A number of psychologists favour the mixing of boys and girls on educational and psychological grounds. According to them co-education helps to understand each other’s point of view properly. It is considered essential for the cultivation of harmonious and well balanced personality. According to the “National Committee on Women’s Education”, “Mutual contact removes the unhealthy feelings of curiosity which is born out of strangeness and is a feature of seclusion and segregation of sexes”. In co-educational institutions both boys and girls learn to appreciate each other’s obvious superiority or inferiority.
Association of boys and girls is helpful in the growth of normal and effective personality. Ordinarily, boys and girls display silly shyness when they happen to talk to each other. The students of coeducational institutions overcome these shyness and attain an emotional balance. They understand each other better. Aderitic once remarked, “Female friendship is necessary for intellectual development”. Dr. Freud believed that co-education alone could keep young people free from diseases of mind.
From the financial point of view co-education is always a more economic proposition and it becomes virtually unavoidable in the country like ours, where a vast portion of the population lives in villages. India’s economy is not so highly developed and with the limited resources it is also not possible to open separate schools and colleges for girls in adequate number. So co-education is the readymade solution for problem of expansion of girls’ education.
The ‘National Committee on Women’s Education states, “We have to keep in mind the economic advantage which co-education has. To open separate schools for girls in the middle and the secondary stage, particularly in rural areas where the required number of girls might not be forthcoming would mean much extra financial burden and unnecessary duplication which would be wasteful”.
It is true that for expanding women’s education we cannot wait till separate girls’ schools are started specially in rural areas. But the remedy lies in throwing open boys schools to girls. Instead of duplicating expenditure, we may make use of the existing resources for both boys and girls. The same building, the same equipment, the same library and other facilities can be utilized for girls.
There is shortage of women teachers and it is, therefore, difficult to get sufficient staff for educational institutions specially meant for women. Co-educational institutions can meet such requirements easily by employing some women teachers along with the male staff. Co-education promotes discipline and makes the students more responsible. Where boys and girls study together in the same class, they behave in a better way. They learn good manners and also are careful about their behaviour.
Coeducational institutions bring out the best in boys and girls and are necessary for leading a happy and prosperous life. It helps to develop a desirable behaviour among students and improve their efficiency. Therefore, co-education is essential for social, intellectual, moral and educational development of students. For promoting literacy among women and to enable them to go hand in hand with men in different walks of life co-education cannot be avoided.
The practice of co-education is hotly debated so far as the secondary stage is concerned. A secondary school deals with adolescent children. This period of life is most critical, crucial and slippery. Instead of creating an emotional equilibrium, it disturbs the emotional balance of students. In the absence of proper handling, there is danger of delinquency and immortality.
The adolescents have no control over their feelings and sometimes they indulge in undesirable relationship. At the college stage some sort of maturity has been achieved which is lacking at the secondary stage. Co-education at the secondary stage, therefore creates problems, aggravates difficulties, produces risky situation for normal trespass. Dr. Stanley Hall opined, “During the early years of adolescence when the body is rapidly changing and a sense of an awkwardness and reticence is felt, the two sexes should not intrude upon each other”.
In the co-educational institutions the girls are the worst sufferers. In the absence of women teachers in the schools, they cannot explain their peculiar difficulties, if any, to the headmaster or other teachers. Their all round development gels retarded.
Society does not permit the free mixing of grown up boys and girls. Obviously the traditions of the community are transferred to school. Perhaps this is the chief consideration of the parents when they do not agree to send their daughters to boys schools According to some educationists the mixing of sexes at the adolescent stage, when sex urge is at its pitch is not advisable. It distracts the attention of both boys and girls and hampers their progress in studies. But the strongest objection is from the moral point of view. There is possibility of increase in sex criminality with co-education.
Conditions in the present high schools (specially in rural areas) leave much to be desired in terms of accommodation, staff, curricula, organisation etc. The risk involving the present unsatisfactory conditions is so great that, there is no security and safety’ in allowing mixed education. Moreover, the inability of teachers to exercise proper influence over girls, overcrowded class, inadequate and inefficient .staff, small number of girls and their shyness to express their feelings before boys, inadequate sanitary arrangements and one type of curriculum both for boys and girls create a good deal of problems in the co-educational institutions.
From the economic and administrative view-point, one must admit that, co-education is the only solution for the needed development of girls’ education in the country. Co-education is necessary in many cases, unavoidable in some and undesirable only in a few.
In this regard the Secondary Education Commission suggested, “It seems to us that there can be no hard and fast policy with regard to co-education and that in this respect the pattern of education in our schools cannot be very much in advance of the social pattern of the community where the school is located. We are of opinion that where it is possible, separate schools for girls should be established as they are likely to offer better opportunities than in mixed school; to develop their physical, social and mental attitudes and all states should open such schools in adequate numbers. But it should be open to girls whose parents have no objection in this matter to avail themselves of co-education facilities in boys’ schools”.