Single gender education

I know I'm not technically a U of I GWS major any more (though I think it's a lifelong title, really). But here's a GWS related conflict for you. I'm teaching in a coed high school now, and the other day, a teacher who was using my classroom made the comment that he thought all high school should be separated by gender. He used to work at an all boys' high school. Having attended an all girls' high school myself (which I loved) I tend to agree with him. I don't specifically track how often students of different genders raise their hands or do any other behavior. but I do notice that they spend a LOT of time during the day discussing who is dating whom, who is eyeing whom across the room, who is passing notes to whom during class, who is paying extra careful attention to their appearance for whom, etc. The whole environment is very heteronormative (though I suppose dividing anything into two genders would be heteronormative, too) and very different from how I went through my four years of high school. So, one part of me knows that my high school experience played a major role in cultivating a lot of the things I like about myself now. And the other part of me says that treating people differently or separately based on gender only reinforcees the dichotomy and naturalizes the social construct. I've been telling myself that gender divided schools are an appropriate response to the fact that we can't avoid that boys and girls are raised differently and therefore may need different things. But it seems like that just feeds into the cycle rather than interrupting it. Thoughts? Does anyone even still read this thing?