Islamic University
Subject: Summary of Coeducation History and its Results
Author: Mohamed Diya al Rahman al Azami al Umari
Issue No.: 2
Page No.: 127-129
Year of Publication: Rajab 1388 – September 1968
Summary of Coeducation History and its Results
Coeducation is one of the fruits of the western civilization. Anyone who browses history
of past nations does not find a mention of this education. The Greek civilization, which
reached a high level of progress and civilization, separates men and women in education.
The Roman civilization, which advocated a second-to-none type of freedom, neither
allowed that type of education not envisioned that new thinking. And we have postgraduate studies in the Chinese civilization that cut long way in education long ages ago.
However, coeducation was mentioned in none of them, unlike the western civilization
and later imitating Islamic countries.
U.S. was the first to adopt that type of education. The term “coeducation” was first used
in 1774 and the matter remained exclusive to the U.S. until only 50 years ago when
European countries and then most of countries adopted it.
Reasons for coeducation spread:
1- Industrial Revolution:
When that revolution broke up in Europe, it forced women to get out of home because the
need became dire for many hands in order to increase production. So women competed
men in most of the fields, including education and guidance in order to plug the shortage.
And since the aim of education is to qualify for work in men’s fields, there is no problem
for women to work at schools and educational centers, side by side with men, to listen to
lectures and offer guidance in one topic through one channel because their outdoor work
was the same.
2- Economy:
When number of learners increased, the government found itself responsible in front of a
large number of men and women so it was hard for the government to establish several
schools for each gender separately and found the solution in coeducation system, which
softens the burdens and spares it huge tuitions. Coeducation encouraged the government,
as well as the then circumstances and situations such as western civilization dreams,
which allow them to let girls sitting next to boys.
With these schools available, we find that high-class and rich people did not let their
children to join such kind of schools. Rather, they sent them to private schools that did
not adopt coeducation system, according to the author of the Encyclopedia of Social
Science: “Prestigious people neither encouraged coeducation nor sent their children to
coeducation schools.”
French writer Meyer says in his book “The Rise of Education in the Twentieth Century”:
“Most of the people despise that kind of educational system, which does not separate
between men and women, causing lechery and obscenity to mushroom.” And we have an
example from the State of Russia, which adopted coeducation system after the Socialist
Revolution 1920-1943 only to cancel it 25 years later. European countries were also
about to cancel coeducation in 1943 on account of lechery and bad deeds that surfaced
out of it.