Learning Together: The History of Co-Education

The history of co-education is a very interesting one, boys were the only one taught in free formal public schools and the girls were smuggled in to be taught after the boys had left for the day. Most prestigious schools like Harvard College only accepted boys into their schools. School in general was not for girls. They were said to be homemakers and the boys were the ones who should have a career.  When girls were taught they were only taught in the summer by under qualified female teachers while boys were taught by qualified male teachers. This system began to change as the people of Massachusetts began to blur the sharp gender distinction between the formal public schooling that was open only to boys and the informal education that was available to both girls and boys.  In the process, girls as students and women as teachers earned a place in public education since parents wanted their girl children to have the same opportunities as the boys and paid the male teachers to teach the girls.

When I look at schools in today’s society one can see that it is a far cry from what took place in the 17th and 18th centuries where boys were the ones being educated. In class rooms all across America girls are outnumbering boys in leaps and bounds.