All-girls Schools Urgent Need for Innovations

Minji Cho

Prof. Kyle Brebner
IERW (03)
12 December 2015

All-girls Schools Urgent Need for Innovations

For three years, I have attended Sungshin Women’s University. As a mature adult and student, after experiencing three years of school life full of same sex, I sometimes regret entering an all-girls’ society. Not only in South Korea, but also in other countries in the world, women's schools are slowly but gradually dwindling. However education for women is still regarded as valuable and women's school needs to go along the current trends changing from moment to moment. All-girls schools should disappear because they offer a lack of natural sciences and engineering education, they provide no diverse human relationships in school, and they do not furnish women with virtues as a contemporary people.

All-girls schools are not advisable because they do not offer enough natural sciences and engineering classes. One of the most serious problems of women-only institution is chronic deficiency of departments and classes of Science and Engineering open for students who want to study these fields for double majors or interest. For example, among the seven female universities existing in Korea, only Ewha Women's University has three Engineering majors, not Natural Science such as Physics and Chemistrye: Computer Science, Electronics Engineering, and Chemistry& New Material Engineering. Unfortunately, they are newly founded majors and especially Chemistry& New Material Engineering was established recently in 2015. Generally women's schools focus on human science and art majors. However this does not offer students fair and rich chance of education. While some might believe that human science and art centralized education in all-girls schools is important as well, it does not mean that they could exclude other kinds of education that are normally offered to students in coed schools.

Another reason that all-girls schools are not desirable is they do not guarantee friendly senior-junior relationships. A weak union between alumni through infrequent alumni associations is one of the reasons that students seldom prefer women's schools. Human relationships between peers in school life are significantly valuable when you think back upon school life. However students in all-girls schools tend to follow an individual lifestyle, which is an obstacle to school activities that all seniors and juniors are participating in. According to an article in Women Newspaper written in 2014, the individualism in women's society is too serious to expect tightly knit community between themselves in school. Forty-two out of one hundred students who attend Women’s school in Seoul answered that the most serious problem of Women’s universities. Ten students also answered that female students tend to be indifferent to organizational activities such as clubs and academic associations in school. Besides, especially in Korean society, it is true that our society is still far from a society where women rise to high-ranking positions naturally. This societal atmosphere means that there is lack of women seniors and pioneers who could be role-models for women college students.

Finally, all-girls schools are not recommendable because they do not socialize women as suitable people whom contemporary society needs. Today is the era of PR and the era of inevitable competition beyond sexuality. However girls who spent many years in all-girls schools are reluctant to make their own voice loud when they run into an animated and somewhat rough society. Actually most women's colleges set forth the feminine and passive values as a good girl, and girls who internalized these values would experience maladjustment at rough society which requires bold and brave behaviors. For example, on the official blog of Sungshin Women's University, there is a posting indicating the educational aims of the university. It says that one of the bedrock principles of Sungshin is “a well-rounded, cultured individual, a sensitivity to and appreciative eye for beauty.” Some people might say that these soft power oriented values are precious and important. However if we follow them straightly, we must be swept away in the strong current of a rapidly changing society because these values are too delicate and naïve for women to win through the male-dominant hard world.

In conclusion, all-girls schools should be abolished because they offer insufficient educational programs and majors of natural sciences and engineering education, they only to provide students narrow range of senior-junior relationships in school, and they do not equip women with strong values suitable for current trend of society. The society no longer views all-girls schools as an object to protect. Will all-girls schools disappear as historical remains if they fail to present a higher value than co-educational schools?