International Herald Tribune, November 3, 2006
CONCORD, Massachusetts: Sitting by the open kitchen doors of my house on the Fenn School campus in Concord, I can see and hear the exertions of our football team at practice. It is the expression of the engaged, community- building life of boys at play in the presence of trusted mentors.
Here the curriculum and schedule fit the natural rhythms of boys at work and play. Too few boys get the same chance to spend so much time playing freely or competitively while also enjoying opportunities to act, sing, paint or play a musical instrument.
Too few boys can easily and unselfconsciously discuss the significance of a novel or poem openly in class, emboldened to be personally engaged because it's the normal thing to do.
Right now I need to be separated from these boys whom I love to teach. On leave as an English teacher at Fenn, I have embarked on a rigorous, six- month chemotherapy program for advanced inflammatory breast cancer.
Today in Opinion Life holds a new, acute meaning for me. I have lots of time to reflect on my life as a wife, mother, first-time grandmother and longtime teacher. Not a day passes that I do not think about the joys of teaching these boys. Given the kind of place that cares for boys in their "boyness," they have a great capacity for goodness and camaraderie, artistry and athletic prowess, competition and cooperation, and empathy and emotional expressiveness.
Recently, a spate of horrifying school shootings has given rise to a discussion about the pathologies and failures of males in our society. My fear is that we might easily slip into hand-wringing despair over our apparent inability to reach them. If boys are falling behind girls in school, as some argue, we should not ask whether, in our admirable quest to level the playing field for girls, we have shortchanged boys.
The right question to ask is, what must we do to ensure that both boys and girls grow to their full moral and intellectual potential? We can start by taking them away from each other at crucial junctures in their schooling. Before coming to teach here, I spent 20 years at Wellesley College as a class dean and writing teacher. I worked to help young women claim an identity of competence and independence in class, on the playing fields, in theater and studio, social service and college government.
In my experience, good single-sex schools and classes for males and females allow young people to release themselves temporarily from the developmental and learning differences between the sexes, from the undue burden of the hyper-sexualized society in which they live, giving them the opportunity to explore freely what it means to be human.
By focusing on them alone as a gender in class or in school, the paradox is that their sex no longer matters in the most essential educational processes. Take an example from school life at Fenn. Without a girl to play the part of a young Jewish woman in the Warsaw ghetto in a fifth-grade drama production, a boy takes on the role, as my then-shy son did years ago.
Today in Opinion
Life holds a new, acute meaning for me. I have lots of time to reflect on my life as a wife, mother, first-time grandmother and longtime teacher. Not a day passes that I do not think about the joys of teaching these boys.
Given the kind of place that cares for boys in their "boyness," they have a great capacity for goodness and camaraderie, artistry and athletic prowess, competition and cooperation, and empathy and emotional expressiveness.
Recently, a spate of horrifying school shootings has given rise to a discussion about the pathologies and failures of males in our society.
My fear is that we might easily slip into hand-wringing despair over our apparent inability to reach them. If boys are falling behind girls in school, as some argue, we should not ask whether, in our admirable quest to level the playing field for girls, we have shortchanged boys.
The right question to ask is, what must we do to ensure that both boys and girls grow to their full moral and intellectual potential?
We can start by taking them away from each other at crucial junctures in their schooling.
Before coming to teach here, I spent 20 years at Wellesley College as a class dean and writing teacher. I worked to help young women claim an identity of competence and independence in class, on the playing fields, in theater and studio, social service and college government.
In my experience, good single-sex schools and classes for males and females allow young people to release themselves temporarily from the developmental and learning differences between the sexes, from the undue burden of the hyper-sexualized society in which they live, giving them the opportunity to explore freely what it means to be human.
By focusing on them alone as a gender in class or in school, the paradox is that their sex no longer matters in the most essential educational processes.
Take an example from school life at Fenn. Without a girl to play the part of a young Jewish woman in the Warsaw ghetto in a fifth-grade drama production, a boy takes on the role, as my then-shy son did years ago.
At this all-boys school, it happens all the time and without stigma. Such an experience can lead boys to uncover the deep emotional and spiritual currents that underlie our common humanity, male and female alike. It may also lead them, as it did my son, to recognize that theater can be a way out of shyness by taking another identity onstage. The same thing happened when he put on football gear and learned how to play the game from a coach who was also his Latin teacher - an experience that led this sensitive, artistic boy to an unexpected development as a strong high school and college athlete.
In my view, these happy outcomes are directly related to a single-sex educational environment. Schools that use gender as a lens to understand boys and girls on their own terms create opportunities that open them up, not close them down, and that make them feel good about being boys and girls learning new things.
These schools foster a sense of being in control responsibly. Some exist now. Many more could become those places if they would consider giving boys and girls a chance to take time out from each other - to learn to be who they are and achieve their potential in all of their gendered and human glory.
At this all-boys school, it happens all the time and without stigma. Such an experience can lead boys to uncover the deep emotional and spiritual currents that underlie our common humanity, male and female alike.
It may also lead them, as it did my son, to recognize that theater can be a way out of shyness by taking another identity onstage.
The same thing happened when he put on football gear and learned how to play the game from a coach who was also his Latin teacher - an experience that led this sensitive, artistic boy to an unexpected development as a strong high school and college athlete.
In my view, these happy outcomes are directly related to a single-sex educational environment.
Schools that use gender as a lens to understand boys and girls on their own terms create opportunities that open them up, not close them down, and that make them feel good about being boys and girls learning new things.
These schools foster a sense of being in control responsibly. Some exist now. Many more could become those places if they would consider giving boys and girls a chance to take time out from each other - to learn to be who they are and achieve their potential in all of their gendered and human glory.
Lorraine Garnett
Lorraine Garnett Ward chairs the English Department at the Fenn School.
