Why an All-Boys School?
An Expert's Opinions of the Advantages of the Single-Sex Classroom
Excerpts from pp. 196-203 from The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling behind in School and Life
By Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint, September, 2005):
The Success of Single-Gender Classes
Our culture has come to understand that the act of dividing boys and girls into separate classrooms and even separate schools is not inherently bad for girls. In fact, there is a great deal of research to support the idea that for many girls, separate-gender schools and classes are quite helpful in opening up opportunity for girls in all areas of success, including engineering, law, and medicine. The pendulum has swung back to an interest in single-gender education-and the job of educators and parents today is to make sure that the "new" (actually quite ancient) innovation of single-gender schools and classrooms works for both boys and girls.
For boys in particular, schools around the country are exploring the potential for single-gender classrooms not only to bring up grades but to bring down disciplinary referrals (in which boys consistently outnumber girls, sometimes as much as ten to one.)
Learn Differently! My colleagues and I showed that middle school was a very important time to separate boys and girls from some classes, given the hormonal, developmental, and social difficulties our young males and females face during early to middle adolescence. We've found that implementation of single-gender classes is initially driven by the need to improve standardized test scores that measure competency in math, language arts, science, and social studies. As school districts, principals, teachers, and parents look for academic and behavioral options, especially in middle school, they see good opportunity in single-gender classrooms.
In our work in these schools, the Gurian Institute has generally found improvement in grades in core classes that are single gender, but we've also found something else worth highlighting. Boys who have suppressed their creative side in the competitive pubescent coeducational environment often become more engaged in creative arts, music, and drama when offered single-gender classes in those subjects.
If a strong case is to be made for a certain kind of educational strategy-especially one that's been as controversial as single-gender classes-outcomes need to speak for themselves. Major studies around the world (including the United States, Canada, England, and Australia) have demonstrated that single-gender education can help both boys and girls. The Australian Council for Educational Research studied more than 250,000 students over six years, in fifty-three academic areas, and found that students in single-gender classrooms scored between 15 and 22 percent higher in academic performance than their coed counterparts. A British study looked at test scores from eight hundred public schools and found that the students in single-gender education not only demonstrated improved performance but also had better attitudes about school and learning-both the boys and girls.
[At this point in The Minds of Boys, the author documents several cases of similar marked improvement in American middle schools. Each individual case is too detailed and the schools too numerous to recount herein.]
Letting Boys Learn as Boys
"The results and positive outcomes we've been featuring from our pilot schools and other schools around the country are transferable elsewhere. They show that boys learning as boys can work well. And "boys as boys" is not a stereotype, not a detriment. According to Graham Able, master of Dulwich College in England, boys in boys' schools consistently outscored their counterparts in coed schools during his research, suggesting that single-gender environments are especially advantageous for boys and dispelling the popular myth that boys do better in coed classes where girls set "a good example."
At the 2003 International Boys' School Coalition Conference in Sydney, Australia, Dr. Bruce Cook reported, "In boys' schools we can concentrate on their learning style. In co-ed, boys tend to adopt a quasi-masculine attitude because girls are there. They feel they have to demonstrate their emerging masculinity by gross macho over-reaction. In boys' schools, they can participate in anything irrespective of any perceived gender bias, whereas in co-ed schools you get boys who don't even try moving into those areas, the choir or debating, because they're fearful of being labeled gay or a sissy"
Diane Ruble, professor of psychology at New York University, has studied the single-gender innovation and argues that these positive results stem from boys' greater freedom to be themselves in single-gender environments without the constraints of gender stereotypes that prevail in coed settings. In the single-gender settings that the Gurian Institute has piloted or assisted, Ruble's theory is borne out: boys become more engaged in art, music, drama, and foreign languages.
What Works Best for Boys?
More Excerpts from the Experts re. The Importance of Single-Sex Education
In educational environments, masculine nurturing systems show very positive results. In New Jersey, male-only classrooms had fewer discipline problems, lowered at-risk rates for boys, and showed greater academic achievement. In her 1992 study, researcher Marie Tickner found that there were fewer discipline problems in boys' schools than co-ed schools-a conclusion that negates the unspoken cultural assumption we have that when boys get together they'll create more problems. Educator and researcher Cornelius Roirdan, in his study "Girls and Boys in School: Together or Separate," found that in many boys' schools the level of learning was higher, the climate of values more substantial, and academic achievement more emphatic than in comparable co-ed schools. This finding is important especially in the face of the fact that adolescent males are falling so far behind adolescent females in academics. (1998, 75)
Michael Gurian
A Fine Young Man
The research is coming out frequently now about the advantages of boys' schools. This research does not posit that coeducation is "worse." It simply shows that for many adolescent boys, a boys' school provides a place where developmental and educational advantages find positive solutions.
Researcher Diane Hulse did a qualitative study comparing boys' schools and coed schools and found that boys' schools provide boys with better concentration, focus, academic achievement in many areas, personal expression, and self-esteem. (1998, 200)
Michael Gurian
A Fine Young Man
A recently studied phenomenon is that men who have attended boys' schools often have better relationships with women than males who have not...there was also a general agreement that the men who had graduated from boys' schools were better at communicating with wives and better at relating...This qualitative data gave them (the researchers) some pause, because they started out some of their research thinking boys who went to boys' schools would be worse at relating to females because of their diminished contact with females. But their research bore the conclusion that because males in same-sex schools can relate more clearly and less distractedly with other males, they learn to relate and communicate more efficiently in general and thus end up better communicators with their wives. (1998, 201)
Michael Gurian
A Fine Young Man
Some boys-high testosterone, those with trouble learning, easily distracted, underachievers-desperately need boys' schools. (1998, 203)
Michael Gurian
A Fine Young Man
Because of the tremendously important role that school plays in a boy's life, I think parents of a boy should be asking, does my son's school have sufficient understanding of the emotional challenges boys face in becoming confident, successful men? . . . Are they sympathetic to boys? Does the school teach subject matters and use classroom materials that interest my boy? Does it use approaches to teaching that will stimulate him and make him eager to learn? Is the school a place where my son feels safe, happy, engaged, a place where he'd like to be? (1998, 231)
William Pollack, PhD
Real Boys
Today's typical coeducational schools have teachers and administrators who, though they don't intend it, are often not particularly empathic to boys; they use curricula, classroom materials, and teaching methods that do not respond to how boys learn; and many of these schools are hardly places our boys long to spend time. Put simply, I believe most of our schools are failing our boys. (1998, 231)
William Pollack, PhD
Real Boys
...boys in the all boys school seemed less defensive and less susceptible to peer pressure, more comfortable with their "aggression" as well as their relationships with girls, and more egalitarian with their attitudes about male and females roles than their counterparts in the coeducational institution. (1998, 259)
William Pollack, PhD
Real Boys
...students at an all-boys school are likely taught in a manner that recognizes and encourages their unique learning styles and tempos. Such schools are more flexible and less defensive in attitude, in comparison to institutions that seek to fit boys into a rigid traditional coeducational curriculum that ignores individual learning styles and paces. Even more important, I believe, these findings suggest that at a well-run boys' school a peer culture evolves in which boys feel more comfortable about themselves, are more confident about their abilities, and therefore do better in their class work. Especially for boys ages ten and older, with no girls around there are fewer reasons to feel they must brag, tease, and bluster. In the absence of girls, boys don't feel as competitive-or vulnerable-and thus tend to be less tough on one another. They do less to shame their compatriots. All in all, they each tend to feel more self-confident and less dependent on the mask of bravado to cover their insecurities. (1998, 260)
William Pollack, PhD
Real Boys
