The central question of this series concerned single-sex education.
Would boys and girls behave differently once separated?
In certain lessons, the answer appeared to be yes.
Music provided one striking example.
The boys struggled to engage with the school song and the formal atmosphere surrounding it. The girls responded considerably more enthusiastically and were generally better behaved.
One girl nevertheless disrupted proceedings with a wolf whistle.
She was removed from the classroom and later encountered the Headmaster.
The response was interesting.
Rather than simply continuing the confrontation, the Headmaster asked her to sing the school song.
She did so rather well.
He applauded.
It was a clever piece of discipline because it gave a pupil who had recently misbehaved an immediate opportunity to do something successfully.
The incident demonstrated that the old-fashioned school being recreated was not based entirely upon punishment.
Praise could be equally important.
Elsewhere, however, the separation of the sexes produced unexpected results.
When pupils were asked to select representatives for a debate, the boys organised themselves comparatively efficiently, nominating candidates and voting.
The girls descended into argument until a teacher intervened.
At first sight this might appear to tell us something profound about differences between boys and girls.
On closer examination, however, there was another explanation.
The boys had apparently received more direction from their teacher at the beginning. The girls had been given greater freedom to organise themselves.
What appeared to be a difference between the sexes may therefore have been partly a difference in teaching.
That is precisely why experiments of this sort need to be treated cautiously.
Television naturally searches for contrasts.
Education is rarely so tidy.
The subsequent “balloon debate” provided better entertainment.
Four pupils represented Shakespeare, Mozart, Einstein and Freud. The imaginary balloon was in danger and the pupils had to argue which famous passenger deserved to survive.
Freud won by sixteen votes to twelve.
More interesting was the social behaviour surrounding the vote.
The boys appeared to vote together while the girls were less united. One participant complained afterwards that two girls had broken ranks and voted for the boys’ candidate.
Another pupil observed that the boys had developed into a fairly coherent group while the girls had divided into several smaller factions.
Again, one should resist drawing universal conclusions.
Thirty teenagers taking part in a television programme cannot represent an entire generation.
But as an observation of group behaviour, it made fascinating viewing.
