The No Good Blog: Segregation Of The Sexes

Two co-ed Mumbai schools, Vibgyor School and Jamnabai Nursery School have banned girls and boys from touching or hugging members of the opposite sex in school premises ( June 14th, 2007 )in order to 'discipline' students who, according to the school authorities, are exposed to and easily influenced by violence and vulgarity on TV and other media. I really don't see how this helps.

Why remain co-ed if you're going to segregate the students? And more importantly, how does this serve any purpose? The kids are going to find ways to meet and have 'physical contact' outside of school anyway. The whole point of having co-eds is to bring up the children in healthy, natural environment; to have them learn how to interact and behave with opposite sex. It's not like when they get out of school ( or even while in school ) they're going to be able to avoid contact with members of the other gender.

It's no wonder our society turns out twisted, perverted males whose perception of women is shaped by the way they are portrayed on television and other media. What stops them from seeing them, not as individuals and equals, but as objects of desire and weaker beings to be exploited and abused? By stopping healthy interaction, aren't they stopping the learning process? You only have to login to a networking site like Orkut to see how totally desperate guys are to 'have friendship' [sic] with random girls and how they seem to emulate what they watch in movies; singing out songs in classes in a completely misguided attempt to woo girls. Listen to the talk in a boys' hostel and you'd have a fair idea what most males in the country think on the subject of women.

And women don't fare much better either. Many young girls seem almost physically uncomfortable in the presence of boys. They don't want to talk to them and certainly don't want any physical contact; not even, say, handing over a pen. And perhaps, it makes them more susceptible to being submissive and to tolerating abuse when they should stand up for themselves. They end up having weird ideas about life too. When I joined my company, we went through a little induction programme, as a part of which, we had to make a little presentation on any topic of our choice.

This young lady, fresh out of college with an engineering degree, dressed fashionably, speaking fairly well, spoke about 'The Requirement For Polygamy And Why It Should Be Legal'. More, allowing a man to have many wives ( technically, this is polygyny ). Now, I have no problems with polygamy if all the involved parties are fine with it ( assuming of course, polyandry is given equal importance ). But the reasons she came up with were a little disturbing, to say the least. She said that if a man were to remain unmarried, everything was fine and dandy. But if a woman were to be without a spouse, her life was a failure. And since there weren't enough men to go around, multiple wives who would share a husband was the only answer.

Really? This girl was at the threshold of her career, educated to a graduate level, placed with an MNC, and her views on the requirement of marriage were, medieval at best. If this isn't a clear example of how denying healthy childhood interaction between the sexes and filling up children's heads with nonsense distorts the youth's perception, then I don't know what is.

By banning physical contact on the premises, the school isn't stopping them from knowing about much more than just holding hands. Everything is now readily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. And children are much better with computers than most adults are anyway.

And finally, how long has it been since these people were kids themselves? Don't they remember anything? Since when did children start doing what the adults told them? Isn't adolescence the age of rebellion and defiance? Just the opportunity to break the rules will be reason enough.

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