Perdita Rambihar was most impressed when her youngest daughter, a petite girl, choose to play soccer on a community team with teenaged boys who towered over her. "She wasn't intimated. She didn't back down," Ms. Rambihar recalls.

She has three girls. The high-achievers, now aged 24, 22 and 19, are all pursuing university degrees in scientific fields. They've been active in a wide variety of sports and have done volunteer work in the Third World.

A hundred years ago, when some of Canada's first private schools were founded, it was a given that boys and girls should be educated separately.

Since then, the thinking about single-sex education has evolved greatly, with a growing body of empirical and anecdotal evidence showing that many girls and boys thrive, albeit for different reasons, in these settings.

Part of the reason is that these schools use teaching methods specifically geared to girls. Work is based on co-operative learning in groups, rather than the traditional notions of competitiveness -- one individual pitted against the next. In math classes at Havergal, the girls keep journals in which they write narratives about how they found solutions to the problems.

The advantages of all-girls education is quite a talking point these days. A lot of research is being done on the topic. And, earlier this fall, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton joined forces to appear together in newspaper ads supporting women's colleges in the United States.

The boys themselves run all of the extra-curricular activities, including ones that in co-ed schools would be out of their domain. When organizing a dance, for instance, the boys are in charge of everything: food, decoration, invitations. At assemblies, there's no pressure to be cool at all costs, so the boys are freed up to experiment creatively with musical and theatrical endeavours.

The result, he has found, is a heightened level of emotional awareness, something which is often lagging in co-ed schools, where a common complaint is about how teenage boys mature so much more slowly than girls.

But when some parents think of all-boys and all-girls schools, they worry about stigmatizing their children by not providing as much opportunity as possible to socialize and be comfortable with the opposite sex.

"That's a red herring," Mr. Roberts insists. Classes only account for eight hours of a day and there are plenty of socialization opportunities outside school.

In Toronto, there's a coalition of single-sex schools whose mandate is to provide shared activities, whether it be dances or student-leadership councils.

To hear these two educators speak so passionately and convincingly about their respective school environments, it's a wonder that more parents aren't abandoning the co-ed tradition.

At Rosseau Lake College in the heart of the Ontario wilderness, strong emphasis is placed on outdoor education. It might seem a setting that would appeal more to boys, but headmaster Joe Seagram says that almost 45 per cent of the student body is made up of girls now.

The one thing that these educators will agree on is that picking the right private school -- whether it's co-ed or single-sex -- is all about finding the right fit for your child.

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