RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL / SP) defended, on Wednesday, December 11th, a model of school with gender separation. The movement was born in the 1960s in Europe under the name of Single-Sex Education and, in Brazil, is present in some private schools in Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba.
“There is strong pressure, especially from feminists, for schools to house boys and girls in the same room, even though there are good pedagogical and empirical current arguments recommending the opposite,” said the parliamentarian without citing what these arguments are.
Há forte pressão, principalmente das feministas, para que as escolas abriguem na mesma sala meninos e meninas, mesmo havendo bons argumentos pedagógicos e empíricos atuais recomendando o contrário.
— Eduardo Bolsonaro🇧🇷 (@BolsonaroSP) December 11, 2019
Eduardo also said that 90 percent of the 25 best English schools are single sex, but once again did not mention his source of research on the data.
Sex-separated education was a common model in Brazil until the 1970s, when most schools adopted co-education.
Experts in the field argue that separating children by gender favors a sexist culture and entails some differences in school performance.
Although the president’s son uses the UK as an example, Finland is now the country with the best public schools, and has been for several years. However, the Finns do things a little differently than Eduardo Bolsonaro imagines. Read here.
One can therefore safely assume that this idea is yet another attempt by the increasingly aggressive evangelical churches, who are the most important and loyal supporters of Bolsonaro’s policies, to get the country under their wing.