ARGENTINA-WOMEN: Prestigious School Refuses to Go Coed

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 7 1997 (IPS) - Students at one of Argentina’s most prestigious high schools are refusing to open their classrooms to females, arguing that the educational level of the three-century- old institution would suffer.

The director of the Women’s Social and Political Institute, Susana Stilman, pointed out that today a majority of university students in Argentina are women, and expressed her concern over what kind of education is being received by young men who defend tradition with such outdated arguments.

The Monserrat National High School in the north-central city of Cordoba, dependent on the public university there, was occupied Tuesday night by students and parents opposed to opening the institution to young women, under the argument that the school’s educational level would decline.

The Higher Council of the University of Cordoba, made up of the rector, deans, professors and alumni, unanimously voted this week to make the school coed, said Jorge Cuadrado with the Cordoba University Radio station.

The initiative to open the school’s doors to females emerged 18 months ago, as the result of student pressure, he told IPS. A vote last year at Monserrat High School indicated that the student body was split in nearly equal parts on the matter, although those opposed to making the school coed more actively defended their principles, he added.

The members of the council said that there was no regulation keeping female students from attending the school, and set a 60- day timetable for the institution to go coed.

The council added that if the resistance continued, the university would back legal action by female students kept from attending the school, although no charges have yet been filed.

The decision to make the school coed is based on the constitutional guarantee of equal opportunity. A humanities- oriented school, Monserrat is one of Argentina’s most outstanding secondary schools, which has produced a number of distinguished figures in the sciences, cultural fields and even former presidents.

Another private high school dependent on the University of Cordoba, the Manuel Belgrano, is coed, but only offers studies in accounting and economics. Another Manuel Belgrano National High School, in Buenos Aires, also founded several centuries ago and dependent on the university here, is coed and humanities-based.

Tradition is invoked by those opposed to making the Monserrat High School coed, but the arguments carry strong discriminatory overtones. “If the student body is 50 women, 50 percent of male students will be discriminated against,” said one father. The protesters say the best thing would be the creation of an exclusively female humanities-oriented school dependent on the university.

One mother said female students would drag down the school’s educational level, while a teacher based her rejection to the measure on a U.S. study that she claimed demonstrated that the performance of male students declines if they are taught along with female classmates.

“This has always been a boys’ school by tradition, and a change is always traumatic,” said Marta Siebert, a teacher who wants the legal system to intervene in favour of maintaining the status quo.

“It think it would be fine to keep the school open only for males, because it is a traditional school,” said a woman official representing the province of Cordoba in Buenos Aires.

Stilman called the debate “medieval,” lamenting that there were women who defended the school’s males-only status and the argument that female students were intellectually inferior.

Expressing her doubts as to the real quality of the education provided at the Cordoba high school, she added that “I believe that from now on many young women will think twice before fighting to attend a school where they will have that kind of classmate.”