that were morphed into public schools. We also came very late to the notion of full free second level education, only achieving that in 1966. Most countries in Europe had done so much earlier on and and would tended to have seen school as a public service at all levels far earlier than we did.

We also lagged the US by a long time. I mean, if you consider how developed the US public school system was in the early 20th century. I know my elderly relatives in Dublin were talking about how shocked they were that their 'grown up' cousins (aged 16-18) were "still at school" when most of them in that part of Dublin were gone by age 12 or 14!

Franz Von Peppercorn · 02-04-2019 08:27PM

Interesting that this topic which assumes (without evidence) that Irish people segregate more by sex than other European/Western countries and that the reason for it (also claimed without evidence) is because of segregation in school has moved onto being only about school segregation, and it’s merits or demerits.

Since it has though - this is a report below from a US study. Limited but some support for single sex being marginally better.

No need to copy Europe then.

A systematic review published in 2005 covering 2221 studies was commissioned by the US Department of Education entitled Single-sex versus coeducational schooling: A systematic review. The review, which had statistical controls for socio-economic status of the students and resources of the schools, etc., found that in the study on the effects of single-sex schooling

"the results are equivocal. There is some support for the premise that single-sex schooling can be helpful, especially for certain outcomes related to academic achievement and more positive academic aspirations. For many outcomes, there is no evidence of either benefit or harm. There is limited support for the view that single-sex schooling may be harmful or that coeducational schooling is more beneficial for the student."
"In terms of outcomes that may be of most interest to the primary stakeholders (students and their parents), such as academic achievement, self-concept, and long-term indicators of success, there is a degree of support for SS schooling.

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 08:32PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I did provide you with a source for what I said, and you chose to dismiss it as wishful thinking in favour of your own individual experience. Fair enough like, but you can’t say a source wasn’t provided as evidence that what I said was fact.

Do you have a link or a quote that includes 30%?

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 08:35PM

Basically, like health here, we evolved our public service out of a mess of religious institutions and charities and a system that really preserved a Victorian model for far longer than should have been the case.

When you look at Ireland from an economic and social development point of view, until relatively recent decades it was a strange, conservative basket case.

I know this is boards.ie and After Hours, but since some people on the thread seem to be genuinely interested in the topic, if you ever get a chance e.g. you've access to an academic library, have a read of Ireland through European Eyes (Mervyn O'Driscoll, Dermot Keogh, and Jéôme aan de Wiel, Cork University Press). They analysed the internal documents and chatter of ministries for foreign affairs from Belgian, French, Italian, Luxembourg, Dutch, and West German politicians, commentators and policy makers in general in the period ahead of our joining the EEC, and after WWII.

It's a very interesting read, as we tend to only view ourselves and our relationship with the world through the lens of Anglo-Irish relations or discuss ourselves in the context of independence etc.

Some of the commentary about Ireland from those countries at that time was more positive than we'd think, but some was pretty critical of where we were socially and whether we were even compatible with modern Europe at all.

It's just interesting to compare what was going on in that period to modern Ireland. It's really been a head headspinningly fast transformation and you start to appreciate how we have some institutional quirks, especially in health and education that very much come from our legacy.

A highly conservative school system is something that we definitely tend to take for granted and assume is normal elsewhere. It's just one of the very obvious legacy issues of quite a different mid 20th century to most of Europe

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 08:42PM

Anteayer wrote: »

I was just looking through the details of the Slovenian education system (looked at OECD and EU reports) and it seems that it would have its origins in a more soviet influenced era. It's 100% secular (if publicly funded which about 99% of schools are ) and there's actually no evidence that there are any single-sex schools at all.

It's not Soviet influenced (they fell out with Stalin) but it is predominantly secular. There are a few religious grammar schools but all co-ed (I think single sex education might be illegal but I'm too lazy to look for source).

Anyway I gave an example of Slovenia and Sweden because I know the system in one country and the other one was first link in Google. Both imply that interpretation of single sex education on the map in the link is a bit disingenuous. I'm too lazy to search by country but I definitely agree with you that single sex schools in most countries I know are extremely rare.

Electric Sheep · 02-04-2019 08:52PM

corminators wrote: »

I actually don't think men and women can work closely together on teams in the workplace. This is from experience of several places.

I've been working closely on a team of the opposite sex for many years. We've never had any issues at all.

Perhaps maturity level plays into it.

One eyed Jack · 02-04-2019 08:53PM

Anteayer wrote: »

From what I can see, you couldn't have picked a worse example of a place with gender-segregated schools.

I didn’t pick it though? It was meeeh who picked it, and Sweden, out of all the countries in Europe. I’m surprised nobody fingered Finland as the country Ireland should aspire to in terms of it’s education system tbh, but as it happens, this -

To quote the department of education here itself :

https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Statistics/Se-Si-Gender-in-Irish-Education-Introduction-to-Chapter-9.pdf

I knew it was about 10 years out of date, and it is, from 2007, because since then there have been a number of reports generated from the various stakeholders in Irish education about how to improve our education system, which always appears to be to their advantage, which I suppose is fair enough, it’s what any good self-involved lobby group would do.

I've lived on the continent (in several countries in Western Europe) and single sex education is very much a peculiarity of Britain and Ireland and much more so Ireland than Britain. It's practically unheard of in France for example and considered really weird.

The topic doesn't even tend to come up much as it's pretty much taken as a given that EU countries have mixed schools. I mean it would be like doing a report on single-sex universities. You'd get a look of disbelief that such a thing could even exist by many people.

We're very much the outlier on this topic.

The Irish and British fixation on school uniforms is also quite weird by international standards. It's something almost exclusively associated with former British colonies and the islamic world.

Irish education is quite strange by international norms as it's basically full of quite traditionalist religious schools that were morphed into public schools. We also came very late to the notion of full free second level education, only achieving that in 1966. Most countries in Europe had done so much earlier on and and would tended to have seen school as a public service at all levels far earlier than we did.

We also lagged the US by a long time. I mean, if you consider how developed the US public school system was in the early 20th century. I know my elderly relatives in Dublin were talking about how shocked they were that their 'grown up' cousins (aged 16-18) were "still at school" when most of them in that part of Dublin were gone by age 12 or 14!

The whole reason this thread went down the whole “education system” as the reason for some adults feeling about there was a barrier between them and the opposite sex was simply as a result of their own bias against an education system they grew up with.

Yet as is evidenced by far more people in Irish society who manage to get along with each just fine and don’t imagine there are any “barriers” between the sexes, or that one sex is the oppressor and it’s opposite the oppressed, the people who imagine they are being oppressed are by far and away simply a small minority of Irish society trying to promote their own ideas as for the good of all society, a sort of “won’t someone please think of the children” type who ignore the fact that parents generally are only interested in their own children, and those parents aren’t making the choices that lobbyists want them to make for their children.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 09:00PM

Ireland's surged ahead on gender equality and women's rights albeit quite late, but it's done well, ranking 5th in Europe at this stage.

I certainly wouldn't credit any of that to the education system (at least not at primary / secondary level), as if you go back into our relatively recent history the position of the country on those kinds of issues was remarkably poor. The huge changes here began with much wider access to 3rd level and that began to occur in the 1970s and expanded very dramatically through the 80s and 90s. So, you're looking at a society that's been shaped largely by a 4 decades of economic improvements and a change of the guard - with a very different group of people running society.

Ireland's just gone through some of the most rapid social changes that have been seen in Europe in recent decades across a whole range of topics where we've basically gone from weird outlier on the very conservative side to often ranking in the same kind of league as the nordic countries.

mada82 · 02-04-2019 09:02PM

In my place of work all the Irish men sit in groups with just men in the canteen. It’s the same with the Irish women.
The only table with consistently mixed gender is the table the polish and Brazilians sit at.
You could also say that the Irish and non Irish group together too though.

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 09:05PM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I didn’t pick it though? It was meeeh who picked it, and Sweden, out of all the countries in Europe. I’m surprised nobody fingered Finland as the country Ireland should aspire to in terms of it’s education system tbh, .

I never said Ireland should aspire to be like any other country. Education in Ireland is actually reasonably good (except maybe certain areas as languages). I gave those two examples to point out that map in your link is more wishful thinking than representation of actual situation. You are misrepresenting again.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 09:09PM

meeeeh wrote: »

I never said Ireland should aspire to be like any other country. Education in Ireland is actually reasonably good (except maybe certain areas as languages). I gave those two examples to point out that map in your link is more wishful thinking than representation of actual situation. You are misrepresenting again.

There's no point in trying to present a picture that's different from reality and there's also a lot of sense in continuously critiquing and developing what we have and striving for the best. I don't see any reason why Ireland can't aspire to be up there at the very top of the league.

Alternative facts that fit your personal beliefs tend to bring outcomes like Brexit and Trump.

Facts based policymaking's the only way to go.

meeeeh · 02-04-2019 09:14PM

Anteayer wrote: »

There's no point in trying to present a picture that's different from reality and there's also a lot of sense in continuously critiquing and developing what we have and striving for the best. I don't see any reason why Ireland can't aspire to be up there at the very top of the league.

Alternative facts that fit your personal beliefs tend to bring outcomes like Brexit and Trump.

Facts based policymaking's the only way to go.

I agree that education has to constantly improve but I replied because I hate when some present whatever their opinion is as a fact.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 09:20PM

meeeeh wrote: »

I agree that education has to constantly improve but I replied because I hate when some present whatever their opinion is as a fact.

Agreed!

There's a major issue with people plucking non-factual stats to muddy waters of online arguments.

One eyed Jack · 02-04-2019 09:30PM

meeeeh wrote: »

I never said Ireland should aspire to be like any other country. Education in Ireland is actually reasonably good (except maybe certain areas as languages). I gave those two examples to point out that map in your link is more wishful thinking than representation of actual situation. You are misrepresenting again.

I never said that you did! I said I was surprised that nobody fingered Finland as a country Ireland should aspire to, because Finland is usually the country that’s brought up in conversations about Irish education reform.

The map is an actual representation of the actual situation, and for someone who hates when people represent their opinions as fact, all you’ve rebutted my evidence with is cherry picking not just your own country, but your own individual experience, because you’re too lazy to bother doing your own homework.

Personally, I think the Irish education system is a product of Irish society - it relies on parental involvement in their children’s education in order to achieve the best outcomes for their children. I don’t think there is any such thing as a one-size-fits-all type of education whether it be in terms of sex, gender, religion, learning ability or what are considered by many people to be learning disabilities, or any other measures you’d care to mention.

beejee · 02-04-2019 09:40PM

Same sex schools is a non-issue, it's nothing. If it didn't work we'd know by now.

If a person would rather it be like f%ckmenistan because some report sometime somewhere by someone may have indicated weakly that f%ckmenistani's have a 0.000005 better idea of how to shave goats therefore have improved lives... Well, f%ck off to f%ckmenistan and enjoy.

The guts of this thread just looks like another disguised rant about the Catholic influence in ireland. How thrillingly refreshing.

Vicarious Function · 02-04-2019 10:00PM

Am enjoying this thread.

I belong to an Active Retirement group of about 65 members. I've often wondered why only women seem to join these groups even though there's no rule saying men can't join. The group to which I belong is 100% women. I know there can be exceptions to this situation, but still, the number of men joining this type of organization is very low.

There is an organization such as Men's Shed, which specifies by the name that it's "Men Only", but Active Retirement does not specify gender.

02-04-2019 11:00PM

Vicarious Function wrote: »

Am enjoying this thread.

I belong to an Active Retirement group of about 65 members. I've often wondered why only women seem to join these groups even though there's no rule saying men can't join. The group to which I belong is 100% women. I know there can be exceptions to this situation, but still, the number of men joining this type of organization is very low.

This is just my opinion, but I would guess it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of men are uncomfortable with a large majority of women in a group. I do some running and there is a local group I could join, but they are 90% women. To put it bluntly women in a large group talk too much and about topics in which i have little interest. There is also a more fussy vibe when you get a bunch of women together than with a bunch of men.

Also many older men spend most of their time with their wives so don't want to spend even more time with women.

There is an organization such as Men's Shed, which specifies by the name that it's "Men Only", but Active Retirement does not specify gender.

This is more attractive to older men as they can be sure there won't be women there, and they can indulge in whatever nerdy hobbies and have a good bitching session at the same time free of judgement.

A good balance works better.

Anteayer · 02-04-2019 11:00PM

Great retort there BeeJee. Nothing re-enforces an argument like xenophobic slurs towards made up countries.

One eyed Jack · 02-04-2019 11:40PM

Anteayer wrote: »

Great retort there BeeJee. Nothing re-enforces an argument like xenophobic slurs towards made up countries.

To be fair, the ridiculous argument that some adults put forward that some imaginary barrier that they perceive between the sexes correlates that strongly with their own education as children, deserves to be ridiculed. The point being of course that if other countries do things so much better than Ireland, those people are perfectly free to leave and go to those countries.

The OP assumes that it is Catholicism is predominantly responsible for this perceived barrier between the sexes, when Catholicism actually encourages mixing between the sexes as complementary to one another. Meanwhile, I’m not quite sure I would call it progress when our political representatives are waving their knickers about in the Dail, our Taoiseach is trying to use their influence to woo Kylie Minogue, and the director of the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland is suggesting that girls in school should be taught that boys are a danger to them.

A basket case of a country and we’ve come a long way you suggested earlier? I suppose it depends upon one’s own perspective and what values they want instilled in their own children.

Vicarious Function · 02-04-2019 11:58PM

Deleted User wrote: »

This is just my opinion, but I would guess it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of men are uncomfortable with a large majority of women in a group. I do some running and there is a local group I could join, but they are 90% women. To put it bluntly women in a large group talk too much and about topics in which i have little interest. There is also a more fussy vibe when you get a bunch of women together than with a bunch of men.

Also many older men spend most of their time with their wives so don't want to spend even more time with women.

This is more attractive to older men as they can be sure there won't be women there, and they can indulge in whatever nerdy hobbies and have a good bitching session at the same time free of judgement.

A good balance works better.

Is it just me, or does this have some misogynistic undertones?

Summing up with

A good balance works better.

I don't see where this applies to what went before.

Why do people self-segregate a lot by gender in Ireland?

Comments