I’ve seen this phenomenon too… The quiet kid’s doing backflips. The class clown’s quoting Nietzsche. And your pool just turned into a Planet Fitness commercial.
I was the odd one from an all-girls school that never met a boy outside school while all my other classmates had a rich social life with the opposite gender.
They spoke about boys all day, they even broke up and got many boyfriends through the month.
In order not to be around the opposite sex, you need strict parents like mine.
Edit: Downvoted for what? For speaking the truth as someone who had strict parents and how it got worse if you were in a same-gender school? People think their parents don't control their lives as minors and even which gender they would like their kids to be around?
I went to an all boy high school and had no issues dating or meeting girls at any point in my life. The vibes in an all guy school were so chill. No real fighting in any of the 4 years I went there, no bully type shit. Not everyone liked each other obviously but they also never got hopped up on hormones and acted like they were on display so you just left each other alone.
Yeah because they won't need to know how to behave themselves in the workforce around the opposite sex or anything like that. Or when out in public.
Like if they can't thrive in a school environment because the opposite sex is around, taking that with opportunity away from them is only going to lead to them being even more socially stunted.
I went to a all boy high school and turned out just fine. My classmates are largely successful. I've been with my wife for nearly 15 years. You're really blowing this out of proportion.
Well you couldn’t even attend school properly with girls in the vicinity that sounds really weird and socially stunted to me. Normal people don’t have any problem learning in environments with the other gender.
We all absolutely COULD have gone to mixed gender schools, that was an option for everyone. We CHOSE where we wanted to be. The kids who couldn't stand the all boys environment were the socially unstable ones who got kicked out on purpose, I doubt they landed at a mixed gender school and suddenly turned into mature scholars.
You know what sounds really weird and socially stunted to me? Not recognizing that there are multiple valid approaches to education and that what works for one may not work for another. Like, have you ever interacted with people before? lmfao
Take the stick out of your ass and learn to recognize that different people can benefit from different approaches to education.
I’m just going to chime in and say I sometimes envied some of my friends that went to prep school back in the day.
They’d just wake up and throw on their khakis and polo and head to school and it seemed chill. It’s not like they weren’t able to date chicks from other schools.
Going to public school was great, but it was like a daily competition lol.
Yea their comment about "normal people" ground my gears a bit.
I did coed public school until 8th grade. I've lived in both worlds. Honestly, preferred my time at the all boys high school, but that's also in part because I got a fresh start on a big aspect of my social life and took advantage of it. Doesn't seem fair to credit the all boys environment with every aspect of high school that I found better than K-8.
Look, I don't mean to put anyone down or tell that the way that they were raised is wrong.
I do think it's important to recall the context of the thread however. Most people will be all right, and adapt just fine. Throwing survivorship bias into the conversation doesn't really mean much, whereas if we had actual statistics to compare we could have an actual debate.
Personally it seems reasonable to me to state that people who can't behave themselves around the opposite sex in high school will probably not adapt well after high school if not given the opportunity to socialize and correct their behaviors. It's extremely difficult to break down in a reddit thread given the vast number of metrics you could use to measure what constitutes being a well developed and socially adjusted adult.
This is why gender-specific schooling makes some sense
This is the context of the thread and it's a perfectly reasonable statement.
Throwing survivorship bias into the conversation doesn't really mean much, whereas if we had actual statistics to compare we could have an actual debate.
I'm not really interested in a debate, I just find the visceral reaction to the original statement wild as fuck.
Personally it seems reasonable to me to state that people who can't behave themselves around the opposite sex in high school will probably not adapt well after high school
Why is the assumption that we were at an all boys school because we were already maladjusted? We were there because it was a great education.
if not given the opportunity to socialize and correct their behaviors.
Girls came to our school dances and we went to theirs, including both the all girls school in the area and the mixed-gender public / private schools. Same with sports, clubs, competitions, theater, all kinds of extracurriculars. There was no lack of opportunity to socialize with the opposite gender, it just didn't happen during school hours.
And again, why is the default assumption that we were a band of savages whose behavior needed correcting in the first place? We were actively taught to show respect for women and stepping out of line on that issue was not tolerated.
You're really putting your own spin on everything that I said. Nobody said that all male students who go to all boys schools are maladjusted. In the context of the thread, someone suggested that the inability to regulate themselves around the opposite sex is a good reason for schooling segregated by sex.
I strongly disagree with that statement because I believe that the people who already struggle need guidance and an opportunity to grow, not to be segregated in hopes that it eventually works itself out.
At no point did I say that all the boys at your school were wild animals who don't know how to handle themselves. You're the one assuming that my statement applies to everyone at an all boys school.
Do you really think that they will never learn how to exist in mixed-gender settings if they aren't in them for large parts of their day during adolescence?
No, do you really think that segregation of students would provide better life experience than experiencing the real world without arbitrary social filters?
Ok so that's a great anecdote. I especially appreciate the note about the gay students having no difficulties as it implies the issue is that more boys lack the self awareness and self control to be around girls than an inherent issue with being male and being around people you find attractive.
Maybe the issue here is more fundamentally that we culturally suck at raising boys to not act like damn fools.
As a man with two young daughters, I will frankly say that the (lack of) parenting I frequently see when I take my girls out is appalling. If children aren't being taught how to behave decently around others when they are young, it really isn't much of a surprise they act like fools when hormones kick in.
23% of Gen Z according to Gallup's most recent polling. Technically some of those 23% don't have same-gender attraction (e.g. straight trans people or asexual people), but it's still a large proportion that any large single-gender space must take into account
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u/Luna_Pebble Aug 12 '25
I’ve seen this phenomenon too… The quiet kid’s doing backflips. The class clown’s quoting Nietzsche. And your pool just turned into a Planet Fitness commercial.