I’ll repond to rebdovid first, as he started the thread.
I too, was in a boy’s only school, and the rebbeim as well tried to teach us a little bit – guess how many listened and didn’t make fun of how “extreme” the rabbis are? Almost none; actually, just one – me, even though at first I was counted in that number as well. The MO home and the TV culture (nowadays it’s the smartphone and social media) taught us how to think and behave. What was normal on TV was normal to us.
Every one of the boys in that school was in contact with girls; no exceptions. Every one of them watched R rated movies and worse, sometimes behind their parents’ back…when you open the door to the yatzer hora, he kicks it down. In a co-ed school, imagine telling teenage boys not to look at the girls. You’re putting the michshol right in front of them and saying the equivalent of “don’t think about a pink elephant”, but magnifying it by a ten fold with raging hormones and daily availability.
Just how many “more religious” children were damaged by their daily exposure to members of the opposite gender to justify a kiruv project? I’m not a chabad chossid, far from it, but if you want to see school-kiruv in action, look at their mahalach – they put a few non-frum students in with a (gender separate) group of frum kids, the frei get shlepped along with the majority. The ratio is about 1:10 I believe. Either way, we don’t sacrifice our own children for kiruv.
Would you give your children experimental anti-cancet drugs that they don’t need, if there were a chance of them being fatal, in order to help other kids who need the drug?
Aside from what everyone knows goes on in hallways and stairwells, whatever rules a school makes against intergender relationships, do you really expect pubescent students to simply not follow their hormones when exposed daily to available and willing stimuli? It’s preposterous. The reason why we keep away from contact with members of the opposite gender (henceforth MOTOG) is because more exposure equals more of a yatzer hora. What we see and hear everyday influences us.
Most MO schools separate genders for limudei kodesh, but there is still quite a lot of mixing elsewhere, as well as in extra curricular activities. Is it a surprise then, when relationships or casual aveiros develop?
Many MO believe in this as a shitah, that it’s better to be exposed and remove the mystery, and that even sinning is natural and unavoidable anyway. They liken it to drinking alcohol. They say, “are you that weak that you can’t even be around women and not have hirhurim?” That is completely against how chazal view the yatzer hora – “yisrachek odom es atzmo meod meod meod (3 meods!) Min hanashim”…be very,. Very, very distant from women. Does that mean we can’t work with women? No, because poskim say that you could, since you’re too busy working to have hirhurim.
Teenage boys are too busy being teenage boys NOT to sin if they are with girls.
The difference lf course, is that alcohol is not assur and social interaction with women is. That’s not a “chumra”. Shulchan aruch, from gemara, is clear that even asking “how are you” is assur gamur. I asked rav belsky once if maybe “how are you” nowadays has no intention of “kiruv daas” and is no different than the permitted “good morning”, he answered that there is still a difference and that one should not say “how are you”. Granted that may not be the accepted standard even in the Yeshiva world, as many rebbetzins have addressed me so, but to socialize and have full kiruv hadaas is definitely assur.
It seems that you’re “right wing” MO and that you’re consistently quoting rabbi willig, who is on the far right of the MO world. Indeed the differences between that minority and the yeshiva world are far less than I’ve described. He influences people who are interested in learning and who have inspired themselves to transcend the world they come from, but the MO world is still pretty much the same as it would be without him and rabbi shechter. Unfortunately, they have not accomplished much in changing MO or even YU, as YU has grown increasingly polarized between the handful of people who take yiddishkeit seriously and the rest who are barely religious. Growing up I had heard of rabbi shechter and heard him speak a couple of times, but he had zero influence on me and my family.
If everyone in MO were like him and rabbi willig, the taanos list I wrote would be much shorter.