Segregation or salvation?

"This environment frees up boys from typecasting and stereotyping of what it means to be male," says Rick Melvoin, head of Belmont Hill School. This allows them, he explains, to focus their energies more on academics and relationships with teachers, and to develop themselves in ways they might not in a coed setting.

For instance, Mr. Melvoin says, a boy at Belmont Hill isn't considered any less masculine if he prefers singing in the glee club or performing in the school play over athletics.

Greg O'Connell, a Belmont Hill senior, would agree. "I am doing acting now," he says. "I might think twice about that if I were in a coed school."

As his friend Dan Neczypor puts it: "This place encourages risk."

That's not to say that there isn't some name-calling that goes on at boys' schools if a student acts in a way that's considered girlish. "If we hear one boy telling another boy that he runs or throws like a girl, we'll stop him in his tracks," says Debbie Callahan, dean of the faculty at Belmont Hill School. "By junior year, they know better."

At Roxbury Latin, art teacher Brian Buckley feels he's giving boys a gift by helping them to realize they can create a pleasing work on canvas, in clay, or with pen and ink. "At the coed school where I used to teach, girls took the lead in art," he says. "But here, boys are not intimidated. Many top athletes excel in art at Roxbury Latin."

Roxbury Latin science teacher Kate Chappell works hard at helping boys to express themselves. "I disagree with the idea that boys are innately stoic," she says. "From the moment students arrive, all of us here try to help them feel so comfortable, safe, and loved that they open up. Within two months, we've gotten to them."

It's a luxury of a boys' school that faculty and staff can address boys' emotional needs, says Michael Obel-Omia, English teacher and admissions director at Roxbury Latin. "Boys are hurting these days," he says. "As a teacher, you have to convey to boys that you love them. Then they will perform well. Boys don't learn subjects, they learn teachers."

One of the most important qualities a teacher can bring to a boys' school is patience, says Kerry Brennan, headmaster of Collegiate School in New York, who will soon take the reins at Roxbury Latin.

"In a boys' school," he says, "boys are given time to grow up at their own pace, whereas in a coed setting, girls' earlier and more advanced clocks define everything."

Of course, not everyone is a fan of boys' schools. Some feel the environment is unnatural and that it will foster boys who are socially awkward with girls. Belmont Hill's Dean Callahan admits she is "a little nervous" about how her students will adjust to sharing classes with girls in college.

But most boys interviewed shrugged off the notion that the adjustment will be tough. Others laugh and say that the biggest myth of a boys' school is that it's a kind of "monastery." Both Roxbury Latin and Belmont Hill students see girls from nearby independent girls' schools at dances and other jointly held events. And they usually produce plays together, which some say - with a wink - gives them that extra incentive to try out for a show.

Dr. Michael Thompson, a child and family therapist, author, and staff psychologist at Belmont Hill, is thrilled that boys' schools are being rediscovered.

"I am not ready to say they are the panacea and that we should return to entirely single-sex schools," he says. "But in a boys' school, learning is a male thing, and there's a danger in coed schools that learning will be only a girl thing. Boys' schools are hard-working places, without being too earnest. There's a lot of humor and ribbing, and nobody is impressed by a macho attitude."

Page: 1 | 2