Bad education

This article was first published in http://andaluciainformacion.es/andalucia/699507/la-mala-educacion/ on 10th September 2017.
"Men and women have the same dignity and the same rights, but they present differences that affect their whole person. The educational model of single-sex education bets on a specialized attention on those characteristics of each sex." Alfonso Aguiló.
With the beginning of the school year reopening the debate on the educational model, the constant changes in the different plans and the sick-to-death of a sector that often does not know what to stick to, and less, when it comes to guiding young people who are deciding their future and they are shaken by a political catharsis that contributes to throw very mediocre indices in reports like the known PISA. But from a few years to now a debate of another draft is reopeneing and is the one referring to the remarkable differences that the statistics between boys and girls show in what is already considered a phenomenon that affects not only Spain but a good part of the developed countries and on which there are studies that leave no room for doubt before two unquestionable facts: women obtain better grades than men in all subjects and with better records and, secondly, girls have a faster cognitive and social-emotional development than boys. The majority of studies place this difference in an average of two years, until puberty that marks a gap from which the margin is reduced. To what extent is mixed education adequate considering that both genders have obvious differences in their rate of psychosocial development?
 
Data. Girls mature earlier, a fact that is mainly due to differences in the pace of brain development, the different morphological structures of the brain and hormonal production. The corpus callosum that communicates the cerebral hemispheres is wider in women and that facilitates them in the processing of  language; in addition, the nucleus of the hypothalamus is two and a half times larger in men, which influences the field of regulation of emotions. The left brain lobe of boys, which is the control zone of thought, develops more slowly than the right one, which controls spatial relationships. In addition, girls have a more homogenous brain development. The two lobes mature at the same time and can therefore use both hemispheres for reading and emotional awareness. Because of this distinct and asymmetrical rate of brain development, boys are usually more adept at math and girls are more skilful in language. They perceive with greater intensity the sensations and do not inhibit them and, at the same time, they have more capacity of concentration. Similarly, with regard to behaviour, the female brain secretes more serotonin, a neurotransmitter that inhibits aggressiveness, while the male brain produces more testosterone, which, among other things, promotes aggressiveness. Always, in general terms, differences in brain structure make women have a much better developed sense of calculation and spatial measurement, as well as the fact of the corpus callosum being larger and the two hemispheres in the girls being more connected  makes them to be able to attend to various things or do various tasks simultaneously; man requires to go step by step. These and other eminently morphological and neurological differences influence psychosocial development and help make the path to maturity quicker for girls.
Alfonso Aguiló, in his book Educación diferenciada describes that, at certain ages, "the boys diminish their performance because the constant comparison with the girls causes them an inhibitory behavior", and this is the reason why the male adolescents "are a collective especially vulnerable". The PISA report shows that academic differences between girls and boys increase each year on the basis that mixed education predominates in the educational spectrum. 66.8% of the girls have never repeated, in boys it drops to 56.9. The 80.4% of girls accede to the bachillerato, whereas in boys it is of the 57,6. They are titled in high school 57.5 girls and 43.5 boys. At age 21 there are 37% girls in college, boys drop to 26.7. In reference to educational abandonment, it is 20.8 in girls and 28.8 in boys. In fact, school failure in men is overwhelming compared to women because it is more than double. Percentages that increase year by year and do so after decades of implementation of mixed education and, therefore, the community begins to seriously question the serious damage that the system seems to cause to children who have a pace of development and processing of emotions and interests different from those of women, who are more conscientious, disciplined and orderly.
Education. Current educational programs ignore the existence of these differences, mixed education or coeducation, taken as basic egalitarian principle, has cancelled them in its design. What was initially necessary to correct the social structures of inequality and discrimination, today needs an evolutionary adjustment. In Spain the Escuela Nueva, the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the Escuela Moderna of Ferrer i Guàrdia were the first examples of coeducation, reflected especially in the educational system of the Second Republic. Except for these cases, the teaching approach was single-sex, according to the role that the political system and social chores had given to men and women. For women, their education was only oriented to what was necessary to be wife, mother and housewife. It wasn't until 1970 that the Francoist education legislation was not modified, with the General Education Law that cancelled the prohibition of the mixed school. But it is from our current democracy that the compulsory nature of mixed education in public and private schools is imposed by law, understanding that it is in compliance with article 14 of our Constitution that prohibits any discrimination based on sex. At this point, studies that demonstrate differences in psychosocial development between boys and girls cannot serve as a justification for defending a discriminatory and inequitable educational system, much has been fought to advance gender equality so that some sectors of society play with it. But let's not confuse. What the evolution of Spanish youth shows is that we are mistaken in considering that equal rights and opportunities leads us to have to think that there are no differences between both genders. And there are, on the other hand, fortunately. And so what should be designed is an educational system that, especially in the cycles corresponding to the age of puberty -different in children than girls- help to get both of them to get to acquire the same knowledge and skills and reach maturity without the psychosocial dysfunctions that seem to be occurring in children because of the manifest superiority of girls of the same age. If, as a general rule, children cost more than girls in language, a teacher who intends to teach by the same method will not help children to read at the same rate and level as girls. And if the subjects in which the development of girls' brains implies a greater difficulty of compression than those of children, for example mathematics and, I insist, always in general terms, a method of teaching that does not take into account will allow girls to reach the same level of learning as boys. Equality of opportunity necessarily takes into account the differences between both sexes, thus, to extract the maximum potential to the individual. So, is differentiated education more effective? One final piece of evidence: seven of the ten best-performing British public schools in 2013 were of single-sex education -four boys and three girls. In the private sector, the figure rises to nine out of ten.