The recent spate of scandals — rape, assault, harassment — leaves no doubt the military has a long way to go in integrating men and women. The potential solution aired Tuesday, that the sexes be separated during basic and advanced training, is a step in the wrong direction.

That recommendation is part of a report prepared by a panel appointed by Defense Secretary William Cohen this summer in the midst of several highly publicized cases, including rapes and assaults at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The panel, led by former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, came up with some worthy ideas, such as having more women as recruiters and trainers, but reintroducing segregation isn’t among them.

First, it merely postpones the inevitable. Men and women will be called upon to work together eventually in small units — Army platoons, Navy divisions, Air Force flights. Perhaps their lives will depend upon the trust and respect they have for one another. The sooner an inability to do so becomes apparent, the better.

The timing of the recommendation is awkward, coinciding with a steady climb in the number of women serving in the military (now about 14 percent of the 1.4 million on active duty) and with a rising debate on the role of women in uniform. As concerns are aired in Congress on whether women are held to same standards of fitness, stamina and expertise as men, separating the sexes for training would only add to the perception that they are not.

The report finds that drill sergeants frequently complain that an inordinate amount of their time is spent dealing with male/female misconduct and it determines that separation during training would improve the morale of women recruits.

Perhaps their morale would improve even more if they were treated as soldiers and not as vulnerable little girls in need of shielding, if fellow recruits and superiors were made to understand that harassment, in word or deed, will not be tolerated. If character counts, the ability to work alongside one of the opposite sex in a professional manner surely is a benchmark.

Unless the president or Secretary Cohen decrees otherwise, each branch of the service now can decide whether to adopt this errant recomendation, each branch must decide whether it is better than this. Units segregated by race, religion or national origin would be unthinkable today. Units segregated by sex should be as well.