The idea of sending girls to a private boarding school for girls can be controversial. The image of boarding schools in the movies and television is negative and tremendously distorted. As parents of a young woman with a bright and promising future, you owe it to yourself and to your daughter to refuse to believe negative stereotyping done by Hollywood and find out for yourself if there is a real value of your teenager to send her to a private boarding school for girls.

What you are going to find out is going to surprise you. The vast majority of private boarding schools for girls are well run institutions that produce top quality students who go on to excellent academic and professional careers. Just as many private schools for boys such as West Point are well known for excellence, there is some solid reasoning behind the good of allowing your daughter to take advantage of the benefits of a single sex classroom.

If you were to visit one of the outstanding private boarding schools for girls in this country, you would also be pleasantly surprised. You would find a population of young women who are thriving in that environment. The idea that for a school community to be vibrant and healthy, it has to be coed is backward and ill informed. Single sex schools give girls a supportive culture and the freedom to focus entirely on their academic careers. Very often the friendships they form at a private boarding school for girls become lifelong relationships and the benefits of their education provide value to the young women who graduate from boarding schools last a lifetime as well.

Girls Learn at Their Pace

There is no question that there are brilliant students in both genders. But there is also no question that boys and girls learn much differently and that the environment of a coed classroom does not benefit the learning ability of either gender. There have been ample scientific studies done on the way the brains of males and female work to support the concept that the genders learn differently. This is not sexist or drawing conclusions about the learning ability of boys. It simply acknowledges that both genders do much better in a single sex classroom where a single approach to teaching and learning can be nurtured.

When your daughter moves to a private boarding school for girls, the curriculum and the approach to learning can be customized to take full of advantages of how the female mind learns. Teachers can specialize in moving girls along at their own pace without having to stop and accommodate the opposing learning styles of boys as often happens in a coed classroom setting.

In addition, girls in a single sex classroom have the liberty to inquire about nuances of the lessons and to interact with teachers free of the cultural or political issues of having boys in the classroom. Because boys often dominate coed classrooms, girls often must rely on secondary ways to get answers to their questions instead of interacting openly with each other and with the instructor in class. Those hindrances are removed in an all girl school that is focused 100% on education for girls and only for girls.

Down Come the Gender Fences

Despite decades of cultural change that have brought out the equality of ability between the genders, cultural stereotypes continue to get in the way in public or even private coed school settings. One such stereotype is the idea that boys naturally excel at certain topics like math science and computer related courses and girls are genetically prone to excel at more domestic fields of study.

Despite giving lip service to eliminating gender bias, it still holds many girls back from expressing their interest and curiosity in what is ordinarily considered to be a male dominated field of study. These gender fences have no place in a private boarding school or girls. In a single sex classroom, girls are free to explore all of the topics available in the curriculum and discover their aptitudes and strengths free of biased determinations of what "girls are best at".

Teachers and administrators at boarding schools for girls are adept at discovering such aptitudes and helping promising girls in their charge to excel and focus on specific areas of academics as part of their preparation for college and then a career in that field. The result is that if your daughter has a talent and a love of math, science, computer programming or auto mechanics for that matter, that natural ability will be nurtured and developed in private boarding school for girls.

A Different Type of School

The decision to put your daughter in a private boarding school for girls is a very individual one for each family. Many families struggle with finding the right school for their child in light of the well known problems in public education. Further, the culture of public school is often filled with issues of status, relationships between the genders and bullying. Girls too have difficulties with these problems as evidenced in tragic recent news stories of bullying between girls that ended badly for the victim.

To send your daughter to a private boarding school for girls means separation from family and an additional expense as well. Each family must evaluate how well your daughter is doing with her current educational setting and if problems that will get in the way of her success can be resolved by moving her to a girl's only educational setting.

Be sure you involve the student in this decision and in visiting the private boarding school for girls before making the decision. If you are careful and wise in evaluating the real value that a private boarding school education can provide to a teenager, it may become clear that a private boarding school for girls is the right decision or her and for your family as well.

Here are additional resources you might be interested in:

What to Look for in Boys Boarding School

What are the Benefits of Boarding High Schools?