In most schools there is a definite plan to separate boys from
girls, especially in their sleeping quarters. Love affairs are not
encouraged. They are not encouraged in Summerhill either --
but neither are they discouraged.

In Summerhill, boys and girls are left alone. Relations be-
tween the sexes appear to be very healthy. One sex will not
grow up with any illusions or delusions about the other sex. Not
that Summerhill is just one big family, where all the nice little
boys and girls are brothers and sisters to one another. If that
were so, I would become a rabid anti-coeducationist at once.

Under real coeducation--not the kind where boys and girls
sit in class together but live and sleep in separate houses --
shameful curiosity is almost eliminated. There are no Peeping
Toms in Summerhill. There is far less anxiety about sex than at
other schools.

Every now and again an adult comes to the school, and
asks, "But don't they all sleep with each other?" And when I
answer that they do not, he or she cries, "But why not? At
their age, I would have had a hell of a good time!"

It is this type of person who assumes that if boys and girls
are educated together, they must necessarily indulge in sexual
license. To be sure, such people do not say that this thought
underlies their objections. Instead, they rationalize by saying
that boys and girls have different capacities for learning, and
therefore should not have lessons together.

Schools should be coeducational because life is coeducational.
But coeducation is feared by many parents and teachers because
of the danger of pregnancy. Indeed, I am told that not a few

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