Girls’ schools are jam-packed with lesbians.
Dear reader, I cannot speak with much authority about the storage of jam but I can tell you that girls’ schools, at least in Ireland, are – much like society! – mainly straight. Most second-level schools here are single-sex, and there’s an additional layer of complication woven in because a lot of the ‘good’ schools (better resources, better reputation, etc) are single-sex.
Claire Hennessy
Girls’ schools are super-bitchy.
This really depends on the school. This idea is part of a wider culture that supports the idea of women never being able to get along (oh those hysterical creatures!). Any environment where people are forced to be together five days a week is going to be stressful – it’s not just a girl thing.
Girls learn better in all-girls’ schools.
Okay, this one is actually true, but it pertains to academic learning versus social learning, as well as inviting investigation into how teaching works in mixed-sex environments and the extent to which the exam system merits rote learning (i.e. being docile, which is bolstered by ideas of what it means to be a ‘good girl’) versus independent thinking.
There will be midnight feasts aplenty!
Only if you’re a boarding school, I’m afraid, and even then it’s often more hassle than it’s worth.
You don’t get to study any of the ‘serious’ subjects.
This is part-truth and part-myth. There is certainly a tendency in single-sex schools to gender the subjects on offer – Tech Drawing & Woodwork are for the boys, Home Ec is for the girls – and this ranges from pressure on students to pick particular subjects to the simple fact of certain subjects not being available in certain schools. I probably wouldn’t have ever leaned towards Tech Drawing or Woodwork, but they were not options at my school anyway.
Girls are super-bitchy.
Well… you try being in an environment with people you haven’t chosen to be with, whose reason for being there is simply ‘to get out of there’, for five days a week and then tell me you’re completely chill with it… Yes, there is a bitchiness in girls’ schools but it’s coming from a place of deep stress. Teenage girls completely understand the pressure they’re under to perform femininity – even if they can’t or don’t articulate it as such – and sometimes it comes out as ‘bitchiness’, which is a highly-gendered term anyway. The system does nobody any favours but it does seem particularly cruel to expect people screwed over it by it, like women, to remain silent about it.
Uniforms are gross.
This is accurate, please continue.
The nuns will beat you.
There are hardly any nuns left. Worry not. The survivors are far too busy denying previous accounts of beating to start up new instances of it.
Everyone only eats salad.
Well, not everyone. Also, did you know that frozen water will help you lose weight? Um. I mean, everyone eats healthily. Yeah.
You’re doomed for life.
It takes a shockingly short space of time to readjust to ‘normal’ society. Dealing with a small group of people inevitably feels very similar to dealing with the world, and everything that they expect – whether they like it or not.
