Welcome to the second edition of the Brilliant Book Club for parents!
This week we’re concluding our discussion of Hilary Levey Friedman’s Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture
Please check out the posts from the other Brilliant Book Club writers and read their final takes on this book:
Stephanie (of Mommy, For Real): “The Intersection of Friendship, Family, and Fun”
Deb (of Urban Moo Cow): “Playing to Win But Thinking for Yourself”
Sarah (of Left Brain Buddha): “Soccer Mom, Aggressive Daughter. Dance Mom, Effeminate Son?”
Lauren (of Omnimom): post pending
If you were to ask me which of my 22 years of schooling — from kindergarten to doctoral degree — were the most important to my education and development, I would not hesitate a second before telling you that my years at Emma Willard, an all girls boarding school, had the most impact.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that I am who I am — as a professional, as a friend, as a feminist, as a writer, and a thinker — in large part because I spent three years living and studying with only my female peers.
Here’s a list of powerful and successful women today (all single sex graduates) who might agree with me: Hilary Rodham Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, Nancy Pelosi, Condeleezza Rice, Gloria Steiner, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Diane Sawyer.
I’m not saying that I would be a completely different person if I had gone to a public school in my hometown or had gone away to a coed boarding school. Or that any of these famous women wouldn’t have accomplished what they had without the influence of a single-sex environment. And yet.
When you learn, grow, and, yes, even compete in an environment with other females, there’s something magical that happens. That claim sounds sentimental, overdramatic, completely nonscientific, and unconvincing. And it is.
I briefly considered examining the impact of single-sex schooling on educational achievement as part of my dissertation research. I have stacks and stacks and stacks of studies on single-sex education in my office. But the research itself was so inconclusive that I decided not to go there. At least as far as I can tell, there’s no good way of disentangling the effects of single-sex schools from the multitude of other ways that girls who choose (or whose families steer them) to attend single-sex schools might be different from those who do not.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my high school after I read Hilary Levey Friedman’s Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture
I had never participated in competitive sports or organized after school activities — unless you count a couple years of tap dance lessons when I was 8 or 9 — and not much changed when I went away to school.
Not surprisingly, girls’ lives aren’t dominated by “gender scripts” at girls boarding school in the way that Hilary Levey Friedman discusses in her book. Popularity or respect is not based on appearance or traditional standards of feminine beauty. Of course, there are pretty girls, and girls think about what they look like, but far, far less than in co-ed settings. (I arrived at my school at age 14 with a long morning routine not unusual for a girl my age in that era– blowing out my hair and curling it in typical 1980s fashion, eye makeup, foundation and blush; after a couple weeks at boarding school, I would crawl out of bed and often arrive at all-school morning meeting at 8 a.m. in what I slept in.)
If my parents weren’t all that interested in whether I acquired “Competitive Kid Capital,” neither was Emma Willard. If I were to list the skills and lessons that I gained from high school, the five aspects of Competitive Kid Capital — internalizing the importance of winning, bouncing back from a loss to win later on, learning how to perform under time constraints, learning to win under stress, and learning how to perform with others watching you — would not make the top 100. Competition was not a fact of our daily lives. Yes, there were some girls who excelled at sports or were terrific dancers, but it was not a part of the school culture to promote that above other more individual pursuits.
As Hilary Levey Friedman herself says in a HuffPost article about her single-sex experience, “We all learned as young women the hard-to-measure notion that females can be leaders in any area just by looking around us at our peers. This knowledge and the confidence that comes with it can’t be discounted.”
Is it possible that single-sex schools instill in young women a different type of preparation for success, beyond the credentials that parents hope that their children receive from competitive afterschool activities? Maybe single-sex schools can point us toward a different path, beyond the pressures and frenzied routines of what we expect from kids’ lives today.
I’m also thrilled to announce Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink
I wrote about the book briefly a couple weeks ago, and I can’t wait to join Stephanie, Deb, Lauren, Sarah, and all of you in an important discussion about why women are struggling so much to “have it all” and feeling like they’re failing at so much. This book is one woman’s personal story of coping with family, work, and identity, but it also will be relatable to millions of women, no matter where they work (inside or outside the home) or what they do.
Please join us and we hope you’ll share with us your own stories of trying to balance career, family, marriage, and identity.
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So interesting. My college roommate went to an all-girls school and felt it was a defining characteristic of her success, too. I didn’t grow up with the pressure of Competitive Kid Capital, either … I took dance after school and viola during elementary school. That’s it. By high school, yes, I did a lot of activities, but not before. Then again, we are the same age, which I think might have been right before the explosion of this mentality.
When I think about the most defining educational experience of my life, it was definitely my undergrad experience at Dartmouth — for better or for worse. That was the first time I went away, anywhere, really. So maybe it is more about that separation from one’s family and less about the all-girls experience that had such an impact on you.
Who knows. I could talk about this for ages.
Very interesting. I wanted to go to an all-girls school when I was a kid, but there wasn’t one near me and my parents weren’t open to boarding school. I love the thought that by being in that environment, you are able to see that “females can be leaders in any area just by looking around us at our peers.” That is awesome.
Interesting to think about. I used to teach a Women’s History elective in our department {before it got cancelled for low enrollment – Boo!}, and, not surprisingly, it was almost all girls. And it was fascinating the way conversations could take place and how the dynamic in the classroom changed with a single-sex environment. I also noticed how the environment/mood in the room changes when I have a large number of boys in a class. I think there is definitely a lot to be said about single-sex education for boys and girls…
Glad you found my HuffPost piece on this. I will also say that until I was pregnant I never went so long without shaving my legs as I did at my all-girls’ school. I still remember the feeling of the long hair as I pulled up my knee socks and knew it was time to shave…
Also, totally agree on the difficulty of doing research on the subject. Some of the data on kids randomized into same-sex classrooms for particular subjects is better– still not great. Like many afterschool activities the strongest evidence is anecdotal. Compelling, but not always convincing to all.
Most defining educational experience for me was definitely Harvard. But most fun? Hands down my post-grad year in England. All the fun I *didn’t* have in college… Liver still recovering.
Ha, yes, the drinking in this country is legendary…
I went to an all women’s college and I think it was the best decision that I ever made. It was small, had great opportunities for internships and strong mentors. It allowed me to develop my leadership skills in an environment that was nurturing. It did define me as a woman and as a leader. I am hoping my daughter will choose the same path.
So, so interesting. I don’t know exactly where I stand on single-sex schools, but I want to find out! I am curious too about the point Deb makes above: what is the relationship between our defining educational experiences and how those experiences overlap with our first time away from home? I.e. do kids attending single-sex day schools have the same experience as kids attending single-sex boarding schools, and are the benefits/detriments the same in those two scenarios? My most defining educational experience was Oxford and I wonder if that was, in part, because it was the first time I felt like I had truly gone ‘away’ (Yale was quite close to where I grew up).
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hi, having studied in an all girls school really defines the character that is within me right now, I have learned a lot from it and it made me who i am today. I am definite that most of your readers can relate to this. We cannot find an article like this all the time and it is really great that i bumped in to it . Thanks for sharing. Great post!
This is really great, can’t always find an article that talks about single sex education and I’m lucky to have bumped into it. Having studied in an all girls school really defined who I am today and I’m proud of it. Thanks for sharing. Great post.