After I had my son, Sam, I started to read everything on raising boys. I have a younger brother who has struggled through life, and I feared that my son would follow suit. I wanted to make sure that I started Sam on the right path. One of my favorite books was the best-seller Raising Cane: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, written by child psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. In this book, Kindlon and Thompson identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school—and they address the benefits of all-boys schools. Last night, I re-read sections of the book and tracked down the following passage on page 48. It touches on why Kindlon and Thompson are advocates for boys schools.
"Boys benefit from the presence of male teachers and authority figures as role models of academic scholarship, professional commitment, moral as well as athletic leadership, and emotional literacy. The presence of men can have a tremendously calming effect on boys. When boys feel full acceptance—when they feel that their normal developmental skills and behavior are normal and that others perceive them that way—they engage more meaningfully in the learning experience."
After reading this book, I remember thinking that I would send Sam to an all-boys school such as Town or Cathedral. And so I decided to explore all-girls schools for Alice since she was the one who would be starting school first. Last year, two years before Alice would even start kindergarten, I toured Katherine Delmar Burke.
My tour of Burke was a year ago and so the details are fuzzy. I remember a beautiful campus, a new gym, tennis courts, and an amazing enthusiastic science teacher in the middle school. In fact, I think she's one of the best science teachers I've observed. She had the girls constructing chain reactions (a match would light a string on fire that would break and then a car would race down a ramp and fall into a bucket of water that would tip over...), and I thought it was so cool to see a woman teaching science. During the Q&A session, I recall someone asking why the school didn't introduce language at an earlier grade (I think they start in 5th or 6th grade). An answer was given about studies showing that language instruction at an early age is ineffective unless it's an immersion program. But what I remember most of all were lots and lots of girls. It was quite awesome to see so many girls of all ages working together in one place, but it was also overwhelming.
As Sam grew older, he developed an incredibly tight bond with his sister. When Sam fussed in his crib at night, Alice would crawl in with him and rub his back. When Alice was scared and couldn't sleep, Sam would reach his hand through his crib and grab Alice's hand. I can remember walking into their room once: they were asleep holding hands. These days, Alice and Sam attend the same small preschool where they're in the same class together. I don't think they play together all that much at school but I think they take great comfort in knowing the other one's there. At home, they're always engaged in "Baby" or "Kitty" or "Peaches in the Meadow," a game they've created that involves tearing all the covers off Mom and Dad's bed and jumping around. As the bond between the two grows tighter, I've realized that there's no way I'm sending them to different schools. I've entirely given up on my dream of sending Sam to an all-boys school. And so I didn't even consider any of the single-sex schools this year.
I'm sure many of you have lots of thoughtful things to say about single-sex education. Please share!