Men and women think differently. But does that mean boys and girls should be taught differently and in separate schools? Some educators tend to think so. In the US, over 500 public schools have set up single-sex classrooms and entirely segregated campuses based in large measure on supposed scientific claims that there are differences in the way brains of boys and girls worked.

But, according to a recent study, brain science offers no basis for teaching boys and girls separately. The study, which reviewed existing knowledge on the link between neuroscience and learning, assumes significance as a number of single-sex schools are coming up on the false premise that boys and girls learn differently.

“Beyond the issue of scientific misrepresentation, the very logic of segregating children based on inherent anatomical and physiological traits runs counter to the purpose and principle of education,” says Lise Eliot of the Chicago Medical School at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in the US, who authored the study which recently appeared online in the journal Sex Roles.

World over, single-gender schools have existed for centuries. But, these schools were established mostly for cultural reasons or for ease of administration. However, nearly a decade ago, as the understanding of the human brain improved, many educators started articulating the need for separate pedagogical needs for boys and girls, often misusing or misconstruing a small number of studies.

“Existing neuroscience research has identified few reliable differences between boys’ and girls’ brains relevant to learning or education,” opines Eliot who authored two books, including the acclaimed Pink Brain, Blue Brain on developing brains. While writing Pink Brain, Blue Brain she reviewed much of the data on sex differences in children’s vision, hearing and brain maturation. “I found little evidence that mere gender segregation is a magic bullet for improving student outcomes,” Eliot says.

According to Eliot, single-sex school advocates often claim differences between boys’ and girls’ brains based on studies carried out in adult men and women. But such effects have rarely been found in children.

“It is wrong to assume that children’s brains operate like adults’. In reality, they are works-in-progress, and much of what influences adult neural processing is due to individuals’ social and educational experience. Therefore the assumption that because gender differences in the brain are biological, they are fixed or “hardwired” is incorrect,” she says.

In the paper, Eliot reviewed seven specific claims often used to justify the need for sex-segregated learning. These include gender difference in brain maturation rate as well as sequence between boys and girls, impact of sex hormones on learning and preferred learning styles of each gender. For each one of them, she showed how the science has been misrepresented and its findings have been exaggerated to build a rationale for sex-segregated education, which misleads parents into believing that there is a scientific basis for teaching boys and girls in separate classrooms.

Decades of research in psychology have uncovered statistically significant sex differences in a large variety of traits and abilities. However, these group differences are on the small side, so that if you look at the scores for abilities — including speaking, reading, writing, math, science, empathy, emotionality, activity level, athleticism, risk-taking and self-control — the range of scores within an only boys’ group or an only girls’ group is much larger than the difference between the average boy and girl.

“Segregation, in fact, deprives boys and girls of the opportunity to learn from each other, work together, and respect and appreciate each other,” Eliot told KnowHow.

Brain scientists already know that opposite-sex siblings are good for each other; brothers bring out girls’ active / athletic sides, while sisters promote their brothers’ verbal and interpersonal skills. There is also pretty good evidence that girls promote boys’ academic growth in co-ed classrooms.

“For girls, the data are more mixed. But my personal view is that girls need to learn early on that they can compete with boys, that they can be as good in math and science as boys,” says Eliot. And although research shows that men and women — not boys and girls — tend towards different learning styles, there is no evidence that teaching geared to such differences is beneficial.

Scientists are concerned about the alarming amount of misinformation floating around about neurocognitive development. Usha Goswami, director, Centre for Neuroscience and Education, University of Cambridge, the UK, highlighted in a 2006 paper in Nature Reviews Neurosciences some “neuromyths” that have taken root in education.

She said a myth such as “brain-based learning” or that “a child’s brain will not work properly unless it does not receive the right amount of stimulation at the right time” obscures the important strides made by cognitive neuroscience in many areas relevant to education.

It may be true that single-gender schools have advantages, such as easy management and disciplining children. “But the objective of education is much more,” says Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal of the coeducational Springdales School, Pusa Road, Delhi. “A school is a microcosm of the world we live in. It is about diversity, respecting humanism and learning through difference,” she says.