Whether students should have a tablemate of a different gender

Whether students should have a tablemate of a different gender

In most schools in China, two or three students in the same row sit together. You may wonder whether they have the same gender or the opposite gender. The answer is very clear: they have the same gender.

So why do teachers put students of the same gender together instead of the opposite gender? It is because they think students can study better if their seats are arranged in this way. When students study in middle school and high school, they are during their adolescence. That means they want to make friends or even fall in love with a person with the opposite gender. And if they really fall in love, they will spend much time on things that have nothing to do with their studies. As a result, they grade may fail. Teachers do not want this kind of things to happen. So they think if they make students of the same gender sit together and separate those of the opposite gender, the possibility of students’ falling in love will decline. Then students will have better grades.

But do things really work as teachers think? The answer is no. Take my class in high school and our neighbor class as an example. In our class, students of the same gender sit together, while in their class students of the opposite gender sit together. Many teachers thought our neighbor class was taking a risk, but to their surprise, our neighbor class did much better than our class in the Entrance Examination. So what is the reason?

In fact, putting students of the opposite gender together has many advantages. Firstly, the encouragement from people with the opposite gender is much more inspiring than that from people of the same gender. Secondly, when students study together, they do not want to share things that are good for their studies with others, because they think others are their competitors. But one usually will not regard a person of the opposite gender as his/her competitor. So such kind of things rarely happens among people with the opposite gender. And when students with the opposite gender sit together, they will help each other, thus, there will be improvements in their studies.

To summarize, I think teachers should let students with the opposite gender sit together if they really want to improve their students’ studies.