A new case for all-boys education 

Boys and men are struggling academically, mentally and socially. In recent decades, they have been losing ground in the classroom and workplace, as they struggle to find purpose and meaning after decades of erosion of traditionally-defined male roles in the economy and in the family.

At every grade level from kindergarten through 12th grade, girls now earn better grades than boys on average, in every subject. What’s more, 45,000 fewer boys than girls are graduating each year from high school, amounting to a gender gap of 6 percentage points. The gender gap in higher education is even wider: Men currently earn only 42 percent of the degrees. 

There is now general agreement across the ideological spectrum that boys in the U.S. are in trouble. The discussion about how to address this crisis has become mainstream. 

Well-intentioned people have a variety of ideas about how to tackle the predicament in boys’ education. Although there is some agreement that the academic crisis of boys reflects a failure to accommodate their distinctive learning style and to present boys with a positive and attractive vision of masculinity, there is no consensus about a plan of action to address these problems. 

Some believe that recruiting more men to the teaching profession can help to provide a positive model of masculinity in schools and facilitate a stronger academic connection for young boys. Others think curricular revisions should be the emphasis. 

What hasn’t garnered much attention is single-sex education. Perhaps that’s because it is now a relatively rare model, even though the number of schools offering single-sex options has increased in recent years. 

Still, fewer than 1 percent of American public schools are single-sex. Even among private schools, less than 5 percent are currently single-sex, and most of those are high schools. 

Some studies suggest there’s no evidence that boys do better at all-male schools. But this result is hardly surprising, given such small study samples and the fact that mere segregation by gender without pedagogical difference is not likely to provide much benefit.

In truth, the resistance to single-sex education is not based on sociological or academic studies. The truth is that the notion of single-sex education comes with significant baggage. In order to have a productive conversation about its potential benefits, we may need to update our thinking.

When single-sex schools were the norm, the widely shared perception was that men and women were on different life-tracks and so needed different academic programs to prepare them. Until 60 years ago, men dominated the hard sciences, the legal and medical professions and academia. It was sometimes asserted that the presence of women on campus or in the classroom would distract men from learning. 

Since those professional distinctions are no longer operative, and since we now have a different consensus about the mingling of the sexes, it is frequently assumed that the whole idea of single-sex education is a relic of a less enlightened age. 

But wait — not so fast. All-boys schools, if done right, can address some of the problems that are at the root of the current crisis of boys and men. 

It’s important to acknowledge that boys and girls learn differently. Many boys struggle in today’s predominant educational models because they implicitly play to girls’ strengths. What many teachers punish as misbehavior is really just natural boy behavior. 

For example, teachers often punish boys for what they deem “excessive movement.” What is likely happening is that boys are demonstrating a need for what neuroscientists call “embodied cognition.” The structure of an all-boys school can allow for experimentation with pedagogies more tailored to the learning style of boys, whose brains gear them toward movement, competition, and risk.

Moreover, all-boys schools provide a privileged place and time for boys to form deep male friendships, the dearth of which people are now realizing is a serious cultural problem.

The bleak data on boys that has spurred the current discussion points us to a deeper cultural problem, of which the academic and workforce problems are ultimately symptomatic. In our contemporary society, people are quick to criticize practices of so-called “toxic masculinity.” But they are slow to propose an ideal of healthy masculinity. To many ears, even speaking of such a thing seems problematic. 

As the evidence of struggling boys and floundering young men suggests, however, the opposite is true: Our society cannot afford to not talk about what it means to be a man. As educators, we have to transmit an understanding of masculinity that is overwhelmingly positive. Our goal has to be not the transmission of negative rules, but the transmission of a positive image.  

For this appeal to have any resonance, boys must see what it means in the one saying it. We need a few — really, many — good men to become teachers, to help parents raise their sons to become men who want to control themselves, so that they can generously give of themselves. 

All-boys schools have the potential to attract more males to the teaching profession — men who can draw from their personal experience to create curricula and learning environments conducive to boys’ flourishing.

Just as the boys will see in these teachers the kind of man they want to become, the teachers will empathize, in their students, with the boys they once were. 

Alvaro de Vicente is the headmaster of The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland. He has served as an advisor to hundreds of school leaders and authors a Substack column called Men in the Making.