Between the age of four and 15, I went to an all-girls convent school. There was no male presence whatsoever, save for the gardener, at the sight of whom the nuns used to giggle quite a bit. And Jesus, of course.
When we were in the fourth form, on Fridays, my best friend (whom you might know from this column as The Nurse) and myself, would go for singing lessons at break time. One Friday, at the end of the lesson, the nun leading the choir sighed, turned to us and said: “You two: you know you have the seed of vocation don’t you? Jesus is calling you to marry him, you will make excellent nuns.”
We gawped at her. Then we left the hall shakily. Was she telling us that to shut us up and get us to pray instead of sing?
We spent half an hour debating whether we really want to spend our lives wearing veils, in a convent which smelt of cabbage soup, and decided that, surely, Jesus had better plans for us. And there endeth our singing careers. Were it not for the ‘head-hunting’ nun, who incidentally left the convent some five years later, we would now probably be treasuring a Gieħ ir-Repubblika.
Anyway, I digress. As you can imagine, it was an education bereft of any testosterone – it was a lopsided and artificial environment. At 14, my parents sat me down to one of those chats: “We were thinking that maybe we should start going to the youth centre”.
Oh, how painfully shy those times were. I’d speak to a boy while arduously studying the point of my shoes. It took me quite a few years to catch up on the nuances of social skills, although of course, working in a newsroom cures you fast.
It’s like being in a boys’ school: you’re called Chetcuti, everyone talks football and there’s a soundtrack of burps. The imbalance was hence redressed.
But you get my gist. I am very much in favour of co-ed schooling – which will be gradually introduced in all government secondary schools come next scholastic year. The premise being that life is unisex, and education should reflect it.
That, topped with a niggling fearing of a seed-bearing nun, I sent my daughter to a co-ed school.
A far more important matter than co-education schools ought to be tackled: education is being run by women for women
There are pros and cons, and hundreds of international reports and analysis have been written. But the bottom line is that there is simply no overwhelming evidence that single-sex education is better academically for young people.
On the other hand, abundant evidence exists that children do better socially if they are educated in mixed groups. To me it makes perfect sense: in lessons, boys and girls are not just learning the subject, but also learning about each other.
For example, let’s imagine they are studying Romeo and Juliet (and we really have to stretch our imagination here, seeing as Shakespeare is considered too difficult and is no longer being taught in schools).
Girls will learn how boys see the play, which is essentially about relationships, and boys will understand how girls get it differently. They learn to understand and respect different views and opinions. It’s the start of the building of a very useful bridge between Mars and Venus.
“But girls fare better academically than boys when they’re on their own,” said a friend of mine the other day, arguing adamantly against co-ed schooling.
I think somewhere along the way we lost the plot on what schools are really there for. They are not exam factories, aimed at getting good grades at ‘O’ levels and at ‘A’ level. Schooling is about nurturing a holistic child.
Having said all this, there is a far more important matter than co-education schools which ought to be tackled: education is being run by women for women. The proportion of women to men in education is humongous, something like 5:1.
“I worry that over the next few years, we will start to see our boys assimilate feminine modes of behaviour, and all initiative, competition and desire to excel will be choked out of them,” said a teacher friend of mine, a lone male teacher among a staffroom of women.
If you think about it, even in families, the education of children is mostly in female hands. If you had to go to a book-reading event, or any other educational activity organised for children in Malta – it’s mainly the mothers you’ll see accompanying their offspring.
So once again, it’s the women who are choosing games, books, toys for boys, discussing the event with them, and so on, and the sons rarely have their male role model present.
I am not sure why men are no longer are attracted to the teaching world. But please, let’s not have schools where the only male presence is the gardener.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti