INFORMATION TO USERS

This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer.

Hie quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of dm book.

Photographs inchided in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.

A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600

Self-Esteem for Adolescent Girls: A Study of School Influences in Private School Settings

A Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

by

Brenda Arnett Petruzzella, B.S., M.A.

1995

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Maia Pank Mertz, Chair George E. Newell Adviser Anna O. Soter ' College of Education Frank O ’Hare Robert Donmoyer UHI Number: 9534051

UMI Microform 9534051 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Brenda Arnett Petruzzella 1995 DEDICATION

In loving memory of my mother, Ellen Clay Arnett, who gave me both roots and wings;

In grateful thanks to my father, John Edward Arnett, who taught me the joy of learning and the value of hard work;

and in honor of my daughter, Ellen Marie Petruzzella, the light of my life, to whom the future belongs. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe thanks to Johanna Sampson, my ninth grade English teacher, who probably never knew that she inspired me to become an English teacher.

I am most indebted to the professors who have supported and guided my work during the last four years, Anna Soter, George Newell and especially my adviser, Maia Mertz. 1 appreciate Robert Donmoyer’s willingness to assist with this dissertation, and Frank O ’Hare’s help in producing a document which is readable as well as informative.

I am most deeply grateful for the constant support and encouragement of my dear friend and fellow graduate student, Bettie St. Pierre.

I especially thank my husband, Nick, who bought me my first computer at the most opportune time, and whose support made two sabbatical years possible; and my daughter Ellen, whose hugs lightened my days when the going got rough, and whose presence helped me keep life in proper perspective.

1 am also, of course, indebted more than I can express to both the students and faculty of the schools in which 1 worked. I am truly sorry that requirements of anonymity prevent me from mentioning them all by name. Without the enthusiastic cooperation of these administrators, teachers and students, this work would simply never have been done, VITA

March 3, 1946 ...... Born, Prestonsburg, Ky.

1968...... B.S. in Education The Ohio State University

1968 - 1991...... English teacher, South High School Columbus, Ohio

1972...... M. A. in Education The Ohio State University

1991 - 1992...... Graduate Assistant The Ohio State University

1992-199...... 3 English teacher, Mifflin High School Columbus, Ohio

1993-199...... 4 Graduate Assistant The Ohio State University

1994-199...... 5 English teacher, Eastmoor High School Columbus, Ohio

HELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Education

Studies in Literature Curriculm and Instruction Dr. Maia P. Mertz, Dr. Anna O. Soter, Dr. George E. Newell

Studies in Language and Composition Dr. George E. Newell, Dr. Anna O. Soter, Dr. Frank O’Hare

Cognate Area: Women’s Studies Dr. Mary Leach

Studies in Qualitative Research Dr. Patti Lather, Dr. Robert Donmoyer

iv LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 - Time Line of Interviews ...... 58

Table 2 - Self-Esteem Ratings ...... 89

Table 3 - Responses to Grounded Survey Statements about Boys ...... 131

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii VITA...... iv USTOFTABLES...... v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 Background of the Problem ...... 1 Statement of the Problem ...... 13 Significance of the Study ...... 14 Definition of Terms ...... 16

II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE...... 18 Women’s Values and Modes of Thinking ...... 19 Gender and Self-Esteem ...... 28 Gender and Reading ...... 36 Gender and Reading Ability...... 37 Gender and Reading Preferences...... 39 Gender and Reader Response...... 40 Sex Roles in Adolescent Literature...... 43

III. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY...... 50 Qualitative Research ...... 51 Data Collection ...... 55 Interviews ...... 55

vi Observations ...... 58 Questionnaires ...... 59 Documents ...... 61 Data Analysis...... 62 Trustworthiness ...... 65

IV. PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS...... 68 Introduction AGS - The Single-Sex Setting...... 68 The Students ...... 70 School Philosophy...... 71 CPS - The Coed Setting ...... 76 The Students ...... 77 School Philosophy...... 78 Discussion ...... 83 Presentation of Findings by Categories...... 86 Self-Esteem and School Setting ...... 87 Girls with High Self-Esteem ...... 90 Girls with Low Self-Esteem ...... 95 Discussion ...... 99 School and Academics ...... 102 Academic Pressure ...... 102 The Role of Reading ...... 106 In-School Reading ...... 106 Outside Reading ...... I l l Changing Tastes ...... 114 The Influence of Reading ...... 116 Discussion ...... 120 The Value of Friendships ...... 123 Discussion ...... 127 The Importance of Boys ...... 128 Discussion ...... 130 Self-Image and Societal Expectations...... 132 Discussion ...... 136 vii School Image and Family Finances...... 145 Discussion ...... 149 The Importance of Home and Parents 152 The Role of Sports ...... 153 Discussion ...... 155 The Role of Race ...... 156 Discussion ...... 159

V CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS...... 163 Summary...... 163 Conclusions ...... 164 Implications for Educators ...... 170 Suggestions for Future Research ...... 174 Final Concerns ...... 177

APPENDICES A. Sample Interview Questions for Students ...... 179 B. Sample Questions for Adults ...... 181 C. Grounded Survey...... 182 D. Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory Questions ...... 184 E. Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory Reliability and Validity Data...... 185

LIST OF REFERENCES...... 186

viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Background of the Problem

This study investigates self-esteem issues for adolescent girls, and how self­ esteem or self-confidence might be affected by single-sex schools and by the literature that girls read. My interest in the work described in this study emerges primarily from two sources: the fact that for twenty-five years I have been a high school English teacher, and the fact that I am the mother of an adolescent daughter. All of my adult life I have been professionally involved with adolescents and concerned about their adjustment into our increasingly complex culture. My teaching career has made me aware that adolescence is a difficult and critical time in a person’s developmental processes, and that concern became sharply personal when I had a child of my own. In addition, I have been concerned about equal rights for women in our culture since I was in junior high school, and in recent years I have been reading a growing body of literature which indicates that adolescence is increasingly a time of psychological crisis for girls in contemporary American culture, more so than for boys. Simultaneously, numerous studies are being published which indicate that girls do not get equal treatment in our nation’s school systems. While both professional reading and my own teaching experience indicate that a student’s home situation is usually the single most important factor in establishing mental and emotional health, the school environment may be a close second, and negative experiences in school certainly can have an adverse effect on students’ general psychological health. 1 2 Some of the most important recent work concerning the problems of adolescent girls has been done by Lyn Brown, co-chairperson of the Education and Human Development Department at Colby College, and Carol Gilligan, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Psychology in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. In their book Meeting At the Crossroads (1992). Brown and Gilligan assert: For over a century the edge of adolescence has been identified as a time of heightened psychological risk for girls. Girls at this time have been observed to lose their vitality, their resilience, their immunity to depression, their sense of themselves and their character....This crisis in women’s development has been variously attributed to biology or to culture, but its psychological dimensions and its link to trauma have been only recently explored. ( p. 2)

While I have no memory of such a crisis in my own life, and might question whether it is something experienced by all girls, many researchers in the field of psychology have conducted studies which confirm some of the assertions of Brown and Gilligan. Examples include Werner & Smith (1982), Elder et. al. (1985), and Rutter (1986), who each concluded that girls respond more negatively to stress than boys. Girls tend to feel that they are somehow at fault when thing go wrong, which is one reason they are more likely to suffer depression than boys (Rutter, 1986; Peterson, et al., 1991). To some degree both “normal” teen-age moodiness and more severe depression may be attributed to the hormonal changes of puberty, which girls usually experience at an earlier age than boys. Several studies have found that early adolescence in particular is a time of difficulty and even crisis for girls, and that girls frequently suffer a loss of self-confidence and self-esteem during early adolescence (Simmons & Blyth, 1987; Bush & Simmons, 1987). Hormonal changes are accompanied by a new level of concern for girls about their physical appearance in general and their weight in particular. It has recently been well-documented (to the point of becoming an issue for the popular press and television talk shows) that increasing numbers of girls are developing severe eating disorders such as anorexia 3 nervosa (Galdston, 1974; Bruch, 1979; Rosenbaum, 1979; Brunberg, J.J., 1988). An exaggerated concern about their looks in a culture which places importance on youth, beauty and thinness for women means that girls are more disparaging than boys in appraising themselves and that they often have a more negative self-image (Crockett & Peterson, 1987). That some of these problems might be linked to girls’ experiences in school was suggested in 1992, when The American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women published a report entitled How Schools Shortchange Girls: A Study of Major Findings on Girls and Education. This complex and wide-ranging study is described as “a synthesis of all the available research on the subject of girls in school” (p. v). Using studies from the fields of both psychology and education, it synthesizes the important findings about girls and schooling from the past two decades. It includes “research on the accomplishments, behaviors, and needs of girls from preschool through high school” (p. 3), and it addresses issues such as who comprises the boards that determine school policy, what standards are set and for what reasons, how testing is administered and what the results are, curriculum issues such as which students take what classes, student self-esteem levels, school staffing patterns, teen pregnancy, and the relationship between race, sex, socioeconomic status and academic achievement. The conclusions of this study indicate that from sexual harassment in the halls to gender bias in textbooks, girls are, indeed, shortchanged in America’s public schools. The AAUW report was given wide coverage in the nation’s newspapers and provoked a spate of publicity in all the popular media. The issue of sex-equity in public schools has even appeared in newspaper comic strips. One of the most widely publicized findings is the sudden drop in math and science scores experienced by previously high-performing middle school girls. David and Myra Sadker, both professors at the School of Education at American University in Washington, D.C., are among the few scholars who have been writing about these issues since the 1970’s. Their new book, Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls (1994). is, like the AAUW report, a synthesis of work done over the past twenty years. It confirms and elaborates on many of the findings of the AAUW report. For example, years of studying the patterns of classroom interaction reveal that teachers call on boys more often and that boys at every level from preschool through college receive more attention and more helpful comments from teachers than girls do. This disparity is important because, as the AAUW report notes, “Careful and comprehensive teacher reactions not only affect student learning, they can also influence student self-esteem” (p. 68). The Sadkers’ work has also become a subject of discussion in the popular media, and the authors have recently been interviewed on various television programs where they have discussed gender equity in schools. The media attention has sparked the publication of a number of other books discussing the problems of adolescent girls, both in and out of school. I will discuss several of these works more thoroughly in Chapter II, but describe them briefly here to indicate the range of concerns which have moved from the realm of scholarly research to become issues for the popular press. One example is School Girls, by Peggy Orenstein (1994). A journalist, Orenstein describes her observations and conversations with eighth grade girls over the course of a year in two California schools. Several books deal more with general psychological health than specifically with school experiences. The Girl Within, by psychologist Emily Hancock (1989), suggests that the major task of a woman’s life involves recapturing the “authenticity” that she possessed as a child. In Reviving Ophelia, psychologist Mary Pipher (1994) gives accounts of numerous case studies in her work with adolescent girls and their problems. Other books attempt to offer assistance for parents of teenage girls. All That She Can Be. by Carol Eagle and Carol Coleman (1993), and The Mother Daughter Revolution, by Elizabeth Debold, Marie Wilson and Idelisse Malave (1993) 5 advise parents, especially mothers, on steering their daughters through the difficulties of adolescence. Not long before beginning graduate school, before I had begun reading about any of these issues, I had made a rather difficult decision to send my own daughter to a private, single-sex school for her middle school and high school years. (I say “difficult” partly because of the considerable financial sacrifice involved, and partly because it seemed at odds with my own professional and philosophical commitment to public education.) I had chosen private schooling because of social and academic concerns, not because of the single-sex setting, but as I began to learn about the research concerning problems with sex-equity in public schools, I hoped that the all­ girls setting would alleviate many of these problems. There has been relatively little research on single-sex education in the United States, where coeducation is generally taken for granted, although this is not necessarily the the case in other countries. James Coleman, in The Adolescent Society (1961), called secondary schools an adolescent subculture in which physical attractiveness is more important than academic achievement His book stimulated a small body of literature on the value of single-sex schooling, and on whether secondary single-sex schools or classes offer a strategy for overcoming sex differences in educational outcomes. Most of these studies were done in Catholic girls’ schools, and conclude that a single-sex setting does improve academic achievement for girls. For example, Riordan (1985,1990) found that single-sex schools increase educational aspirations for girls. Girls in these schools were found to have a more positive attitude toward academics, to more readily express an interest in math, to do more homework and to exhibit less stereotypical sex-role behavior than girls in coed schools (Lee & Bryk, 1986,1989; Lee & Marks, 1990). However, some of these conclusions have been challenged by Marsh (1989a, 1989b), who objected to procedures Lee and Bryk used for statistical testing of effects and questioned the nature of contols for preexisting differences in students in the two 6 types of schools. Lee and Bryk responded to Marsh, (1989b) defending their work. Ironically, this debate began at a time when single-sex schools were rapidly disappearing as an option in the United States. Lee and Marks (1990) report that in the 1960’s only 38% of the approximately nine-hundred members of the National Association of Independent Schools were coed, but that the percentage had increased to 79% by the 1989-90 school year. In the nineteenth century when feminist educators discussed single-sex schools, they were generally opposed to them because such institutions were usually of the “finishing school” type and represented an inferior education for girls (Tyack & Hansot, 1990). Recently, neither feminists nor educators have been much concerned with single-sex schools because they are rare and usually available only to economically privileged families. In Australia and the U.K, on the other hand, where approximately one-third of state secondary schools and most private schools are single-sex (Riordan, 1990), studies of this type of schooling have been more numerous (Amot, 1983; Jones 1984; Mahony, 1985; Willis & Kenway, 1986). Most of this work, however, does not address social or psychological issuess but is concerned only with quantifying academic differences between girls in single-sex and coed schools. David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot (1990) provide some historical background for gender issues in American education, pointing out that in American Colonial and Revolutionary times, most schools were for boys only. Mixed-sex schools, mostly one-room schools in rural communities, became common in the first half of the 19th century, in “such a slow and quiet process in thousands of communities that it is, in fact, one of the mysteries of educational history” (p. 34). Horace Mann called it “smuggling in the girls” (p. 34). In the late 1700’s, literate men probably outnumbered literate women two to one. Fifty years later, the literacy levels of men and women were roughly equal. The change did not result from any official state policy but from decisions made “by school boards and parents and citizens in tens of 7 thousands of local school districts, usually with few records of debate” (p. 34). It probably began simply as a matter of expediency. Most of the population lived in the country, and parents who wanted to send their children to schools within walking distance saw little reason to finance two separate schools for boys and girls. Tyack and Hansot explain that at this time, education was not expected to affect the adult roles of the sexes. Mann supported education for women, as had Rousseau, Mary WoIIstonecraft and Catherine Beecher, among others, as a means of making girls more worthy of a good marriage and improving the next generation through more enlightened motherhood. The term “coeducation” was coined in the 1850’s when furious debate arose over what had already become common practice. Advocates of separate schools conceded that, in rural areas, mixed schools were probably inevitable but argued that the larger population in the cities made separate schools feasible. In fact, suggest Tyack and Hansot, it was probably the mix of classes and ethnic groups in the cities which triggered the debate, as it was argued that girls needed to be shielded from the “rude assaults of riff-raff boys” (p. 36). In some cases the critics expressed concern for girls’ physical health. In the 1870’s, a physiologist at Harvard, Dr. Edward H. Clarke, proposed the ludicrous theory that “during the crucial years of adolescence concerted academic work and competition with boys in coeducational schools wrought havoc with the healthy development of the reproductive system: a young woman might learn algebra, but when the limited sum of energy flowed to her overwrought brain, it harmed the natural growth of the ovaries” (Tyack & Hansot, p. 37). While these arguments raged, girls continued to enter high school and began to win academic honors and graduate in far larger numbers than boys. Apparently this produced a certain amount of nervousness and defensiveness on the part of some male educators. Tyack and Hansot quote one high school principal in Chicago as asserting that: “The valedictorians of the high school graduating classes are almost always girls; but in after life, whether in universities or in life occupations, boys have not shown themselves wanting. The Great Business College of Life has conferred its highest degrees upon many a boy who has been marked a failure in high school, when compared with the average girl” (p. 37). Thus, girls’ academic success was summarily dismissed as unimportant. Tyack and Hansot report that the feminization of the schools was also marked by increasing numbers of women going into the teaching profession, prompting a Columbia professor to declare it “little short of monstrous that boys receive almost all their intellectual and moral impulses from women” (p. 37). There was concern in some circles that educated women would seek to challenge men in the work place and neglect their duties as wives and mothers; however, the larger concern seemed to be that the predominance of women was making schools unfit places for boys. Much of the progressive movement in education at this time can be understood as an attempt to masculinize the schools with the addition of organized sports and technical and vocational classes, which linked public education to the male job market. Home economics courses were added about the same time, apparently in an effort to entice girls back into their traditional role. Still, in the majority of academic classes, boys and girls studied the same curriculum together, if only for the same financial reasons which had allowed girls into public schools in the first place. Soon, the graded classroom, classes of pupils grouped so that they are of approximately the same age and proficiency, became more common. (This change took place mostly in the cities. In one-room rural schools, the teacher still taught a wide variety of abilities and ages.) When schools adopted the system of grouping students by grade level, they found that coeducation made it easier and more economical to fill each of the new classrooms with a sufficient number of pupils, so the graded school accelerated the adoption of coeducation. It is a paradox that girls, although not accorded equal treatment, still manage to outperform boys in many areas of schooling. As the AAUW report points out, 9 however, the fields of math and science where girls fall behind are precisely the areas in which a student needs to excel in order to succeed in today’s technological version of the “Great Business College of Life.” As Tyack and Hansot’s article illustrates, the treatment of girls in American schools has more or less mirrored the image that our culture has held of appropriate female roles. Teaching, having to do with the nurture of children, became one of the first acceptable careers for women, and because it became a woman’s field, it remained for the most part, poorly paid. Despite the distress of the Columbia professor about boys receiving their “intellectual and moral impulses from women,” many men seemed content to move into more lucrative professions. It was with much justification that in the 1970’s feminist critics concerned with equal opportunity for women charged that schools were instrumental in reinforcing traditional sex-role stereotypes. In light of current arguments that some school practices actually damage the emotional and psychological health of girls, it seems ironic that the AAUW’s first national study in 1885 was “initiated to dispel the commonly accepted myth that higher education was harmful to women’s health” (AAUW Report, 1992, p.v). Although I had thought that an all-girls setting might minimize the difficulties faced by girls in school, two books suggested that single-sex schools are not a panacea. Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School, edited by Carol Gilligan, Nona P. Lyons and Trudy J. Hanmer (1989), and Meeting at the Crossroads: Women. Psychology, and Girls’ Development, by Lyn Brown and Carol Gilligan (1992), are studies of adolescent girls at single-sex, independent schools: Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, and the Laurel School in Cleveland. These books, particularly Meeting at the Crossroads, were seminal influences for me, helping to focus my interest in self­ esteem issues for girls and shaping the course of this study. 10 Meeting at the Crossroads deals with nearly one hundred girls at the Laurel School, a private day school where most of the girls are white, and middle or upper- middle-class, although about 20% are scholarship students from working class families, and about 14% are minorities. In Meeting at the Crossroads. Brown and Gilligan (1992) document what they characterize as a loss of “voice” among these girls, a sort of repression imposed on them by society’s expectations for “nice” women, causing adolescents to deny their true feelings in contrast to the honesty and authenticity demonstrated by younger girls. Brown and Gilligan feel that school practices foster this repression, as faculty members mirror society’s expectations of how girls are “supposed” to behave. Because these authors believe that “an inner sense of connection with others is a central organizing feature in women’s development” (p. 3), they feel that the loss of voice in adolescence “suggests that adolescence is a time of disconnection, sometimes of dissociation or repression in women’s lives” (p. 4), although: Given their fortunate and privileged status in many respects, one might expect that these girls would be flourishing. And according to standard measures of psychological development and educational progress, they are doing extremely well. Our study provides clear evidence that as these girls grow older they become less dependent on external authorities, less egocentric or locked in their own experience or point of view, more differentiated from others in the sense of being able to distinguish their feelings and thoughts from those of other people, more autonomous in the sense of being able to rely on or to take responsibility for themselves, more appreciative of the complex interplay of voices and perspectives in any relationship, more aware of the diversity of human experience and the differences between societal and cultural groups. (1992, p. 5)

Given these positive comments, one might wonder what problems these girls could have, beyond the expected adjustments of moving from childhood to adulthood, but Brown and Gilligan add: Yet we found that this developmental progress goes hand in hand with evidence of a loss of voice, a struggle to authorize or take seriously their own experience--to listen to their own voices in conversation and respond to their feeling and thoughts-increased confusion, some times defensiveness, as well as evidence for the replacement of real with unauthentic or idealized relationships. If we consider responding to oneself, knowing one’s feelings 11

and thoughts, clarity, courage, openness, and free-flowing connections with others and the world as signs of psychological health, as we do, then these girls are in fact not developing, but are showing evidence of loss and struggle and signs of an impasse in their ability to act in the face of conflict. (1992, pp. 5-6)

The authors believe that this toss of voice is forced on girls by society’s restrictions and expectations about what a woman is “supposed” to be: neat, nice, polite, kind, quiet, always putting others’ needs before one’s own, etc. Boys are allowed to be strong, messy, angry, loud, and are encouraged to express themselves more overtly. If the girls at Laurel, who have both ability and material advantages beyond the average, were experiencing a loss of voice, difficulty in maintaining a sense of self, and difficulty in maintaing real relationships, then it seems reasonable to suspect that many girls experience similar problems. Surely “clarity, courage, openness, and free-flowing connections with others and the world” are desirable traits for all girls. I was encouraged to investigate this issue because Brown and Gilligan go on to say that: At the center of this crisis is the realization that girls are not only enacting dissociation but also narrating the process of their disconnection- revealing its mechanism and also its intention. The girls in our study, as they approached adolescence, were finding themselves at a relational impasse; in response, they were sometimes making, sometimes resisting a series of disconnections that seem at once adaptive and psychologically wounding: between psyche and body, voice and desire, thoughts and feelings, self and relationship. The central paradox we will explore-the giving up of relationship for the sake of “Relationships”--is a paradox of which girls themselves are aware. (1992, p. 7)

If girls do “narrate the process of their disconnection,” then it ought to be possible to establish relationships with girls and discuss the issue; to determine if other girls are also finding themselves at “a relational impasse.” Teachers might be in a position to assist girls in this “struggle to authorize or take seriously their own experience.” As an English teacher, I am aware that the study of literary works written by women is not particularly common in the nation’s public school English classrooms, 12 and that a number of educators have recently expressed the opinion that it is vital to girls’ self-esteem that we expand the literary canon to include more works by and about women. Surveys of required readings in schools indicate that the vast majority of the works selected for study have male protagonists and male authors. Although the AAUW study (1992) suggests that there has been some improvement in this area since the 1970’s, as late as 1989, Applebee found in a national sample of high school English courses in public, independent, and Catholic schools that the ten most commonly assigned books included only one written by a woman. It is a common belief of feminist teachers that including more works by and about women in the literary canon will be of benefit to our female students (Fetterly, 1978). Campbell and Wirtenberg (1980), in a review of research on how books influence children, cited 23 studies which indicate that books do transmit values to young readers. Many of these studies had to do with the effect of multicultural factors in children’s reading, but several dealt with gender issues and concluded that sex-role stereotyping was reduced in those students whose curriculum portrayed females and males in nonstereotypical roles. For example, McArthur and Eisen (1976) say: If one wishes to promote more equal representation of men and women in achieving roles in our society, a change in the representation of females in children’s books may be a useful step forward...it does not seem unreasonable to expect that young girls’ prolonged exposure to stereotypic children’s books may contribute to their lower levels of adult “achievement” as compared with men. (1976, p. 473)

However, there seems to be little documentation that either achievement or self­ esteem for adolescent girls can actually be increased in this manner. To learn more about these issues, and to determine a focus for my own work, I conducted a pilot study using observations and interviews with several girls in two local private schools: one a single-sex school for girls, and the other a former boys’ school which had recently become coeducational. Exploring the issue of 13 self-esteem, I patterned my questions after ones used by Brown and Gilligan (1992) as closely as I could, listening for the loss of voice which they describe. I did not, however, attempt to replicate their study, which took place over a period of several years and involved approximately 150 girls as well as 15 research assistants. From the conversations with the girls in the pilot study, I did find signs of the loss of voice and self-confidence described by Brown and Gilligan (1992), but I also found that some of the girls seemed very self-confident and exhibited no particular indications that they were suffering from repression and loss of voice. In fact, I came to admire their strength and self-confidence, and to wish that all girls might share these characteristics. I found myself becoming most interested in these girls who seem not to fit the pattern; girls who are not just coping with, but successfully resisting the formidable pressures of societal expectations.

Statement of the Problem

Bogdan and Biklen (1992) assert that finding the questions in qualitative research “should be one of the products of data collection rather than assumed a priorf' (p. 58). From the data in the pilot study, then, the questions which emerged have to do with whether and how some girls successfully resist repression and maintain a strong sense of self and voice during this adolescent crisis period. 1 became interested in the nature and the source of the knowledge or ability, as well as the social and psychological strategies, that might allow some girls to negotiate the difficulties of the growing up years without undue stress. I was particularly interested in the role the single-sex school might play in this process, and in how much influence might be exerted by the literature that girls read. While I realized that other questions might emerge during the course of my work, the research literature and my pilot study led me to focus on the following issues: 14 (1) What school factors might aid some girls in successfully resisting the repression and loss of voice described by Brown and Gilligan and others, helping them remain strong and self-confident through the adolescent years? (2) What are the influences of a single-sex educational environment on the self-esteem of girls? Does a single-sex setting contribute to self-esteem, or help girls resist losing their voices? (3) Does the type of reading that girls do provide them with role models or otherwise influence their ability to manage this difficult period in their lives? Does reading an increased number of works by or about women have a favorable effect on girls’ self-esteem? (4) What can we learn about building strength and self-confidence for girls that teachers, particularly English teachers, can apply in the mixed-sex public schools where most of our students will continue to be educated?

Significance of the Study

In Making Connections (1990), Gilligan quotes the 1980 Handbook of Adolescent Psychology: "Adolescent girls have simply not been much studied” (Gilligan, 1989, p. 1). In reviewing research over the past twenty years, I found this to be generally true, and I found no studies which investigate specifically whether the reading that girls do has a discernible impact on their self-esteem or self- confidence. The recent surge of interest in girls and their experiences in school, largely prompted by Brown and Gilligan’s work, has produced a number of new studies about adolescent girls, but they concentrate almost entirely on the problems girls face and the difficulties they encounter. Much of the recent research work which has been done with girls in the U.S. has focused on the pathology of eating disorders such as anorexia, which affects about 5% of teenage girls (Bruch, 1979). I know of no research which studies girls who are strong and successful, who come 15 through adolescence relatively unscathed, with their self-esteem and voices intact. The 1992 AAUW Report points out that, “Obviously, self-esteem is a complex construct, and further study of the various strengths and perspectives of girls from many different backgrounds is needed in order to design educational programs that can benefit all girls” ( p. 13). “Further study of the strengths and perspectives of girls” is exactly what I hoped to do in this research: to add in some small way to our understanding of how self-esteem is, or is not, constructed for girls. I want this work to be meaningful for parents and for educators, particularly for English teachers. My interest in exploring the role of reading in constructing self­ esteem was reinforced by this quote from the AAUW Report: Researchers have puzzled over the drop in girls’ self-esteem as they go through school, even though they do as well as boys on many standardized measures and get better grades. Teacher trainer Cathy Kelson attributes this drop in self-esteem to the negative messages delivered to girls by school curricula. Students sit in classes that, day in and day out, deliver the message that women’s lives count for less than men’s. Historian Linda Kerber suggests a plausible connection between falling self-esteem and curricular omission and bias. “Lowered self-esteem is a perfectly reasonable conclusion if one has been subtly instructed that what people like oneself have done in the world has not been important and is not worth studying.” (1992, p. 67)

It also seems, on the other hand, “a perfectly reasonable conclusion” that girls’ self­ esteem might be enhanced if the contributions of women counted for more in their school curriculum. Certainly, it seems that it is worthwhile to examine in more detail how reading, both in and out of school, might influence girls’ self-images. Additionally, the fact that single-sex schooling is not widely available in the United States does not mean that such schools are not worthy of study. Studies of these schools may help educators identify problems that girls face in coeducational schools. The study of single-sex schooling, free from cross-sex socialization and harassment, an environment where social and academic concerns are separated, might also offer insights into how gender issues are constructed by adolescent girls. 16 Furthermore, there is a tendency for social scientists, including feminist researchers, to focus on the underprivileged, whereas the schools I studied tend to draw most of their students from the upper strata of society. Connell et al.( 1982), argue that understanding why and how elite schools are academically successful is just as important as understanding why some types of schools fail. I agree, and I would add that we might learn from girls who are psychologically successful as well. If we can identify girls who are negotiating adolescence without losing their voices, their sense of themselves, and their early self-confidence, we might learn a great deal from them about how to help other girls in all types of schools.

Definition of Terms

As 1 will be using the terms self-esteem and self-confidence throughout this study, it important to establish precise definitions for these words. The introduction to the manual for the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, a questionnaire designed by psychologists to measure self-esteem, provides a definition that works very well for the purpose of this study:

The term “self-esteem” refers to the evaluation a person makes and customarily maintains with regard to him- or herself. “Self-esteem” expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval and indicates the extent to which a person believes him- or herself capable, significant, successful, and worthy.1

Self-esteem, then, refers to one’s feelings about oneself, and is invisible. Self-confidence, on the other hand, refers to the way in which one relates to others, and can be observed. A basic assumption underlying this work is that the two concepts are related; that girls with higher levels of self-esteem will generally act in a

1 Reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto CA 94303 from Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory - School Form by Stanley Coopersmith. Copyright 1967 by W.H. Freeman and Co. Published in 1981 by Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent. 17 more self-confident manner, and that high levels of self-esteem and self-confidence are inconsistent with feelings of repression and loss of voice. Self-esteem results from the intersection of many variables, some of which educators cannot hope to influence. As books such as Mother Daughter Revolution (Debold et al., 1993) point out, the role of parents and the home environment is undoubtedly the single most critical factor in how young people feel about themselves. Brown and Gilligan (1992) say that the girls in their study who maintained their strong voices have strong mothers, who “do not fit conventional images of good women” (p. 225). The influence of home and family is not a factor which educators can usually control, and is beyond the scope of this study. However, schools do play an extremely important role in the lives of children as well, particularly during adolescence when peer approval becomes of paramount importance and young people are becoming more independent of parents. I have grounded my work in school experiences, particularly in English classrooms. English is my own area of expertise, but more importantly, English is the primary subject area where ideas, concerns, thoughts and feelings relevant to self-esteem are likely to be a topic of discussion. In teaching writing, English teachers encourage students to find and express their own voices. The study of literature by its very nature lends itself to exploration and discussion of one’s feeling and values, and to the expression of one’s own voice in both speaking and writing. CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The literature which informs my research can be organized into three broad categories: (1) that which consists of inquiry into women’s modes of thinking and learning, (2) literature which examines self-esteem issues for girls in an educational context, and (3) inquiry into educational theory and practice examining the reading, teaching and learning of literature from a gender-conscious perspective. Discussion of gender issues can usefully begin with exploring and explaining feminine values and modes of thinking, and how these might differ from the values and thinking processes of males. There are several recent works which explore these questions, and which are foundational to understanding self-esteem issues for girls. This work has often been inspired by a feminist orientation. Many studies which specifically address issues of self-esteem or self- confidence for adolescent girls belong to the field of psychology and, as I have indicated, this research tends to address problems such as eating disorders or serious depression. Therefore, although I referred to several of these studies in Chapter I, I will review here several works directed toward parents or educators published by the popular press, which seem to have more direct relation to my own research and which consider self-esteem in a context of schooling. The last category encompasses a great variety of work. As 1 have indicated, the role of gender issues in schooling and in the teaching of literature has recently become a topic of much discussion in educational and in feminist circles, and the subject has produced a number of research studies. There are numerous works

18 19 which look specifically at relationships between gender and reading, and I have limited my review to that research which has the most direct bearing on my own study.

Women’s Values and Modes of Thinking

That women see the world differently from men, think differently from men, is an ancient idea, and has long been conventional wisdom. In 1929, Virginia Woolf noted that “the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex,” adding, "it is the masculine values that prevail.” Nancy Chodorow’s (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering is by now a classic and one of the veiy first studies to explore and attempt to explain what appear to be differences in values between men and women. Chowdorow suggests that because women are almost universally responsible for the raising of young children, girls grow up identifying with their caretaker and thus “have a basis for empathy built into their primary definition of self in a way that boys do not” (p. 167). This difference leads girls to form a view of the world based on relationships and “connectedness,” and boys to see themselves as separate and individual. Therefore, Chowdorow suggests, girls develop a value system based on cooperation and maintaining relationships, whereas boys learn to value individual competition. In terms of moral development, girls come to feel that it is most important not to hurt others, while boys develop a sense of objective fairness and rules. For example, Lever’s (1976) studies of sex differences in the play of young children found that boys were more competitive in their games and yet resolved disputes more effectively, utilizing rules. When disputes threatened girls’ games, they usually just ended the game, rather than jeopardize the friendships involved. Chowdorow’s theory offers a possible explanation for some of the differences between men’s and women’s values. Carol Gilligan’s (1982) In a Different \foice further examines what this difference between boys and girls means in terms of moral development and value systems. Basically, she says, the difference between men and women comes down to a contrast between “a self defined through separation and a self delineated through connection” (p. 31). Females perceive morality as based in the connections among people in specific contextual situations. The male approach to morality is based on separation, on the ability to distance oneself from concrete situations in order to determine objectively just rules for mediating relationships. Gilligan notes that women have always failed to fit models of human growth and moral development, which were invariably based on studies of men, and that women were usually pronounced “deficient” in some way as a result. Not only Freud, but Piaget and Kolhberg assumed that the experience of boys and men is the norm by which human beings should be judged. Gilligan quotes David McClelland (1975): “sex role turns out to be one of the most important determinants of human behavior; psychologists have found sex differences in their studies from the moment they started doing empirical research” (p. 14). However, Gilligan explains: Since it is difficult to say “different” without saying “better” or “worse,” since there is a tendency to construct a single scale of measurement, and since that scale has generally been derived from and standardized on the basis of men’s interpretations of research data drawn predominately or exclusively from studies of males, psychologists have tended to regard male behavior as the “norm” and female behavior as some kind of deviation from that norm. Thus, when women do not conform to the standards of psychological expectation, the conclusion has generally been that something is wrong with the women. (1992, p. 14)

In other words, male behaviors and values have traditionally been considered the norm, and female behaviors and values have been relegated to an inferior status. According to Gilligan, Freud criticized women’s sense of justice, because it refused blind impartiality. In Kohlberg’s well-known schema of moral development, based on a study of 84 boys, there are six stages of moral development. Women 21 usually seem to be in the third stage where “morality is conceived in interpersonal terms and goodness is equated with helping and pleasing others” (p. 18). Kohlberg pointed out that this stage works well for women as wives and mothers, but that if “women enter the traditional arena of male activity they will recognize the inadequacy of this moral perspective and progress like men toward higher stages where relationships are subordinated to rules (stage four) and rules to universal principles of justice (stages five and six)" (p. 18). Gilligan points out that this view creates a paradox for women, because “the traits that have traditionally defined the ‘goodness’ of women, their care for and sensitivity to the needs of others, are those that mark them as deficient in moral development” (p. 18). So, a woman can choose to maintain female values and be considered a “good woman” but inherently inferior to men, or abandon her true self and attempt to adopt male values-but still never quite become accepted as equal. This book is thought-provoking and a good explanation of the dilemma in which many modem women find themselves: how to maintain one’s feminine values and still be accepted as an equal in a man’s world. It may well be that some part of the drop in self-esteem experienced by contemporary adolescent girls is caused by their dawning realization of this dilemma. The third basic work which builds on the theories of Chodorow and Gilligan, Women’s Wavs of Knowing by Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986), describes “five different perspectives from which women view reality and draw conclusions about truth, knowledge, and authority” (p. 3). They are “ silence, a position in which women experience themselves as mindless and voiceless ... received knowledge, a perspective from which women conceive of themselves as capable of receiving, even reproducing, knowledge from the all-knowing external authorities, but not capable of creating knowledge on their own; subjective knowledge, a perspective from which truth and knowledge are conceived as personal, private, and subjectively known or intuited; procedural knowledge, a position in which women are invested in learning and applying objective procedures for 22 obtaining and communicating knowledge; and constructed knowledge, in which women view all knowledge as contextual, experience themselves as creators of knowledge, and value both subjective and objective strategies for knowing” (p. 15). These perspectives are somewhat sequential, although not all women start from a position of silence, nor do they necessarily attain the position of constructed knowledge. Belenky et al. claim that procedural knowing may take a more “separate” or a more “connected form,” and that the two forms are not necessarily gender-specific, although women more usually practice the connected form, which can create problems since both the academic and the business worlds more often value the separate form. For example, they say that argument is seldom a mode of discourse among women friends: ‘The classic dormitory bull session, with students assailing their opponents’ logic and attacking their evidence, seems to occur rarely among women, and teachers complain that women students are reluctant to engage in critical debate with peers in class.” (Belenky et al. 1986, p. 105). In a school system which values critical debate, women are at a disadvantage. Connected knowing, say Belenky et al.(1986), comes more easily to many women. In female discussions, the emphasis is more often on trying to understand others’ points of view than on attacking them. The authors report that “In teaching undergraduates we have found it necessary to ask many of the males to refrain from making judgments until they understood the topic. On the other hand, we have often had to prod the females into critical examination” (p. 116). Belenky et al. feel that “the quest for self and voice plays a central role in transformations in women’s ways of knowing” (p. 133). In other words, women make a transition in their mode of thinking when circumstances in their lives seem to require it For women to achieve constructed knowledge, the most sophisticated position, they try to “reclaim the self by attempting to integrate knowledge that they felt intuitively was personally important with knowledge they had learned from 23 others" (p. 134). “Women constructivists show a high tolerance for internal contradiction and ambiguity. They abandon completely the either/or thinking so common to the previous positions described. They recognize the inevitability of conflict and stress and, although they may hope to achieve some respite, they also, as one woman explained, ‘learn to live with conflict rather than taking or acting it away’" (p. 137). This book adds to our understanding of how women think by going far beyond Gilligan’s conception of difference. Not only do women think differently from men in a general sense, but they think in various ways, differently from each other as well. In postmodern terms, Belenky et al. show us that we must avoid “essentializing” women’s points of view. As a teacher, I think we need to move women beyond the point of silence, or of relying totally on external authorities, or of relying entirely on their own intuition. Belenky et al. point the way for teachers to assist women in becoming procedural or constructed knowers, by acting as “benign and knowledgeable” authorities. English teachers are in a particularly good position to fill this role, because discussion of literature lends itself to collaborative efforts by students and teachers to find meaning, and writing assignments offer opportunities to explore one’s own thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, and feelings. 1 find this book very meaningful because it offers descriptions and explanations for some of my own experiences. I have personally known girls and women who seem to be at each of the stages which these authors describe. An important debate is currently being waged between scholars who believe that differences in the thinking patterns of women and men are culturally created and those who believe the differences are biologically inherent. Some educators believe that proof of biological difference would be beneficial to women. A 1993 article by Joanne Draus Klein in Cleveland Now magazine includes the following passage:

Researchers like Harvard’s Carol Gilligan, who studied how girls learn at Laurel School...and the University of Vermont’s Jill Tarule...say 24

education, like so much else, is based on a masculine model. Recognizing a feminine model, they say, is the first step toward equality in the classroom- and life. That feminine model-which focuses on discussing rather than lecturing, cooperation rather than competition, and intuitive and experiential learning rather than memorization and recitation-is both psychologically and physiologically based. JoAnn Deak, director of Laurel’s Lower School and an expert on gender-related learning differences, thinks the physiological reasons, though more controversial, are also more important. Deak says that females with normal or higher estrogen levels have brains that are more developed-literally larger-in the area where language skills originate. Meanwhile, the brains of males with normal or higher testosterone levels are more developed in the section dealing with spatial relationships. When those hormone levels change, she says, proficiency in the related skills changes along with them. “What this means,” Deak says, “is you can no longer say that if you treat girls the same as boys they’ll turn out the same. Now you can be a staunch feminist and still acknowledge there are different patterns of learning, that boys and girls have their own natural inclinations.” (p.7)

Some scientists, researchers and femininsts, however, vigorously dispute the studies which indicate biological difference. Carol Tavris (1992), in her provocative book, The Mismeasure of Woman, insists that differences between men and women are culturally created, and that the most recent research indicates that the brains or minds of men and women are not inherently different in any important ways, but that there are important differences in life experiences. It is just these differences in life experiences which often lead to self-esteem problems for adolescent girls. Tavris agrees with Gilligan that men are widely considered, both physically and psychologically, the “normal” human being and women, in so far as they are different from men, are abnormal, the sex to be “explained.” Tavris states that her goal is to “expand our visions of normalcy, not replace a male-centered view with a female- centered one” (p. 20). She says: The confusion over whether women are the “same” as men, and whether they can be “different but equal” is at the heart of the current debates between (and about) the sexes. In contrast, I take as my basic premise that there is nothing essential-that is, universal and unvarying-in the natures of women and men. Personality traits, abilities, values, motivations, roles, dreams, and desires: all vary across culture and history, and depend on time and place, context and situation. (1992, p. 21) 25 Tavris’ work was inspired by Steven Jay Gould’s book, The Mismeasure of Man. in which he “showed how science has been used and abused in the study of intelligence to serve a larger social and political agenda: to confirm the prejudice that some groups are assigned to their subordinate role by ‘the harsh dictates of nature.’ The mismeasure of woman,” Tavris claims, persists because it also “reflects and serves society’s prejudices” (p. 24). Tavris says that recent research concerning differences in the brains of men and women “does not exactly reveal a noble and impartial quest for truth” (p. 24). The brain consists of two hemispheres, connected by a bundle of fibers called the corpus callosum. For the past several years, newspapers and magazines such as the one quoted above have published articles about the supposed difference in the functions of the two hemispheres, including the idea that the hemispheres develop differently in girls and boys. Right hemisphere dominance was supposed to account for men’s superiority in art, music, math, and visual-spatial ability. Women were described as having more interconnected spheres, which explained their intuition, interest in talk and feelings, and ability to make quick judgments. Tavris points out that these findings aren’t nearly as conclusive or persuasive as the popular press has indicated. According to Tavris, two researchers who conducted a well-publicized study of sex differences in brains were using rats, not people, and in a study of 507 human fetal brains, they actually found no significant sex difference: Science published another study by two researchers who claimed to have found gender differences in the splenium (posterior end) of the corpus callosum. In particular, they said, the splenium was larger and more bulbous in the five female brains than in the nine male brains they examined, which had been obtained at autopsy. The researchers speculated that ‘the female brain is less well lateralized-that is, manifests less hemispheric specialization -than the male brain for visuospatial functions. Notice the language: The female brain is less specialized than, and by implication inferior to, the male brain. They did not say, as they might have, that the female brain was more integrated than the male’s. This article, which also met professional acclaim, had a number of major flaws, that, had they been part of any other research paper, would have 26

been fatal to its publication. The study was based on a small sample of only fourteen brains. The researchers did not describe their methods of selecting the brains....the article contained numerous unsupported assumptions and leaps of faith. For example, there is at present absolutely no evidence that the number of fibers in the corpus callosum is even related to hemispheric specialization. Indeed, no one knows what role, if any, the callosum plays in determining a person’s mental abilities. Most damaging of all, the the sex differences that the researchers claimed to have found in the size of the corpus callosum were not statistically significant (1992, p. 51)

According to Tavris, neuroscientist Ruth Bleir, professor of neurophysiology at the University of Wisconsin, wrote to Science, “delineating these criticisms and also citing four subsequent studies, by her and by others, that independently failed to find gender differences of any kind in the corpus callosum. Science failed to publish this criticism, as it has failed to publish all studies that find no gender differences in the brain” (p. 51). Clearly, Tavris believes that male chauvinism abounds in the world of scientific research, and that scientists who are looking for biological differences in the brains of men and women are doing so in the hope of establishing a physiological basis for “proving” that men are naturally superior. Actually, Tavris says, the differences between men and women in fields like verbal, mathematical and spatial ability are disappearing, with recent studies finding more variation within the sexes than between them. The biggest problem Tavris finds with biological theories of sex difference is that “they deflect attention from the far more substantial evidence for sex similarity” (p. 54). She points out, ‘The fields of math and science are losing countless capable women because girls keep hearing that women aren’t as good as men in these fields” (p. 55). In the last decade, says Tavris: Feminist scholars have divided into those who believe that there are no significant personality differences between the sexes (other than temporary ones caused by differences in power and society) and those who believe that there are fundamental differences but that women’s ways are better....! 27

thoroughly endorse the effort to retrieve the best qualities and experiences associated with women from the scrap heap of slander in which they have reposed. It was about time for psychologists to realize that capacities such as intimacy, cooperation, nurturance, vulnerability to others, and empathy are healthy and necessary for both sexes, not oddities of the female psyche. (1992, p. 59)

Thus, she points out that sex-role stereotyping also damages men by forcing them to deny inherent “feminine” aspects of their natures, and she insists that the “misguided belief that there is something special and different about women’s nature” is “an attitude that historically has served to keep women in their place” (p. 60).

Chowdorow maintained that the differences between men and women were a

result of mothering arrangements established by our culture, not mothering instincts or biology. But, says Tavris, "her work, like Gilligan’s, has tended to enter public conversation as evidence that the two styles are somehow part of male and female nature -enduring and unchangeable.” Tavris reports that new studies “find that the behavior we link to gender depends more on what an individual is doing and needs to do than on his or her biological sex” (p. 63). For example, single men who are caring for children because of widowhood, a wife’s desertion or lack of interest, are just as nurturing as mothers. “Similarly, a study of 150 men who were spending up to sixty hours a week caring for their ailing parents or spouses found that the men provided just as much emotional support as women traditionally do. The obligation of providing this care usually falls to women, but when men have to do it, they do it just as well and lovingly” (p. 63). This is a thought-provoking book. Certainly I know that I grew up thinking that reading was for girls and math was for boys, and when I read articles about “left- brain” or “right-brain” thinking, or “male” vs. “female” thinking, I found it believable that there might be actual physiological differences. However, Tavris believes that the theory of biological distinction in male and female brains is bad science promoted by simple male chauvinism, and she makes a persuasive case. Feminist scholars are deeply divided on this issue. It is an important distinction, and must be eventually 28 decided on the basis of fact, rather than political expediency. In terms of my own research, whether women’s ways of thinking are biologically or culturally based is not really critical. The point is, differences do currently exist, and the differences must be appropriately dealt with in school settings. One cannot build self-esteem for girls using a male model of thinking and values construction. According to Tavris, even Freud acknowledged, “I cannot evade the notion that for women the level of what is ethically normal is different from what it is in men” (p. 80).

Gender and Self-Esteem

According to the 1992 AAUW Report, a nationwide survey commissioned by the AAUW in 1990 found that 69% of elementary school boys and 60% of elementary school girls said they were “happy the way I am” (p. 12). Among high school students the percentages were 46% for boys and 29% for girls. Broken down by race, in elementaiy school 55% of white girls, 65% of black girls and 68% of Hispanic girls reported being happy with themselves. In high school, the numbers drop to 22% of white girls and 30% of Hispanic girls, compared to 58% of black girls. However, black girls did not have high levels of self esteem in areas related to school. The role of race in construction of self-esteem for girls, although peripheral to the main issues in this study, is an interesting point, and I will return to it in discussing my interview data. Simmons and Blyth found that “The type of school, whether K-8, middle school, or junior high school, and the timing of the transition from one school to another is particularly important for girls. Research reveals that girls’ self-esteem benefits if there is only one transition at the end of eighth grade rather than the two changes: first from elementary school to middle or junior high school and, second, from there to high school” ( quoted in AAUW, 1992, p. 13). 29 These findings were confirmed by Gunnar and Collins, who compared girls whose schools ran from kindergarten to eighth grade and those who moved into a junior high school, or what we now refer to as middle school, after sixth grade. They found that the latter group experienced a dramatic drop in self-esteem, lower grade point averages, and less participation in school activities. Furthermore, these girls never really caught up with those in the K-8 schools. Boys experienced some similar problems, but fared better than the girls. As far as I can tell, studies such as these have had no impact on school planners. Decisions about closing schools, building schools, and grouping students often continue to be made on a purely financial basis. Other literature addressing issues of self-esteem for girls includes several books published by the popular press. Author Emily Hancock holds a doctorate in human development from Harvard University and is on the faculty of the Center for Psychological Studies in Albany, California. In The Girl Within. Hancock (1989) suggests that women “come fully into their own and become truly themselves only when they recapture the girl they’d been in the first place, before she got all cluttered up” (p. 1). The “cluttering up” refers to the “feminine” baggage that girls get loaded down with in the teen years—how they are supposed to look, to act, how to get a boy interested, etc. According to Hancock, “the task of a woman’s lifetime boils down to reclaiming the authentic identity she’d embodied as a girl” (p. 2). The magic, authentic age, according to Hancock, is about eight or nine, when a girl has become somewhat liberated from the confines of the family, may go through a tomboy stage, and is not yet subjected to the social and hormonal influences of the teen years. “Poised between the make-believe of preschool and the thrall of adolescence, the eight-to-ten year old occupies an intermediate zone of childhood, an interim space between fantasy and reality that fosters creative self-ownership. A child this age enjoys a wholeness of self, a unity with the cosmos...paradoxically, this is the time in 30 a female’s life when she is most likely to be allied with her father and yet least defined by the patriarchy” (pp. 8-9). Then, says Hancock, “Suddenly, well before puberty, along comes the culture with the pruning shears, ruthlessly trimming back her spirit...conformity marks the era of the older girl, in spite of changing times” (p. 18). Hancock is essentially describing the loss of voice described by Brown and Gilligan, and she makes an important point with the image of the culture’s “pruning shears.” However, her breathless prose style is irritating, even to one who has recently read an abundance of dry, academic writing, and her insistence on recapturing an eight-year-old self seems fatuous to one who really can’t remember anything specific or special about that particular year. Head of Child and Adolescent Psychology at Montefiore Medical Center/ Einstein College of Medicine and an associate professor of psychiatry at Einstein College in New York, Carol Eagle runs a hospital-based group therapy program for girls aged 11 to 13. All That She Can Be. which Eagle wrote with Carol Coleman (1993), begins with the now familiar explanations that for many girls, puberty marks the beginning of a precipitous drop in self-esteem and diminished expectations. According to this work, 20% of all teenage girls develop abnormal eating habits; 20% of white girls and 40% of minority girls will be pregnant at least once by the age of 18; and most girls will graduate from high school with test scores below those of the boys in the class. This book is primarily directed to parents and gives many suggestions as to how they can counter some of the negative experiences girls have. Eagle and Coleman suggest that “educators are beginning to have second thoughts about whether the rush to coeducation was a mistake” (p. 167), and that many girls clearly do better academically in single-sex settings. This judgement is based on the studies by Lee and Bryk (1986a) and Lee and Marks (1990) which I mentioned earlier. The book makes a valuable contribution in reminding us that girls develop at different rates, and that each girl’s specific situation is unique. This is refreshing after the sweeping generalizations made in Hancock’s book. 31 The Mother Daughter Revolution, by Elizabeth Debold, Marie Wilson & Idelisse Malave (1993) suggests ways in which mothers can support their daughters and help them through the adolescent years. (Debold is a member of the Harvard Project, Wilson is president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, and and Malave is vice president.) These authors discuss some of the problems girls face in coed schools, including sexual harassment. According to these authors, a study of sexual harassment in schools conducted by the Wellesley Center for Research on Women reported that “Well over a third of the girls reported being harassed every single day in school” (Debold et al., 1993, p. 50), sometimes through looks or comments; but eight out of ten girls who reported harassment also reported having been touched, pinched or grabbed. Although intended for parents, this book has important messages for educators. Sexual harassment in school has been discussed in several recent books and articles. It also appeared as a topic in my interviews with girls. Such harassment is certainly detrimental to girls’ self-esteem and should not be part of the school experience. A 1994 publication, which was required reading for the faculty at the all-girls school in my study, is Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist and instructor at the University of Nebraska. She uses the drowning of Ophelia in Hamlet as a metaphor for what happens to girls in contemporary American society, and much of the book is devoted to individual descriptions of her patients. Pipher says that Simone de Beauvoir was correct in asserting that girls do not suffer from the penis envy postulated by Freud, but from power envy-that adolescence is when girls realize that men have all the power in society and that women’s only power results from “their consenting to become submissive, if adored, objects. Adolescent girls suffer because of the conflict between their autonomous selves and need to be feminine" (p. 21). American culture, says Pipher, has always “smacked girls on the head in early adolescence. 32 This is when they move into a broader culture that is rife with girl-hurting ‘isms,’” (p. 23) including sexism and what Pipher calls “lookism,” the over-emphasis on physical appearance. She discusses sexual harassment in the schools and on the streets, media messages that encourage drinking, spending money, and being sexually active as symbols of adulthood, the cult of beauty and thinness, and other pressures felt by adolescent girls. Pipher quotes Alice Miller (1981) who believes that their own parents sometimes force girls to face a choice between being “authentic” ( a word also used by Carol Gilligan) or being loved. Miller describes how girls “split” into “political” and “personal” selves, and the damage that this split causes. Pipher, however, feels that parents often are “fighting hard to save their daughters’ true selves,” and are frustrated by the media values (which she characterizes as “junk” values") and “cultural definitions of their daughters as consumers or sex objects” (p. 37). “Ironically,” Pipher claims, “bright and sensitive girls are most at risk for problems. They are likely to understand the implications of the media around them and be alarmed. They have the mental equipment to pick up our cultural ambivalence about women, and yet they don’t have the cognitive, emotional and social skills to handle this information. They are paralyzed by complicated and contradictory data that they cannot interpret” (p. 43). Pipher identifies four ways in which girls react: conforming, withdrawing, becoming depressed, or becoming angry. Those who conform are the “Barbie dolls” with “hair and smiles in place and a terrible deadness underneath” says Pipher, because to “totally accept the cultural definitions of femininity and conform to the pressures is to kill the self’ (p. 44). Those who blame themselves for their difficulties become depressed, while those who blame their parents become angry. Pipher goes beyond simply describing the problems girls experience to explore causes, and I believe that she is correct in targeting our current popular culture as a major cause of much of the distress among contemporary' girls. 33 “America today,” claims Pipher, “is a girl-destroying place. Everywhere girls are encouraged to sacrifice their true selves” (p. 44). Girls who hold on to their true selves also tend to hold on to closer relationships with their families, Pipher finds, and she believes that parents can help-that “once girls understand the effects the culture on their lives, they can fight back...Intelligent resistance keeps the true self alive” (p. 44). Whereas the parental role used to be to help children fit into the culture, now parents must fight against cultural influences which are harmful to their children. Teachers, too, can learn to help girls fight back. Another very recent book is Schoolgirls (1994), written by Peggy Orenstein in association with the American Association of University Women. This book, unlike the others, concentrates on girls’ experiences in school, focusing on one middle school in an upper/middle class suburban neighborhood and another which serves primarily poor and minority children. “The girls I spoke with,” says Orenstein, “were from vastly different family structures and economic classes, and they had achieved varying degrees of academic success. Yet all of them, even those enjoying every conceivable advantage, saw their gender as a liability” (p. xv). Orenstein stresses the power of what she calls “the hidden curriculum.” She says, “Few of the girls I spoke with had ever been told that girls ‘can’t’ do what boys can-most were overtly encouraged to fulfill their potential. Yet all, on some level, had learned this lesson anyway” (p. xxviii). This hidden message, Orenstein feels, is one of the reasons for the decline in girls’ scores in the important subjects of math and science. She says that researchers “have long understood that a loss of confidence in math usually precedes a drop in achievement,” and that a “confidence gap,” rather than an “ability gap,” is the problem (p. xvii). Furthermore, she claims there is a circular relationship between math confidence and overall self-confidence. There is also “a circular relationship between girls’ affection for science, their self­ esteem, and their career plans," and the gap in achievement between girls and boys in science, unlike math, is actually widening (p. 22). 34 It has long been said by feminists that many girls feel pressure to deemphasize their intelligence in school, to pretend to be “dumber” than they really are in order to be liked by their peers and, especially, by boys. Girls at the suburban school in Orenstein’s study used the word “schoolgirl” as a pejorative term for those who made good grades and took their class work seriously. The only worse term, she says, was “slut,” although it was all right for boys to be “studs.” The preoccupation with sex which Orenstein describes among these children, and the amount of sexual harassment perpetrated by the boys were astounding. Several of the eighth grade girls at the upper/middle class school had been invited to have intercourse and were otherwise sexually harassed by the same young man. “Even though they refused him,” says Orenstein, “their reputations, not his, are in jeopardy” (p. 65). As one girl explained, ‘“The thing is, we don’t have controL.he could just say we were asking for it or that we wanted it. Then everyone will think we’re sluts’” (p. 65). In the inner city school, Orenstein says, the primary difference in the harassment was that the girls fought back more, breaking “the pattern of silence and shame” among the girls at the first school. However, without a language “that degrades men as colorfully and efficiently as it does women, the girls are forced to adopt the same terms boys hurl at them, terms such as ‘bitch’ or ‘ho...’” (p. 150). Thus an African-American girl, irate over something a boy has said to her, can think of no way to express her anger except to call him “nigger,” and “bitch.” At least she is fighting back, which girls in the suburban school seemed unable to do. The AAUW (1992) report found that African-American girls in general have higher self-esteem than white girls, except in areas related to school. Body image, for example, is not such a critical problem. Orenstein quotes one such student who brims with self-confidence despite being overweight: “‘It’s not my body that’s going to get me somewhere, it’s my brain. I could be the biggest person, bigger than this, and it’s still my brain, not my body. So I’m not trippin’ if I’m big or small or nothing. That don’t matter’” (p. 231). 35 Even this student, however, faces formidable obstacles to reaching her goals, primarily in the form of peer pressure. She says, and teachers Orenstein spoke with confirm, that for students from the economically disadvantaged segment of society, achieving success means giving up any sort of social life whatsoever-a heavy price for teens to pay. The student says, ‘“My friends wonder about me....they say, “Dang, you’re getting these high grades, that’s cold.”...I don’t want to stop hanging around the friends I grew up with....I don’t want to be snotty, like I’m too good for them now’”(p. 236). This middle school girl’s fantasy is to go to a high school where she doesn’t know anyone, and where she would make no friends because they might distract her from her goals. Boys, of course, are an even worse distraction. Another inner-city student who wants to go to college tells Orenstein, ‘“I think that boyfriends could get in my way, though. You fall in love with a boy and then you don’t want to do anything. You just do what he wants to do and then you do nothing. So I don’t want to fall in love. I know a girl who went with her boyfriend when she was fifteen, and she got pregnant and that was it. You have to keep your eyes open, and you can’t fall in love, that’s important’” (p. 237). The African-American girls in my study, because of socioeconomic factors, do not experience these pressures to the same degree as the girls in Orenstein’s book, but their sentiments are recognizable from work with my own students in the public schools. Some of them, like the giris Orenstein talked with, are unable to visualize friendships which are mutually supportive in terms of achievement in school, perhaps doing homework together. They are equally unable to imagine a relationship with a boyfriend which does not include sexual activity that might result in pregnancy and derail their lives. Since forming relationships with boys is usually an important part of adolescence, these girls are in a difficult dilemma. 36 Gender and Reading

There is an enormous body of research about reading including many studies inspired by Rosenblatt’s (1978) theory of reader response, and a good deal of the newer research does address gender issues in some respect. However, many of these studies concern reading habits and tastes for elementary age children, or for college students or adults rather than adolescents, and few deal with topics relating directly to self-esteem issues for giris. Studies which include gender as a significant factor in some respect fall generally into four categories: those which examine gender differences in reading ability, those which examine gender differences in reading preferences, those which examine gender differences in reader response, and those studies concerned with sex-role stereotyping in literature for young people and the need to expand the literary canon to include more works by and about women. The latter two categories have the most relevance to my study, but I will examine selected examples of the first two types of studies as well, because they serve as background and introduction for the work that bears more specifically on my research. The concern over what girls read is not new. In 1910, Clara Whitehill Hunt, the Superintendent of the Children’s Department of the Brooklyn Public Library, wrote an article for Ladies Home Journal which begins: “The emptiness, insipidity and general dead level of mediocrity of present day girls’ books, and the avidity with which our girls devour this weak diet move many a librarian to despair” (p. 52). She suggests that mothers read the books their daughters are bringing into the home and approve those that present a “simple, happy home, with a father of whom any girl might be proud, a mother who is a wise, strong, loving companion to her boys and girls and the center around whom the home revolves..." (p. 52). She thinks that character should be more important than wealth, and stories in which money figures prominently should be avoided, as well as those in which the heroine is sorry for herself. She says that, of course, “a sensible mother will not tolerate stories of 37 school boy and girl flirtations,” although she would not prevent a girl from reading a “romance of true love, high, pure and ennobling” (p. 52). Clearly, Hunt is operating on the assumption that girls’ ideas and behavior will be influenced by their reading, and that their reading, therefore, needs to be carefully selected. She decries the narrow range of interests of the average American girl and recommends historical tales “full of color and romance, of other times and other lands” (p. 52). Finally, she asks, “Why should we behave as if we thought it enough for girls to be pretty and sweet, while boys must have strength and breadth and mental power?” (p. 52). And why, I’d like to add, are we still asking the same question eighty-four years later?

Gender and Reading Ability

As I have indicated, there is a commonly held belief in our culture that reading is an activity more suited for girls than for boys. A typical American father is not likely to object to his daughter reading a book, but he is likely to feel that his son should be out playing ball. Certainly it has been conventional wisdom among educators for many years, supported by standardized test scores, that girls do better at verbal activities than boys. Some of the research into biological differences in male and female brains was an attempt to determine whether there is a genetic or physiological cause for the fact that girls at every age always outscore boys on standardized tests of verbal ability. A study by Dwyer (1973) examined the common explanations for the fact that girls generally have scored higher in reading on standardized tests than boys. For example, it has been suggested that girls are simply more advanced developmentally than boys. Dwyer says that studies indicate there is no relationship between reading and physical development, nor is there a developmental timetable for reading achievement. Dwyer claims that existing data support the idea that environmental 38 factors explain differences in reading achievement A second common explanation for sex differences in reading is that the content of reading materials is more suited for girls than boys. Dwyer finds it difficult to believe that the content of basal readers is more suitable or challenging for girls than for boys, and in fact, she says, research indicates that sex-differences exist no matter what materials are used. A third explanation holds that teachers, usually female, are responsible for boys’ lower achievement, because they treat boys more negatively. Dwyer insists that this doesn’t make sense, because the same boys who score poorly in reading excel in other areas. Furthermore, when boys have male teachers, their reading achievement is not improved. The fourth explanation, which Dwyer believes, is that “boys’ perceptions of school and reading as inappropriate to or in conflict with development of the male sex role may depress boys’ achievement” (p. 455). She says that research has shown that in the United States, reading is considered to be a feminine activity and that this classification lessens boys’ motivation to excel in reading. For girls, however, there is little conflict between sex-role demands and reading demands. Dwyer thinks that research argues strongly against the existence of sex differences in reading ability based on innate physical or maturational characteristics. The AAUW report (1992) found that sex differences in verbal ability as measured by standardized tests have decreased significantly in recent years. In all age groups, girls consistently receive higher scores in reading and writing. However, since 1971, boys have continued to make gains relative to girls, giving substance to arguments that there is no physiological reason that boys can’t achieve as well as girls in this area, just as there is no sex-linked “math gene” which prevents girls from achieving in math and science. An example of this newer research is a study done in 1987 by Hall et al., who claim the two most important theories in explaining girls’ reading superiority are inherent perceptual or physiological differences between the sexes, or social, cultural or educational factors such as sex-role expectations. Again, for these authors, the 39 debate boils down to biological differences versus cultural ones. This study examined whether sex was related to reading achievement in the areas of silent reading comprehension, sight vocabulary, recognition of vocabulary in context, and the use of structural analysis in word recognition. In approximately 160 second- graders, about half male and half female, no significant differences between the sexes were found. These results are different from the conclusions of most studies, which the authors suggest is an indication that cultural attitudes toward reading are a more likely explanation for sex differences than biological differences, which would show up consistently. Gender and Reading Preferences

Another commonly held belief about gender and reading is that boys are harder to please when it comes to reading material. Teachers often think that girls will read books about boys, but that boys will not read books about girls. Research generally supports this idea, and given that a teacher needs to engage all students, it is logical then to choose books with male protagonists. Donelson (1989), however, has concluded otherwise; he calls the belief that boys don’t relate to stories about girls a myth based on out-of-date and inconclusive research, although he says we are in danger of having this idea become a self-fulfilling prophecy, when teachers act as if it is true. Investigating student preferences in reading, Beyard-Tyler and Sullivan (1980) conducted two studies involving 576 students in grades 7,9, and 11, precisely the grades of the students in my study. They wanted to determine whether students preferred themes in which the central problem is resolved successfully, and whether boys and girls preferred protagonists of the same gender. Using four popular adolescent novels, they adapted two synopses from each book, one with a positive resolution and one with a negative resolution. Each synopsis was also prepared in two versions, one with a male protagonist and one with a female 40 protagonist The study concluded that both male and female protagonists at all grade levels preferred more positive endings, which I find very predictable. The results also indicated that boys and girls prefer characters of the same sex, although for girls, the preference decreases in strength as they get older, while for boys, the preference for same-sex characters increases as they get older. Beyard-Tyler and Sullivan speculate that students learn to value the male role more than the female role as they grow older. If this is true, learning that the male role is more valued may be one of the causes for the drop in self-esteem experienced by many girls.

Gender and Reader-Response

A number of researchers have addressed gender issues with respect to reading response and studying literature in school. As early as 1964, Squire elicited responses from fifty-four students reading short stories, and concluded, among other findings, that girls have a greater tendency to make literary judgments and to associate themselves with the emotions of the characters than boys do, a conclusion which is also voiced in the interviews I conducted with teachers. Culp (1977) points out that “Teachers since Plato and Aristotle have believed in the power of literature to affect people’s lives-for good or for ill" (p. 245). She investigates the influence of reading literature on attitudes, values and behavior as determined by randomly selected case studies at an urban university by asking students to fill out a questionnaire and then discussing their responses with them in an interview. Most of her questions are very similar to questions I asked in my interviews. She says, ‘These studies revealed the inadequacy of a survey instrument, even one with open-ended questions, to describe the highly complex process of response to literature. The stimulus of discussion on a one to one basis revealed many facets of response not possible in a survey.” These comments echo my own feelings about talking with my study participants. Culp says that attitudes 41 were most commonly influenced by reading, followed by values, particularly in the areas of “self-image, sensitivity to others, awareness of moral and ethical issues, and awareness of social problems” (p. 252). There were also some specific influences on behavior, and the “case studies indicated that students are more influenced by works of their own choosing, that the novel is the most influential genre, and that teacher intervention appears to have little relationship to influence of literature” (p. 252). Although Culp does not discuss the influence of gender, it is interesting that her example of “maximal influence” (a student who reported being greatly influenced by reading) is female, while her example of “minimal influence” is male, which is consistent with the stereotype that reading is a female activity. And, although she does not directly address self-esteem, her interest in the influence of reading on values and attitudes has relevance to my own research. Petrosky (1976) also employs the case study method to investigate how reality perception and fantasy among students influence their response to literature. Petrosky proposes that “reality perception and fantasy give both structure and content to a reader’s literary response” (p. 240). Working with ninth grade students, Petrosky concludes that if it is correct that “our reality perception determines our deepest sense of identity” (p. 255), then the students’ responses to literature are powerfully influenced by their sense of identity. He discusses implications for response-centered teaching, and says that teachers should “not lose sight of our purpose: to share responses, perceptions, and bits of inner experiences so as to facilitate a consensus, or at least an understanding, of reality perceptions” (p. 256). Petrosky does not discuss how gender might affect one’s sense of reality and therefore of identity, though it must play an important role. Although both the case studies he describes in this article are female students, they have distinctly divergent responses to literature, serving as a reminder not to essentialize gender. Further exploration into gender differences in reading was conducted by Flynn (1983), who examined interpretative strategies of fifty-two college freshmen, half of them male and half female, reading three short stones. Flynn postulated three versions of the relationship between reader and text: (1) The reader can resist the text and remain unchanged by the reading; (2) the reader can allow the text to become all- powerful and dominate the relationship; (3) the reader can interact with the text and be affected by it without losing the necessary critical distance. Flynn found that both male and female students tend to be submissive readers and allow the text to dominate them. However, men were more likely than women to be unable to engage the text, and to dominate or reject the stories. Women were more able to find a balance between detachment and involvement, to resolve tensions in the stories and form a consistent pattern of meaning. These findings are persuasive. Being a college freshman tends to be an uneasy time, when a student may be unsure of his or her intellectual prowess, and therefore, it is not surprising that the students tended in general to be submissive readers. However, since men in our culture generally enjoy a greater degree of permission to be judgmental or aggressive, neither is it surprising that most of the students who did reject stories that they couldn’t understand were male, while the women felt obligated to work harder at establishing resolutions. Bleich (1988) recounts examining sex differences in the literary response patterns of seven students in a graduate seminar. They read Bronte, Dickinson, Melville and Wordsworth and decided that while men and and women read the poetry in similar ways, the women were more likely to actually “enter” a novel. In retelling stories, men usually delivered a clear, concise chain of events. They were concerned with giving information. The women were more likely to make judgments and comment on the work’s atmosphere or effectiveness and to be less concerned with the literal text (similar to the findings of Squire). Bleich concludes that women are generally more willing to risk involvement Men do not want to do this and do not like stories which are ambiguous. Bleich believes that there are physiological or biological differences in the brains of men and women, and he thinks that these factors interact with cultural factors to create gender differences in reading response. 43 Sex-Roles in Adolescent Literature

An example of research which is concerned with the sexist stereotyping prevalent in adolescent literature is Matthews’ (1973) paper presented at an NCTE convention. She explains that a branch of the National Organization for Women examined 144 children’s books, concluding that they consistently portray boys as vigorous, adventuresome, and creative, while girls are as passive, indecisive and dependent. A California study of school readers revealed that 75% of the stories were about males, and a study of Newbery Award winners showed that the award had been given to books about boys three times as often as to stories about girls. Matthews (1973) says that boys’ books deal with plots stressing lots of action, with the protagonists finding adventure and excitement in the great outdoors and in competition of all kinds, such as car racing or school-sponsored events. Success for these heroes is measured largely in terms of achievement and the promise of a bright future in a wide open adult world. In girls’ books, however, the heroine’s goals are narrowly circumscribed: “...success for her is primarily social; it usually consists of gaining popularity, being crowned queen or winning that boy she’s been dreaming about” (p. 4). Sanford and Donovan (1984) also discuss the male-centeredness of much of our curriculum. In a study of books from 14 American publishers, they found that, “In the process of learning to read, a little girl is exposed to more boy-centered stories than girl-centered stories by a ratio of five to two, to folk and fantasy tales with four times more male characters, and to biographies that are six times more likely to profile males than females. Even animal stories are twice as likely to feature male animals” (p. 178). Kazemek (1985) draws on Gilligan’s (1982) work to emphasize the importance of the role literature can play in the moral development of adolescents. She agrees with Tolstoy’s statement that real art serves a moral purpose, that it not only delights, but also instructs and improves, and then goes on to discuss the “potential power of children’s literature to establish models of human action” (p. 2). She uses Charlotte’s Web (White. 1952). The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses (Goble, 1978) and Roll of Thunder. Hear Mv Crv (Taylor, 1976) as examples of literary works which exemplify Gilligan’s concept of female morality because of the concern for others exhibited by the female protagonists. Kazemek feels that teachers should be aware of the need to include works which encompass the female perspective. D’Angelo (1989a, 1989b) published two papers that look at adolescent novels featuring female protagonists, using content analysis to learn how they were portrayed. She found that books written before 1971 feature girls who are primarily self-centered and narcissistic; those after 1980 feature girls who are more capable, self-sufficient and less bound to stereotypical roles, so perhaps there is some progress being made in the portrayals of female characters. For many educators, one of the most problematical genres in adolescent literature is the romance novel. Although often criticized as trivial, sexist, and unrealistic, the romance novel for adolescent girls has become as popular as the romances written for adult women. Radway’s (1984) definitive study of adult romance novels concluded that women read these books to experience vicariously a kind of emotional sustenance missing from their real lives, and Radway seems undecided as to whether the books serve as harmless wish-fulfillment, or whether they may provide just enough satisfaction to prevent women from making real, constructive changes in their lives. Adult women read romance books for the emotional excitement of the idealized love affairs they do not experience in real life, and young girls read teenage versions to learn about love affairs they hope to have. The formulaic nature of the stories has an appeal for girls at certain developmental stages, although it may be difficult for some adults to understand how girls can read one after another of these novels which are all so much alike. Indeed, one of the questions raised in Radway’s study was how adult women can continue to read these 45 books for years, when the plots are alt virtually identical. Women readers in Radway’s study insisted that the heroines were all different, although to critics they appear to be as formulaic as the plots. Moffitt (1987) conducted a study examining the reasons girls read adolescent romance novels using a reader-response approach. Most began reading romances between the ages of 11 and 13, and they have read literally hundreds of these books. In the words of one girl, reading is preferable to TV because “You can watch television for half an hour, but after that you’re left there. But if you read, you can keep going; the story can keep building; it prolongs the time you can change who you are” ( p. 8). This reading amounts almost to an addiction for some girls. One said “I read them wherever I am... I’m so hooked. It’s a habit” ( p. 9). Moffitt feels that girls who get “hooked” on these books are experiencing three types of conflicts inherent in growing up: identity pressures, heterosexual interests, and social and economic expectations. She says ‘The struggle they feel between what family and society expect of them and what they feel capable of accomplishing is managed, in one way, through this leisure reading practice” (p. 13). Girls who enjoy these books clearly identify with the heroines in the romances, who are always attractive and successful, and they read the books for the feeling they get from them. One girl said, “I feel like I’m the person-wishing I was like that. I carry that feeling around for a while. I read to get that feeling. Sometimes, I wish to be better than I am and when I read, I feel I am” (Moffitt, 1987, p. 14). There is nothing inherently wrong with these reasons for reading, and indeed, the comment “Sometimes I wish to be better than I am...” is a laudable sentiment Identification with characters who are better, more interesting, and more exciting than our mundane selves is probably a reason we all enjoy reading. What educators find worrisome is the sort of role models the girls are actually finding in these books. Harvey (1981) asserts that these books place an overwhelming emphasis on physical appearance, and the key issue is always and only getting and keeping a boyfriend. 46 “The major obstacles to be surmounted in the search for the boyfriend,” Harvey says, “are, of course, other girls. Rivalry between girls is an important theme,” (p. 9) reinforcing the old stereotype that a man is the ultimate prize, and that “in the battle for that prize, the weapons are good looks and charm, intelligence is a liability, and the enemy is other women” (p. 9). In one book, a mother says to her daughter, “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. You’ve become so frivolous and artificial” (p. 10). The daughter replies “I want to be popular, Mother” (p. 10). The problem, Harvey points out, is that the author is on the side of the daughter. Adolescence includes a natural awakening of interest in the opposite sex. Moffitt says that in her discussions with the girls, “virtually the only characters mentioned were the hero and heroine; there seems to be no real importance attached to any of the supporting characters” (p. 15). Since girls this age are often afraid to talk to boys, one of the things they like best is the conversation and perfect communication the characters in the books enjoy. Several girls said they got the courage from the adventuresome heroines to initiate conversations with boys. Moffitt says there was “consensus that what the readers also sought was information on rules for showing affection and actual sex technique,” (p. 17) although most of them were not yet sexually active. Moffitt concludes that girls read these books for information, for fantasy escape, to identify with the idealized heroine and to help establish their own self-esteem. The teenage reader “constructs the fantasy images of the romance story in order to, as it were, ‘live them through’ first in the reading so that when faced with the actual experience, she enters into the ‘real’ setting having felt she has already ‘done it’ through the text” (p. 32). Moffitt then, feels that girls are influenced by their reading, and specifically says that girls use the images in these books to help construct their own self-esteem, and to “practice” for real relationships. Given that the images of girls in these books are extremely stereotypical in terms of sex-roles, educators cannot be pleased with this influence. 47 Lanes (1981) calls the commercial success of the preteen and teenage romance series the “publishing phenomenon of the decade” (p. 5). In little more than a year, she says, the Wildfire series of Scholastic proved more successful than its originators’ wildest imaginings. Naturally, its success was imitated by other publishers. These books are now being marketed through schools, in the mail-order book clubs which teachers have used for many years as a source of good, inexpensive books for students. Lanes says that Simon and Schuster planned a first- year advertising budget of $1,400,000 to introduce their First Love line, and another publisher planned nation-wide cover-girl beauty contests as part of their promotion. 1 think we need to examine the role that these books are playing in helping our students establish their self-images, and consider whether schools ought to promote or discourage such reading. Another problem for some educators is that if many girls are finding few exemplary role models in the reading they do outside of school, similar problems are evident even in the “good” literature they read in school. In The Resisting Reader A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Fetterly (1981) is very concerned that females have to read a male canon which exemplifies the male morality and approach to life which Gilligan (1982) describes. In the preface, Fetterly describes her book as a “self-defense survival manual for the woman reader lost in the masculine wilderness of the American novel” (p. viii). She believes that, while reading, women are constantly forced to identify with men, that one of the main things which makes literature unavailable to the female reader is the pretense that male reality is a universal truth. To read American literature, the canon, is to have to identify as a male. It is a paradox that while the canon is overwhelmingly male, reading is often perceived as a feminine activity, and that girls at every level of schooling are generally better readers than boys. Fetterly says that women who are readers are taught to think as men, to identify with a male point of view and to accept as normal and 48 legitimate a male system of values, one of whose central tenets is misogyny. Women rarely see their own perceptions and experiences confirmed in literature. They are sexually female but intellectually male. Fetterly states that the first act of the feminist critic must be “to become a resisting rather than an assenting reader and, by this refusal to assent, to begin the process of excoriating the male mind that has been implanted in us” (p. xxiii). To illustrate her point, she discusses eight works which she says are representative of American fiction, four short stories (Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark,” Sherwood Anderson’s "I Want to Know Why,” and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”), and four novels fHemingwav’s A Farewell to Arms. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsbv. James’ The Bostonians and Mailer’s An American Dream). While the misogyny in several of these texts is unmistakable, I find myself resisting Fetterly’s call to resistance, thinking that perhaps she overstates the case somewhat. It is inevitable, and perhaps wise, I think, that we test the ideas of others against our own experience, and I never felt that literature was “unavailable” to me as a female reader. I find myself rather resenting the implication that a “male mind” has been “implanted” in me. On the other hand, another study indicated that many students may, indeed, bring a male-centeredness to reading. In 1991, Nudd used Katherine Anne Porter’s short story, “Rope,” to examine college students’ androcentric readings of literature. This story recounts an argument between a man and a woman, but uses no quotation marks, leaving it up to the reader to decide which character is speaking which lines. Nudd asked her students to write a retelling of the story, including their impressions of the male character and the female character. She categorized their responses as either a balanced reading, pro-female/anti-male, or anti-female/pro-male, and found that 44% of the responses indicated a balanced reading, 6% were pro- female/anti-male, and that 50% were anti-female/pro-male. Furthermore, in retelling the story, most of the androcentric readers simply omitted the climax, in which the man may be seen as violent This study certainly seems to be an indication of male- centered reading. Annette Kolodny (1979) wrote that “for those of us studying literature... (there was) a painfully personal distress at discovering whores, bitches, muses and heroines dead in childbirth where we had once hoped to discover ourselves” (p. 1). Does this “painfully personal distress” represent the feelings of most adolescent girls about their school reading? I have no memories of feeling this way about any of my own reading. However, while we need not discount our own experience, we also must not assume it is eveiyone’s experience. Kolodny’s comment made me realize that perhaps not all girls react as I did. It reinforced my desire to discover what the girls in my study were thinking and feeling about their school reading as well as their leisure reading, and how influential it is in helping girls construct their own self- images. CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

Qualitative Research This study falls within the paradigm of qualitative research. The value of this approach in educational research has been well-documented. Strauss and Corbin (1990) define qualitative research as “...any kind of research that produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification. It can refer to research about persons’ lives, stories, behavior...” (p. 17). They say that qualitative methods “can give the intricate details of phenomena that are difficult to convey with quantitative methods,” and that qualitative research is often conducted by “researchers in the social and behavioral sciences, as well as by practitioners in fields that concern themselves with issues related to human behavior and functioning”

(p. 19). Glesne and Peshkin (1992) say that qualitative research uses “face to face interactions” as the “predominant distinctive feature” (p. xi) of its inquiry, and Bogdan and Biklen (1992) point out that data collected through interviews and observations are “rich in description of people, places, and conversations, not easily handled by statistical procedures” (p.2). I worked as a participant-observer relying primarily on observations and interviews as the most important and useful forms of data collection, and I hope that my descriptions might be characterized as “rich.” Assumptions underlying this research include the recognition that all knowledge is necessarily contextual, partial, and subject to multiple perspectives which shift over time and space. Ball (1990) points out that such research cannot be made “researcher-proof,” and therefore, where research questions come from, who 50 51 asks them and why, are matters of context which qualitative researchers consider important. Glesne and Peshkin (1992) point out that our research questions emerge from our own lives, and Reinharz (1992) says “Personal experience can be the very starting point of a study, the material from which the researcher develops questions, and the source for finding people to study” (p. 260). As I have explained, my interest in this research comes from my own personal experiences as an English teacher and a mother. Although this study clearly is based in concern for women’s issues, and occasionally refers to the work of feminist scholars, I have avoided calling myself a feminist because the word means so many different things to different people. To some people, it has negative connotations, and the head of the upper school at one of my sites recommended not using the term in the interviews with the girls, because she felt that some of them might consider it a negative term. In conducting a qualitative study where the researcher relies on human interaction and participation for data collection, it is important to consider the context of the research and how it affects what participants say. Coleman’s (1961) concept of school as an “adolescent subculture” is a valuable and accurate insight, and the schools which participated in this study are quite different from the typical public school with which most people are familiar. Therefore, I have written rather lengthy descriptions of my field sites to illustrate as clearly as possible the context in which the observations and interviews took place.

Site Selection, Access, and Participant Selection

I chose to work in two particular schools from among the many possibilities in a large and prosperous mid western city because both of these schools are particularly aware of and concerned about the problems of adolescent girls. This was my original reason for choosing these schools for the pilot study, and I was 52 pleased to be able to use these sites for further work. It might be useful to note the terminology used by these schools. The elementary grades are called “lower school.” The term “middle school” refers to grades six, seven and eight, as is usually the case in public schools, and “upper school” is equivalent to high school, or grades nine through twelve. The headmaster or headmistress is in charge of the entire school. The head of each division, lower, middle and upper, is roughly equivalent to the position of principal in a public school. Given my interest in single-sex education, I was especially pleased to have access to an increasingly rare all-girls school, which I shall call AGS. This school recently made a decision to remain single-sex at a time when most of the single-sex schools across the nation have opted to become coed. It was in some respects a risky decision for the administrators and trustees. For many years, AGS had enjoyed a close relationship with a nearby all-boys school; they had joint dances, put on joint theater productions, and shared other activities. When administrators at the boys’ school decided they wanted their school to become coed, they originally suggested a merger with AGS. The board of trustees at AGS, after much deliberation, declined the merger, but, as expected, when the boys’ school began to admit girls, many who enrolled were former AGS students. AGS appears to have withstood the competition-enrollment applications are up-but relations between the two schools are not as close as they once were, and there are few shared activities. In declining the proposed merger, the school certainly underwent a serious reexamination and reevaluation of its commitment to educating girls in a single-sex setting. At the other school, naturally, the trustees and administration faced a certain amount of resistance and criticism from students, faculty and alumni for choosing to end many years of tradition as an all-male school. Administrators and staff have had to justify their decision, and have necessarily become concerned about the problems girls face in school, including how to ensure that girls will be comfortable and successful in this previously all-male academic setting. For my purposes, it was 53 useful to have a coed school comparable to AGS in other respects such as the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students and the academic expectations of the school. I shall call this school CPS (coed prep school). As well as having academic reputations to maintain, both these schools are dependent on alumni, parents and the community for their financial support. They have, therefore, a vested interest in achieving a high level of success in educating girls, and the needs of adolescent girls are being given serious attention. At AGS, gaining entree was initially simplified by the fact that my daughter is a student there. I made an appointment with the Head of the Upper School, Mrs. Beaton, and explained that the research would consist of exploring self-esteem issues for girls; that I had been impressed with the confidence and sense of self which several of the girls had displayed in the pilot study; and that I wanted to identify school factors which might assist girls in maintaining strong voices. Having previously worked at the Laurel School and having read the research which Brown and Gilligan did there, she was quite willing to participate. I planned to interview girls in grades seven, nine and eleven, chosing these three grade levels because Brown and Gilligan’s (1992) work indicates that seventh grade is near the beginning of the crisis period for girls, ninth grade is approximately in the middle of it, and by eleventh grade, most girls are beginning to get their feelings sorted out and have a sense of control over their lives. By interviewing at these three levels, I would be seeing the girls at important stages of their development. I wanted a sample of three to five girls from each of the three grade levels in each of the two schools. It seemed that this would provide a large enough sample for meaningful results, and probably the maximum number of participants that I could deal with in a reasonable time frame. To find ninth and eleventh grade participants, I explained to Mrs. Beaton that I was interested in as varied a sample as possible. She gave a brief explanation of the project to the upper school students during moming announcements and 54 asked for volunteers. As far as I know, there was no effort on the part of the school to select girls, and all who volunteered were referred to me. I was given the names of four eleventh-graders and three ninth-graders, all of whom became part of the study. Three of the girls had participated in the pilot. To find seventh-grade participants, I contacted a middle school English teacher who had formerly been my daughter’s teacher, and whom I knew from graduate classes where we had occasionally discussed Brown and Gilligan’s work. She described the project to her seventh-grade English class, and five girls volunteered, two of whom had participated in the pilot study. At CPS, the Head of the Upper School, Mr. Curtain, was also somewhat familiar with the purposes of the research, because I had received permission to conduct interviews there for the pilot study. For the long-term work, he asked me to submit a project description in writing so that it could be approved by the headmaster. When this was accomplished, I talked with a ninth grade teacher, Mrs. Dunbar, whom I knew because we had previously taught together in another school. I suggested to her that I was particularly interested in speaking with girls who had come to CPS from AGS or any other single-sex school, so that I could ask them how they perceived the change in school setting. Mrs. Dunbar asked for volunteers from her classes and introduced me to an eleventh grade teacher and a seventh grade teacher who each agreed to explain the study in their classes and ask for volunteers. As at AGS, as far as I know, there was no effort to select particular girls (for example, those who would speak well of the school), and I did not eliminate anyone who volunteered. Five of the CPS girls had been part of the pilot. I interviewed a total of 26 girls, 12 from AGS and 14 from CPS. After the first year, three girls, for various reasons, withdrew from the schools. This left 23 girls, 11 from AGS (5 seventh-graders, 2 ninth-graders and 4 eleventh-graders) and 12 from CPS (3 seventh-graders, 5 ninth-graders and 4 eleventh-graders), who participated in the full two years of the study. Seven of these girls, four from AGS 55 and three from CPS, had also been pilot participants. Because they had been interviewed previously, their responses may have been somewhat more elaborated. Except where noted, all the data reported are from the girls who participated in the full two-year study. All had parental permission to participate, and were told that they would be anonymous in the final reporting of the study. The girls at CPS and AGS are a rather homogeneous group in some respects-- they are generally interested in school, and academically capable--but it appeared that my sample consisted of a reasonably diverse selection. At AGS, two of the girls were African-American and one was of mixed race. At CPS, participants included one African-American girl and two Asians. Some of the girls came from very wealthy families, and some did not. Because they were all volunteers, however, I must acknowledge that there is no guarantee that they were “typical” students of AGS or CPS. In order to help define the context in which the girls’ learning took place I also interviewed eight adults who agreed to participate-teachers, counselors and administrators. I wanted to describe the general philosophy which guides each school, as seen by the faculty, and determine to what extent the adults in the schools were aware of and concerned about self-esteem issues for girls.

Data Collection Interviews Data were collected over a period of two school years, 1993-94, and 1994- 95. During the fall and winter of the first year 1 spent a full day at each school once or twice a week. I interviewed all participants at least once during these first months. Interviews were held at the school in an empty office or classroom. I spoke with students when they had a free period so as not to interfere with class schedules. AH interviews were audio-taped and transcribed as promptly as possible. I used an interview guide (see Appendix A), asking general but direct questions patterned after 56 Brown and Gilligan’s (1992) work, about how the girls were feeling about school and about themselves. However, questions were often changed or added, based on the girls’ responses. The girls had some freedom to guide the interview in the direcion they wanted to go, but my research questions served as a frame for our discussions. I added questions about the reading they were doing, either in or out of school, how they felt about it, and whether they thought their reading influenced them or provided role models. I attempted to be sensitive to nuance, to body language, to facial expression and intonation, rephrasing questions if a participant seemed to be having trouble. I tried not to put words into anyone’s mouth, but to create a dialogue. I tried to consider how time, place, race or socioeconomic background might be influencing what participants said. To make the interviews as comfortable and conversational as possible, I kept note taking to a minimum, but wrote down all my impressions as quickly as possible after each interview. Specifically, I noted the tone of voice in which a girl spoke and body language such as the way she sat in the chair during interviewing, whether she looked me in the eye or avoided eye contact and whether she exhibited small nervous habits like biting her nails or playing with her hair while we talked. I listened for signs that girls were losing honest relationships, evidence of Brown and Gilligan’s statement that girls are “narrating the process of their disconnection” (Meeting At the Crossroads, p. 7). In transcribing the interviews, I made note of the number of times the girls used phrases like “I don’t know,” which Brown and Gilligan say begins to appear in girls’ speech in abut the seventh grade and serves as an indicator of loss of voice and of confidence in the validity of their own feelings. In the spring of the first year, I began the second round of interviews, examining my initial impressions of the girls’ self-esteem levels and looking for changes. During these interviews, I did member checking, and asked them to elaborate on material from the first interviews. This round of interviews were 57 completed during the second year of data collection. I continued to look for evidence of girls who seemed to fit the pattern of loss of self-confidence and voice described by Brown and Gilligan (1992), as well as for girls who seemed to exhibit strength and strong voices. I continued to collect comments about their reading habits and their thoughts and feelings about what they read. I especially wanted to identify girls who seemed to be articulate and self-aware to serve as case studies, keeping in mind Patton’s (1990) advice about “maximal variation sampling,” to increase the validity of my selection. In other words, I wanted my case study sample to be as diverse as possible in terms of variables like grade level and race. In the winter of the second year, I identified four students and interviewed them a third time to clarify points of interest or questions. However, I eventually made a decision not to use the case study approach in reporting findings, because it did not seem to be the best way to fully illustrate the data. Although the four girls whom I had chosen were particularly articulate, many of the other girls also had significant comments to make in one area or another. Therefore, in presenting the findings in Chapter IV, although the longest and most frequent quotes are from the students whom I considered as case studies, I have also included comments from many other girls when they seemed representative and pertinent. In interviewing the adults, I was primarily interested in their perceptions of the schools’ respective philosophies and what they saw as the advantages of either single-sex or a coed institutions, as well as their perceptions of the girls’ self­ esteem levels and what factors they thought might influence those levels. In interviewing English teachers, I asked specifically about their impressions of students’ reactions to literature selections or reading outside of class (see Appendix B for sample questions). 58 TABLE 1 TIME LINE OF INTERVIEWS

Fall and winter. 1993-4 Spring. 1994 first round of interviews, begin second round interviews, 26 girls, eight adults do classroom observations

Fall and winter. 1994-5 Spring,. 1995 finish second interviews, interview four girls 23 girls a third time

Observations During the first year I also conducted 18 classroom observations, choosing English classes for several reasons: (1) As an English teacher, I felt this was the subject area in which I was most qualified to interpret what I saw; (2) English is the subject area where ideas, concerns, thoughts and feelings relevant to self-esteem are more likely to be a topic of discussion than in most other academic content areas; (3) Because of my interest in the influences of girls’ reading, I hoped to see some discussion of the literature the girls were reading in class. I was also able to arrange the observations so that I saw classes which included at least one of the girls who were participating in the study. It was sometimes helpful to see how the girls I had interviewed functioned in a classroom setting. Observations were arranged in advanced with the teachers. This usually consisted of a simple request for permission and an appropriate time. Most of the teachers in both schools had become accustomed to seeing me around and had some degree of familiarity with my study. (Indeed, there were occasional jokes that I should be given my own office in the school.) I arrived at the beginning of the class period and stayed until the end. During observations, I quietly took notes and tried to 59 be as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as possible, although occasionally a teacher referred to my presence or invited me to comment on the class discussion. During these days at the schools, I ate lunch in the dining halls and spent time in between interviews observing students and their interactions in the hallways or commons areas, chatting informally with both teachers and students. I also attended evening athletic events, school plays, concerts and parent meetings ranging from morning coffees for mothers to evening open houses. While I did not formally interview any mothers, I had several interesting conversations with mothers who had heard about my research and were interested in discussing it. Some of them had daughters who were participants and some did not. Several had read one or more of the books discussed in the literature review. Because so much of my research is informed by the Brown and Gilligan study, I felt it might be useful to see the school where they worked and form some general impressions as to how it compared to AGS. During the second year of the study, therefore, I spent one day visiting Laurel School, where 1 observed three classes and spoke with several students as well as four teachers.

Questionnaires During the second round of interviews 1 asked the girls to fill out two written instruments. Using material which emerged from the pilot study interviews, I made a simple grounded survey (see Appendix C) using a Likert scale and 1 gave the survey to each participant to serve both as triangulation and member checking. I also gave each girl a Stanley Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) to assist in making determinations of self-esteem (see Appendix D for sample questions). The SEI, recommended by a psychologist, was developed by a team of psychologists led by Dr. Stanley Coopersmith, and according to the Inventory Manual, has been administered to tens of thousands of children and adults from different socioeconomic and ethnic groups, in research studies or educational or 60 clinical programs. Studies representing the reliability and validity of the SEI are discussed in Appendix E. I used the School Form of this inventory, which consists of 58 short statements which participants mark “like me” or “unlike me.” The scoring yields a general self-esteem rating of high, medium or low, as well as subscales for the categories of Social Self/Peers, Home/Parents, and School/Academic. There are also questions which serve as a “lie scale,” to measure the defensiveness of participants. The introduction to the Coopersmith SEI manual explains that educators need to be concerned about self-esteem because: Positive feelings about oneself appear to be one of the feeling states that increase involvement and successful performance. As such, building self-esteem is not a secondary, luxury option in the schools’ programs, but is more of a basic component of programs geared to motivate learning.... Self-esteem is not something separate from school performance in reading, math and social and physical skills. It is an important part of performance.2

According to the Coopersmith manual, there are numerous studies indicating that children with high self-esteem perform better in their school work and even indications that the kindergarten child’s feeling about him-or herself is a better indication of reading readiness than are scores on an intelligence test. The manual acknowledges that a measure such as the SEI has limitations: While a person’s appraisal of his or her self-esteem will usually remain consistent over a period of several years, momentary or short-lived changes can and do occur. Sudden, drastic changes in a person’s family or school situation may temporarily inflate (or deflate) self-esteem; for example, a student from an intensely achievement-oriented family who receives a “bad” grade could score significantly lower on the SEI the day after receiving the grade than he or she would have scored the day before. In addition, though persons with high self-esteem are generally well-adjusted in school, this is not always the case. A delinquent street-gang leader could very well report high self-esteem but show no signs of being willing or able to function

2 Reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto CA 94303 from Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory - School Form by Stanley Coopersmith. Copyright 1967 by W.H. Freeman and Co. Published in 1981 by Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent. 61

appropriately in the classroom.3

It is also possible that “Some students will also be incorrect in their views of themselves; they will answer ‘like me* to items such as ‘ I can make up my mind without much trouble* but in fact be completely unable to do so....It is recommended that a behavior observational rating be administered along with the SEI” (p. 3). My interviews and observations serve this purpose.

Documents Glesne and Peshkin (1992) say that “Documents provide both historical and contextual dimensions to your observations and interviews. They enrich what you see and hear by supporting, expanding, and challenging your portrayals and perceptions. Your understanding of the phenomenon in question grows as you make use of the documents and artifacts...” (p. 54). With these ideas in mind, I collected and examined issues of school newspapers, parent newsletters and school promotional material at AGS to see what insights such material might add to my understanding of the school culture. Promotional documents included a postcard to send in to request more information about the school, and a simple, one-page calendar of events-plays, admissions open-house, parent sessions, etc., titled “Special Opportunities to visit AGS.” All of the other material I collected was concerned with parent programs: a flyer for a six-week course in ‘The Art of Positive Parenting ” a schedule of “Box Lunch Talks for Parents,” on topics such as “Conversations about Sexuality and Values;” a flyer for a parents’ workshop on drug abuse; a flyer about parents’ morning “coffee and conversation” events, held

3 Reproduced by special permission of the Publisher, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto CA 94303 from Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory - School Form by Stanley Coopersmith. Copyright 1967 by W.H. Freeman and Co. Published in 1981 by Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher’s written consent. 62 monthly by grade level, and a brochure about a parent-to-parent drug prevention workshop. The relevance of this material will be discussed in the next chapter.

Data Analysis

According to Strauss and Corbin (1990) there are two components in the interpretation of data, description and analysis. Both occur simultaneously, during the process of data collection as well as afterward. Glesne and Peshkin (1992) say that “Data analysis done simultaneously with data collection enables you to focus and shape the study as it proceeds” (p. 127). In writing description, the researcher looks for themes and patterns by coding and categorizing the data, as well as looking for negative cases, those that don’t fit the pattern. Analysis consists of asking the “why” questions, moving beyond the facts and attempting to formulate theory that emerges from the data. This requires a constant comparison of emerging ideas, generating theory from the data of the particular research project rather than trying to make the data fit existing theory. Glesne and Peshkin (1992), Strauss and Corbin (1990), and most others who write about qualitative research continually caution the novice researcher to be reflexive, to step back periodically from the data and reflect about what has been learned. I performed data analysis using these principles, interpreting and summarizing material from the first interviews to formulate questions for the second and third interviews. Data reduction and thinking about conclusions took place concurrently with continuing data collection. Data were analyzed inductively, as I read through the interview transcripts and observation notes looking for recurrent themes or patterns, as well as conflicting ideas. During much of the data collection I kept a research log which provided opportunities for refiexivity, and I had what Glesne and Peskin (1992) would call a “key informant” in each school, teachers whom I knew before beginning the research. Approximately once every two months, 63 I met with these teachers, Mrs. Dunbar at CPS and the AGS seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Jackson, to discuss the progress of the study as a form of member checking. Coding qualitative data usually means determining meaningful categories which emerge from the data, and then sorting chunks of words into these categories in order to create an organizational framework. In Meeting at the Crossroads. Brown and Gilligan (1992) describe listening to their interview data four times-first, for the story the girl tells—the “plot.” The second listening attempted to pinpoint the voice of the speaker-the essential “I.” In the third and fourth listenings the researchers were concerned with the ways the girls talked about relationships and attended to the realities of race, and class. Borrowing Judith Fetterley’s (1981) term, “resisting reader,” the researchers worked as “resisting listeners,” listening “for and against conventions of relationship within a society and culture that are rooted psychologically in the experiences of men.” (p. 29) I went through the tapes and the interview transcripts of my conversations with the girls several times trying to “listen” in these ways, and looking for categories which seemed to have some bearing on self-confidence, the influences of the single-sex or coed setting, and influences of the literature the girls were reading. I color-coded the interview data accordingly, as suggested by Glesne and Peshkin. This was, at times a difficult task, as I didn’t always ask the same questions, or ask them in the same order, and the responses to the same questions sometimes varied widely and sometimes were very similar. Furthermore, categories in the girls’ responses often overlapped. About halfway through this process I decided I needed to rethink the coding and categories, so I threw out everything and started again with fresh copies of the transcripts. When I felt that 1 had identified categories which reflected the range of comments the girls had made, I reduced the number by eliminating some categories which seemed to have no relevance to this study and collapsed other categories together. Eventually, I settled on nine categories which encompass topics that frequently came up in the interviews and seem to have relevance to self-esteem for girls. Inevitably, there is a certain 64 amount of overlap between some of the categories. Again following suggestions in the methodological text by Glesne and Peshkin (1992), I cut the transcripts apart, taped passages onto large index cards, labeled each card with the girl’s name, grade and school, and sorted the cards by the color-coded categories. During the second and third interviews, I discussed the categories with the participants as a form of member-checking and as an impetus for further conversation. I coded, cut and sorted the transcripts of the second interviews in the same way. Then I arranged the index cards in each category by grade level and by school so that I could compare the girls’ comments based on their grade level and their school setting. Next, I read through all the interviews a last time, making notes of specific comments the girls made which seemed to indicate high or low levels of self- confidence. Then I tallied the answers from the grounded surveys. Some of the survey questions fell into the same categories as the interview data, and I arranged this information so as to include these responses in discussing the categories. Other questions on the survey had to do with self-esteem, and these responses were placed with my notes from the interviews about self-esteem levels. With the girls’ interview data and the survey information sorted, I turned to the observational material. After several careful readings and repeated analysis of both my personal descriptions of each girl and the field notes made during classroom observations, I made another list of notes describing my impressions of the girls’ self-esteem levels based on this material. I assumed that mumbling, looking at the floor, and habits such as fingernail biting indicate lack of self-confidence, while poise, looking the interviewer in the eye and an assured tone of voice indicate the opposite. Then I scored the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventories, and noted the scores for each girl along with the notes from the interviews, surveys and observations. A final determination of the girls’ levels of self-esteem as high, medium or low, was 65 based on three things: (1) Body language and behavior during the interviews and observations, (2) Actual statements made during the interviews answers on the surveys, and (3) The girls’ scores on the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. 1 made a chart showing the self-esteem rankings by school and grade level (see Table 2), and I noted the self-esteem level I had assigned to each girl on the index cards. The three types of data were generally consistent, with the SEI scores corresponding closely to the self-esteem levels which seemed indicated by the interviews and observations. In point of fact, the actual interview transcripts turned out to be the most informative data. Most of these girls, at least on the surface, appear to be poised and self-assured. This is probably due to their socioeconomic backgrounds and the fact that all my participants were volunteers. Very shy girls or girls lacking in self-confidence might not have volunteered to participate. In reporting results, therefore, I have relied primarily on SEI scores and what the girls actually said. Factors such as body language during interviews or classroom behavior during observations are mentioned only when they seemed particularly relevant or different. Finally, I read through all the index cards many times to form conclusions about how the different categories related to the girls’ self-esteem rankings. I kept a tally sheet of recurring themes in each category, as well as making note of comments which seemed distinctively different I wrote down each idea that I formed during this process and continually checked each tentative conclusion as I continued working through the data cards. The ideas which emerged from this on-going process will be presented in the next chapter.

Trustworthiness

Credibility is a term used by naturalistic researchers to refer to the trustworthiness of the findings of research. Credibility is to some extent a function of the researcher’s background and the amount of time and effort invested in a study. 66 My years of working with adolescents in schools provide a background for making informed judgments, although I recognize the possibility that having spent so much time in school cultures could make it more difficult for me to see certain aspects. The literature review in this document demonstrates an attempt to keep abreast of the most recent methods and conclusions of others working in related areas. Prolonged engagement at the study site adds to credibility, and, as described, I spent a great deal of time at my sites over a period of two years. Thick description, the inclusion of member checks, and the keeping of a research log are all recommended methods for enhancing credibility which I have employed. In addition, I have used questionnaires for corroboration of my own determinations of self-esteem levels. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory was “developed in conjunction with an extensive study of self-esteem in children” (p. 2) and contains a “lie scale,” designed to measure a participant’s defensiveness or test­ wiseness. Items on the inventory were written by psychologists. In administering the inventory to 1,748 school students of diverse abilities and backgrounds, it was determined that the difference between mean scores for males and females was not significant. The concept of credibility also makes it necessary to discuss what Glesne and Peshkin (1992) would call doing research in my “own backyard,” because I have a tenth-grade daughter who has attended AGS since fifth grade. I recognize that having a previous role in a setting (in this case, as a mother) can constrain data collection and that having a personal interest in the results can interfere with interpretation. I believe that I avoided these pitfalls for the following reasons: First, most of my work was done in the upper school, where I was a relative stranger, since most of my interviewing was completed during my daughter’s first year there. I had no previous relationship with the upper school head or the teachers. Although I did know some of the students in the ninth-grade (my daughter’s class when the study began), I was not acquainted with any of the eleventh-graders. 67 Secondly, the head of the middle school is fairly new, having been at AGS only for the last year of my daughter’s middle school experience. Therefore, my relationship with her in my “mother” capacity was brief and limited. I had a more extended relationship with the school counselor, who serves both middle and upper school, and with one of the middle school teachers, but I was not acquainted with any of the seventh-grade students. Except for one teacher, I had no previous relationship with any of the interviewees at CPS, student or adult. Thirdly, the issues in this study are ones in which I have long been interested. As a secondary public school teacher for the past twenty-five years, my interest in adolescent girls predates my own daughter’s existence and schooling by many years. Fourthly, qualitative research recognizes the inability of any social scientist to achieve complete objectivity in any case, and requires researchers to acknowledge, in so far as possible, the position from which they are working. Throughout this research, I have tried to do that. After considering the issue carefully, I have concluded that my ability to work effectively at AGS was not hampered by the fact that my daughter is a student there. Indeed, it may be that my previous experience in the school was a positive advantage. As Rosalie Wax (1971) points out in the first chapter of Doing Fieldwork, understanding is a “precondition of research in any social setting” (p. 13) and when anthropologists go to live in native villages, they devote much time and energy to becoming “insiders” so as to understand the culture they are investigating. At AGS I was already an “insider.” I knew how to act, how to dress, and how to speak the language of the school world. Although I could not really enter the adolescent subculture of the girls, it appeared that the participants felt comfortable with me and that my presence as an observer was easily accepted. On the other hand, my own teaching experience has been in schools so different from the field sites that I think there was little danger of my being so immersed in their school culture that I would fail to recognize significant data when it appeared. CHAPTER IV PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS Introduction Both AGS and CPS are independent institutions which offer classes from preschool through high school, with tuition fees in the $7,000 range for the lower grades, increasing to nearly $10,000 in the upper grades. This means that most of their students come from middle to upper class families, although there are some scholarship students. Both enjoy reputations as academically excellent schools in the local community as well as in the national network of independent schools.

AGS - The Single-Sex Setting

AGS was founded in 1898 by two local women in a downtown mansion that had formerly been a private residence. In 1953, the school moved to another old mansion in a suburb where much of the “old money” of the city had settled. Though now accompanied by other buildings, this former home is still the center of the school, housing offices and rooms for meetings. Surrounded by spacious houses with large lawns, wide streets and old trees, the property borders the main street going into downtown, so that the school manages to occupy a serene and peaceful setting and yet seem a part of the city. Over the years, several buildings were added as the school grew. The most recent addition and reconstruction unified the appearance of the different buildings around the original home with exteriors of stonework and soaring windows. Some would call it beautiful; others would no doubt call it pretentious. It is certainly rather spectacular looking for a school. The facilities are state-of-the-art, although no more elaborate than one finds in some of the 68 69 wealthier suburban districts. There is a pool, an arts complex, a three-quarters round theater, a regulation-size gym, a spacious new library and a sophisticated computer lab. Athletic fields and the running track as well as facilities for nature study are located on 25 acres about a five-minute drive away on property recently donated by a local family, a welcome gift since possibilities for expansion are limited by the suburban setting. The buildings which house AGS are designed for a maximum of 650 students, and there are currently 605 enrolled in kindergarten through twelfth grade. This school is run by women. There is a headmistress, and the heads of each division-elementary, middle and upper school-are female, as are the business manager, the admissions director, the director of development, and 11 of the 22 members of the board of trustees. Of 71 faculty members, 11 are men. The interiors of the school, with white walls and gray carpeting, are filled with light from the many windows. Both middle school and upper school have separate commons areas where students can dump bookbags and meet to socialize, snack or study. Seniors have their own, private commons in the old mansion, off limits to other students and to faculty. Although more attractive than most, the interior looks very much like any other school: classrooms with chalkboards, one big desk and many little desks, hallways lined with lockers. Between classes, the halls are crowded and noisy, and it takes a first time visitor a few minutes to realize that there are no boys here. There is a general sense of informality and friendliness in the school. Upper school students may go where they please during study hall periods, and there are always a few girls sitting in the hallways or sprawled on the chairs in the commons. Both teachers and students tend to greet everyone they pass in the halls. Bulletin boards are filled with flyers, announcements and posters. One, advertising a dance concert, had a conspicuous mustache inked in on a woman’s face. Teachers decorate their individual classrooms in various ways, with plants, curtains 70 and posters. Students eat in a self-serve dining room with tablecloths and fresh flowers on the tables.

The Students Students come from about a forty-mile radius around the school. Approximately 17% are minority students, with the majority of those being African- American. About 13% of the students receive financial assistance. The school uniform consists of plaid skirts, Bermuda-length shorts in either plaid or navy, or navy slacks, worn with white oxford cloth shirts or white turtlenecks. Cardigan or pullover sweaters in various colors may also worn, but they must be plain knits, with no cables or patterns. For students in public schools, the idea of not being able to dress as they please is generally abhorrent, but I found that the AGS girls actually like the uniform. Although they assert their individuality by sabotaging the uniform in small ways (emblems on shirts, the wrong color socks), and the seniors make a ritual of shredding their plaid skirts on the last day of classes, most of the girls appreciate that the uniform makes dressing for school very easy, and acknowledge the way it downplays “in” brands or expensive status symbols. Occasionally, the school has a “free clothes” day for some special event, when students may dress as they please. Interestingly, on these days I still saw some girls in uniform. When I inquired if they had forgotten, the usual response was a shrug and, “Nah, this is just easier than figuring out what to wear.” With no boys to impress, hairstyles are simple, often just a casual pony tail, and few girls wear makeup, which makes them look somewhat younger than their counterparts in public schools. AGS Middle School Head, Mrs. Johnson, who previously worked in a coed school, believes that the AGS girls are “younger” in more than just appearance. She said: 71

Our girls are thinking about who they are, not in relationship to what boys are thinking, or how boys are perceiving them, but in terms of how other girls are perceiving them, and that’s different. When you’re trying to impress a boy, there’s more of a tendency to go to extremes .... I don’t think we get up in the moming expecting to impress our girl friends. I look at our girls, they get up in the moming, they put on their uniforms, we don’t see a lot of make-up, we don’t see a lot of jewelry, we don’t see those things that call attention to us to let people know who we think we are. And I think you have that in coed schools. Consequently, I think girls start to act older than they really are. Not only in how they dress, but in how they talk and how they think.

School Philosophy To articulate the school philosophy and the advantages of single-sex schooling for girls as seen by the authorities at AGS, I have chosen to use rather extensive quotes from two women among the adults I interviewed. I see these quotes as part of the description of the school context, but I will also discuss specific comments from these interviews in explaining my conclusions; they serve as a frame for my subsequent analysis.

Mrs. Beaton - Head of the Upper School. Some insights about AGS’ decision to remain a single-sex school were offered by the Head of the Upper School, Mrs. Beaton. She is in her fourth year at AGS, previously having worked at both Laurel and Hathaway Brown in Cleveland (all-girls schools) as well as a coed boarding school in Massachusetts. She had left Laurel before the Brown and Gilligan study. In addition to her duties as upper school head, she also teaches one ninth-grade English class. She said: The decision to remain single-sex was made just before I came, but of course I do know some of the thinking, and some of the conversations that took place afterward. Plus, I worked at Laurel for ten years, and we went through the same decision there three different times. In many places, I think the big push for independent schools to go coed peaked about ten or fifteen years ago. Our city was a little bit later in coming to terms with that issue, and I think the impetus came primarily from CPS. My understanding is that while the talks were going on between the two schools, our board members were talking about co-ordinate education, and at CPS they were talking about coeducation. And when they realized that neither side wanted to do what the 72

other wanted to do, the talks fell apart AGS has never wanted to stop being a school for girls. It was willing to relocate the upper school, to offer some co-ordinate classes and some shared facilities, but it very much wished to retain its identity as AGS. The same thing happened at Laurel. The reason none of those mergers happened was fear of loss of identity. As you look at the independent schools in the east, where many of them merged, like Choate-Rosemary Hall, in almost every case, the identity of the girls’ school has to some extent been lost or at least compromised. Choate-Rosemary is called Choate by most people. I think at AGS, our mission is to educate young women, and that has been its mission for more than 100 years, and to sacrifice that, and embrace a different mission, which coeducation is-not that that’s a wrong mission- would be very different. Academically, this is an incredibly good choice for girls. I have taught in both girls’ schools and coed schools, I’ve raised a son and a daughter. During the ten years I was at Laurel, we had many cross-registration classes where we had boys from University School in some of our classes, so in the course of the day, I was teaching both coed and single-sex classes, and sometimes I had the same girls in both kinds of classes, and in every case I saw a difference in the classroom behavior and performance of the girls when they were in class without boys and when they were in class with boys. There is a willingness to take risks, to speak out, to ask questions, to make statements that are very revealing of their own attitudes toward life, their own questions about themselves, their own lack of knowledge-as well as the areas in which they feel very confident. There is that willingness to be open when they’re in class with other giiis-even if the teacher is male. That simply dries up and disappears when there are boys in the class. I think that adolescent girls are very much interested in how boys perceive them, and some of that is physical, so they’re going to spend more time on their appearance if they know they’re going to be with boys, but also some of it has to do with their own emotional and intellectual selves and they want to be perceived in one way by boys, especially boys they don’t know well, because they are feeling the beginnings of the sexual tension that exists in our society between men and women, no matter what they’re doing. If people working together are of different genders, there is a kind of tension that doesn’t exist if they are of the same gender. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s there. Sometimes it holds us to maybe even a higher level of conversation when both genders are represented-but with adolescents, I don’t think that’s true. I think that with adolescents there’s a certain amount of posing and concern about how other people perceive them, particularly boys.

When I suggested that if girls don’t learn to work with boys, perhaps they’re missing something that they may need to get along in the larger world, Mrs. Beaton replied: 73

Their hormomes are raging, and they certainly don’t want to go to school to be taught by a bunch of ranting feminists who say that men are bad, and we try not to do that. But I don’t believe they need to have that interaction in the classroom while they’re adolescents, and while they’re engaged in academic pursuits that will only happen one time in their lives. I do not believe that genders should be kept separate from ages three through college. But I think it is beneficial to every young woman to have a period of her education when she is only with other young women. I had that opportunity in college. My daughter had it in middle school. I doubt if you’ll find many girls who have been at AGS for all of elementary and secondary school who then choose to go to a women’s college. I just think there have to be options in the world. If I were to choose the optimum time for young women to be separated from boys-only in school-I would guess that middle school and high school are the most important years. If I could financially afford only four years, I would choose high school, and the reason for that goes beyond the academic separation, because what grows from the academic separation is a level of confidence that cannot be taken away in college when they’re thrust into a coed situation, which most of them will choose. But that confidence is engendered in high school. Young people, for example, who have been cheerleaders in coed schools-they never lose that edge of confidence that they’ve gotten out of that experience. There are students who have excelled on a debate team, perhaps, who don’t lose that assurance in their bearing in their interactions as adults. If you go beyond the classroom, you’ve got a situation in a school like this where there are tremendous numbers of activities, athletics, student council, plays, music, clubs--and every single leadership role is filled by young women. They learn how to organize their time, they learn that what they do on the playing field or in student council meetings is extremely important.... It’s not like our girls never see boys. Because we’re a day school, most of our students continue to interact with neighborhood friends, with church groups. We don’t have trouble getting boys to come to our dances, or to try out for our plays. The drama director has laughingly commented to me that sometimes it takes a little longer to accomplish what she wants to because there are boys in the plays and there’s a certain amount of interaction going on in which they’re sizing each other up. I’m grateful that that’s happening in play rehearsal and not in class, not the drama class, or the English class, or the history class.

When I asked Mrs. Beaton about the role that a single-sex school might play in helping girls avoid the loss of voice described by Brown and Gilligan, she said, “Well, a school like this has to do a lot, or it sort of loses its reason for being. Yes, we’re a school, so the academics take first place, but the assurance and 74 self-confidence that we can help our students develop-that’s one of our primary reasons for being.”

Mrs. Cecil - Drama Teacher. The second person I want to quote is Mrs. Cecil, who has been the drama teacher at AGS for three years, having previously taught in a private school which was coed. She works with both middle school and upper school students. I had not originally planned to interview her, but she had heard about my work in the school from other teachers and stopped me in the hall one day to tell me how interested she was in what I was doing, so I set up an appointment with her to discuss it. It was a serendipitous occurrence. I realized as we talked that she sees the girls in a different setting from a typical classroom~a setting in which the girls are freer, and actively encouraged to express themselves. She said: What made me interested in your work was two different projects that I have been doing with middle school girls. In sixth grade, I’ve asked them to prepare a personal narrative, only about three minutes long, about some event which had a strong effect on them. It could be something very funny, or something very sad. It’s a great early activity for me, to see how comfortable they are speaking to the group, what their body language is, what kind of language they use. The other project is an eighth grade assignment called the story of my life. It is to be a three to five-minute presentation, not storytelling or strictly narrative, but a performance piece- a one-woman show. I encourage them to use characterization or some kind of dramatization. I have been so moved in both these situations by the vulnerability of the giris—their willingness to share what I would have thought would be pretty tender information-I’ve taught the same assignments in coed schools and not had the same emotional content. The sixth graders are remarkable because they’re willing to look at themselves through a lens that’s pretty self-critical, but not in an awful, destructive way. One girl talked about her brother having been terribly ill, in a life threatening situation and how jealous she was of him. It wasn’t fair at all —he got a Nintendo and he had it right in his bedroom, and sometimes when he was asleep she’d just go in his room, right in his bed, and elbow him out of the way and play with that Nintendo. And she was able to say it was just because he was getting so much attention. I was just so interested in her willingness to say that, because I think at that age that I would have felt so guilty, knowing that my feelings of jealousy were inappropriate. And she knew that too, but she was accepting of all those feelings. 75

I think part of it has to do with not having toys around. In situations where we’ve had toys come in, like to do plays, I think the girls are very much affected, and are much more likely to censor what they say, or present themselves in a different light. In the story of my life project, the girls are interested in sharing objects that mean a great deal to them, and often they’re stuffed animals that they’ve had since they were babies, and tender little mementos that I just suspect wouldn’t clear their censoring devices if there were toys. I think in that case they would be things that had a more tangible value or a utility to make them seem worth sharing. The eighth graders vary more widely in the amount of candor. However, I had an Iranian girl who did the most wonderful performance depicting herself at home, reacting to some commands and some reminders, some warnings, and then writing a letter to a cousin who is still in Iran about the frustrations of not knowing whether you are a Western woman or an Eastern woman. It was so powerful, so eloquent, and apparently, it was satisfying to her to have an opportunity to give shape to all of that I’m a little concerned that this could be a very prying assignment and I tell them they should be very comfortable about what they wish to reveal. We hope that we’ll know a little bit more about them than before, but not everything, and not the things that they need to protect Some only show the sports or the books they like, but there are others who talk very frankly about divided families. There was an amazing piece by a girl - I was so overwhelmed by the metaphorical aspect-this girl brought two huge suitcases loaded with very heavy stuff, and she showed herself going back and forth from her mother’s house to her father’s house, and the messages that went back and forth, and I kept thinking, look at all the baggage that she has to carry. It was painful. The girls were respectful, they were admiring, they inquired as to whether that had been solved. It stimulated some dialogue that I think in a way was very satisfying for the girl. In my experience, it would be unusual for a toy to do something like this.

When 1 mentioned to Mrs. Cecil that Brown and Giligan say it is right about seventh grade when many girls begin to experience a drop in self-esteem and become more self-conscious, she responded: Well, it is interesting that I have never used either of these assignments with seventh grade, and I’m sure the reason is because it would just be such a tangle. I think at that age I want to protect them from each other. If I try a really risky activity, in which, for instance, I’m in a role, and it is implicit that I want them to come along with me in this dramatized situation, assume a role and play this together without knowing where we’re going, sixth graders are happy with that, but sometimes I’m scared to do it with sevens, because it’s so delicate, so fragile, it only takes one person jockeying for some sort of a power position to make fun of somebody who’s buying into it to destroy it. 76 In speaking more specifically about the dynamics of single-sex and coed classes, Mrs. Cecil said: I’ve often recognized the validity of things I’ve read about the amount of attention that boys get in class. Although I’m the mother of three daughters, and I feel like I interact well with females, I am positive that the boys sort of dominated my classroom in the coed school. I thought that because I’m in the arts area, maybe it’s harder to keep boys engaged. They may be under some peer pressure about even taking a drama class. I wanted to be sure that they’re having a great time, and that this is of value to them, that their parents think it’s ok, and all that. From the time I first arrived here, I wished that my three daughters had had this opportunity. I feel that they were distracted by all the attractions and magnetisms and hormonal issues.

CPS - The Coed Setting

CPS was founded in 1911 by a group of local businessmen who wanted prep-school educations for their sons without having to send them to boarding schools. In 1968 the school moved to its present location northeast of the city. This used to be countryside, but is now rapidly falling victim to rampant suburbanization. New highway connections mean that downtown is only minutes away. However, because of the acreage owned by the school, it still seems situated in a peaceful country setting, surrounded by wide lawns, ample parking lots and athletic fields. There is a football stadium, a feature conspicuously absent from AGS. A long, winding drive leads to the school, bordered by lawn with woods and wildflowers in the background. Bird houses and feeders hang from trees. The buildings are primarily traditional-looking red brick, and are not all connected as at AGS. Students must brave the winter weather to get to the dining hall, for example. This school also recently underwent some expansion and reconstruction in the lower and middle school wings. The new construction is rather similar to that construction at AGS, with many windows and a general sense of brightness and airiness. The halls and classrooms are carpeted and the impressive new dining hall is large and high-ceilinged, although without tablecloths or flowers. 77 As at AGS, students are responsible for clearing their own tables. More remodeling is planned for the upper school. For the present, the upper school building seems distinctly dowdy compared to the new construction, with inadequate space for faculty offices and student activities. The library is small and crowded, although the facilities for art classes are outstanding. There was no upper school commons area during the first year of my study, and students would simply congregate in the halls to chat at break time. By the second year, a large vestibule just inside the back door of the upper school, previously office space, had been furnished with couches and turned over to the students. As at AGS, the overall atmosphere is informal and friendly. Lockers are decorated with signs wishing a student a happy birthday or an athlete good luck in a game, and individual classrooms are made decorated with pictures, curtains and plants. One teacher has a fireplace mantle in her room complete with cardboard flames; another has an oriental rug under her desk. The school is run by a headmaster, and the heads of the upper school and middle school are also male. However, the Lower School Head is female, and there are 51 female faculty members out of a total of 103.

The Students Although somewhat larger, the CPS student body is demographically similar to that of AGS. The school has an enrollment of about 830 students. In the first year of the study, one-fifth were girls; by the second year, this had risen to one-third. The percentage of minority students is about the same as at AGS, 17.7%. However, fewer of these students are African American and more are Asian. As at AGS, about 13% of the students receive some sort of financial aid. The head of the upper school told me that they strive for a “uniform look,” more than a uniform per se, and the students have a wider range of clothing choices than at AGS. Girls may wear gray or plaid skirts, and both girls and boys wear 78 either navy or tan slacks. Shirts may be white, blue, pink, or yellow, and there are options for turtlenecks and sweaters. The girls seem to feel much the same as the AGS girls about the dress code, and they also do not wear much makeup, although several of them told me that they do feel more pressure to take some pains with their appearance, particularly their hair, because there are boys around.

School Philosophy - CPS To explain some of the philosophy behind this school’s decision to become coed, I will quote from the interview the Head of the Upper School, Mr. Curtain. He has been at CPS for eight years, having previously been at a coeducational boarding school in Connecticut. He has two daughters, one of whom graduated last year from AGS, and one who was a junior there when the study began.

Mr. Curtain - Head of the Upper School. Explaining the reasons for the decision to become coed, Mr. Curtain said: There were some philosophical factors, but also ones of practicality. We weren’t seeing some boys because they didn’t want to come to a school that was all male. By not seeing any girls, we were seeing less than half of the student population that would potentially be interested. We were also driven by the sense that in order to be complete, our educational program had to find a way to combine male and female ways of knowing, male and female principles, if you will. If our doors had been being beaten down by boys, whether the decision would have happened, perhaps after a longer tim e- it’s hard to say.

Mr. Curtain explained how the school prepared for the change:

Well, we had a number of workshops and sessions with people who had spent time in coeducational institutions, to explore issues that came up. We had some speakers for the faculty and we also spent a fair amount of time among ourselves discussing issues, what things we would have to consider and maybe change, not only in our curriculum, but also in the athletic program, and in the physical components of the school—classrooms, restrooms. We talked about the best ways to deal with diversity in classrooms, we talked about how many girls, or how much diversity does one need to make it worth while. We talked about how to do it-do we open up all grades at the same time, do it one class at a time? We had days when 79

we allowed boys and girls to come to school to visit, to make students more aware of our program. We still have visitation days. We had an open house to help girls who had been accepted understand our program better. The students were included in some of the programs we had, some of the speakers. They certainly were interested, and encouraged to talk about it informally in classes. A lot of interest was given to the topic in the school paper. Students wrote about things that might change, both positively and negatively. There was a questionnaire that went out to parents that attempted to glean positions and opinions about coeducation. We spent a lot of time talking about ways to have dress not be an issue, to make the important things about people that which we cannot see, rather than that which adorns their bodies, so that all students, boys and girls, would feel comfortable, not feel that they had to dress up or dress down or whatever the current fad or fashion was. And of course, in having girls, we talked a lot about pedagogy, different ways of teaching. What has to be examined, what has to be changed? What differences in learning styles would girls bring? Those issues were addressed by some of our speakers.

Speaking of the changes coeducation has made at CPS, he said: The biggest change that I’ve felt is the shift of the school from a place where collaboration and working together and accepting various kinds of students, was less obvious than it is today. It seems that students today are more accessible than they were when I came. The paradigm then was more of a place where the scholar-athlete was developed, and now it is a place where young people are developed. I think the school’s more approachable, friendlier, more open. Initially, I think as an administrator coming in, it seemed as if it was a more serious place, a more competitive place than the one from which I came. That may be to some extent because the students here were more qualified- indeed, this school is a more accomplished school in terms of standardized test scores.

In terms of the benefits afforded by a coeducational setting, Mr. Curtain remarked: There’s probably a more considered effort to be thoughtful, academically speaking, and to have more thoughtful relationships with other young people, to be more aware of how they come across and what they do in the context of school. I’m not sure I wouldn’t say the same thing for girls. When giris get up in the moming to go to an all girls school, they probably don’t have the same sorts of thoughts and concerns as they do here where they go to school with girls and boys. So they too, are being forced in a way to be more thoughtful about what they do. It may be superficial, or it may be more in depth, but there is a difference when you have to deal with the other sex in your school. I think there’s probably more cooperation, more collaboration, than when I first came, and it may be attributed to the fact that we have girls here now. 80

In discussing how successful the change to coeducation has been, Mr. Curtain said:

I would say, in general, it’s gone well. It’s hard to know the ways in which it hasn’t There’s nothing glaring, nothing obvious. 1 know in the beginning, some girls might have said they weren’t given enough respect, or that their strengths and abilities were not regarded in the same way as the boys’. I don’t know that that would be a position now....I think now it’s much more natural for all students.... There was some discussion as to whether the girls’ sports teams were Vikings or Lady Vikings-that came up in there somewhere. The girls had no interest in being Lady Vikings, they were Vikings, we decided the term Viking was a generic term that included both men and women. There will be a reference in the paper to the girls’ varsity, and after that it’s just, “go Vikes.” The sports teams, the girls’ teams, have been received, I think, very well.

Mr. Curtain said the future ratio of girls to boys would be determined by:

Whatever the market brings. The ideal would be a parity, but it’s impossible to know what the forces in the marketplace will be. Most of the qualified students who apply are eventually accepted. We never put a number on it, except to say that there should be two or three girls in every academic class that had girls—that if there was going to be one, there ought to be two or three. That hasn’t always been possible to accomplish. Then the question came up, if there’s one African-American student in a class, do there have to be two or three others. My own daughter said it was discriminatory to say that She felt that, “I can take care of myself, I don’t mind being in class by myself.”

In explaining why his own daughters did not make the switch to CPS, Mr. Curtain said: I think in the case of the older one who’s now in college, she was going into her junior year when she could have made the switch, and she felt that she had already built up a set of relationships with both students and teachers and administrators, and she didn’t want to leave. She often said she had friends in both schools, but AGS was where she wanted to stay. And the younger one, I think her reason was partly that she thought it would be difficult to be in the same school as her father. Also, we don’t have volleyball here, which is something she’s interested in.

Mr. Curtain summed up his philosophy abut the role of schools as follows:

It’s hard for me to separate girls from what we do for young people in general. I would say we need to be able to listen, and really hear what young 81

people say, particularly girls. The whole area of relationships, how they learn, if you take those dialogues seriously, I think they become helpful in how we shape the program, direct the program, and help young people understand themselves better. We ought to be willing to look at the different sorts of pedagogies that are out there, the different curricula, issues that speak to diversities of all kinds. We need to become people who are willing to celebrate the contributions of all. I think that schools become effective when they are able to utilize the wisdom of students, faculty, alumni, parents to help improve the program. There shouldn’t be anybody who is disenfranchised, and if girls have felt that way in the past, we should make sure that the value of what they have to say is heard and implemented. The collected wisdom of the faculty is there—it’s just a matter of how to get at it. I think that, by and large, people are in education because they appreciate and value young people, and value the process of education. We want to be receptive and listening, but we don’t want to take away the rigor of schools. That may enhance self-esteem, but it may not do much for self-respect. We need to allow all diversities to take on the same sort of worthwhile challenges, not excuse them, or say that we’re not going to hold you as accountable. But we need to understand how each group comes to the challenge, how they understand it and can learn from it. That sort of approach, I think, would benefit all students, including girls.

Some insights were added by a recent female addition to the CPS staff whom I shall call Dr. Kay. She has a Ph.D in psychology, is a member of the school’s Board of Trustees, and a parent who has had two boys attend CPS and two girls attend AGS. She was on the committee to implement the school’s decision to become coed and was hired as a teacher by the school to oversee the transition. She sees her position as evidence of the school’s real desire to become a true coeducational institution, rather than “a boy’s school which decided to admit girls.”

Dr. Kav - Coeducation Facilitator. She said: Initially, when the trustees discussed becoming coed, the talk seemed to center around the idea that it would be beneficial for the boys to have girls here. I was the one who kept saying that we needed to make sure it was an excellent experience for the girls as well, so they asked me to come and try to assure that I think there were both lofty reasons and very practical reasons. The lofty reasons had to do with providing a better education for the students here, preparing the students better for the world outside, because 82

after all, it is a coed world. I think other factors had to do with the need to be competitive due to an increased level of excellence in the suburban schools. And I think it’s just a general trend.... I don’t think the school would have died if it had remained all boys. It’s very easy for a boy in a male culture to grow up unaware of many of the issues that women have. My own children, who all went to single-sex schools, said that they wished that they had had the chance to work with students of the other gender, and know them on a basis other than strictly social. They realized that this was going to be part of their future, both in their personal lives and in their careers, and they felt when they got to college they were at somewhat of a disadvantage. I see the reason for wanting single-sex schools for girls; we have identified some of the problems that girls have in school. But it doesn’t have to be single-sex education to take care of these. What we need to become aware of is how the girls are and how they behave. I really want to work out these things in a coed world. We have boys whose style of learning is less the traditional style, and they need to be attended to as well. There is the boy who learns in a pattern different from the traditional male, the boy who hesitates before he speaks. That’s been identified as a girl’s thing, but it is a boy’s thing as well. I can see the rationale for a single-sex girls’ school. I can see it less for a boys’ school, because the traditional curriculum has been so male oriented.

Concerning specific changes which CPS has made since becoming coed, Dr.

Kay said: The easiest one to look at is the content of our curriculum. This is an on-going experience, trying to help faculty broaden their perspective, to see other dimensions of history, for example, and to broaden the canon of things being read. The history department is shifting, and the English department. The faculty is being challenged.... There are lots of other things. For the middle school, the second year I was here, 1 pulled together some materials from the AAUW study and I gave that out to faculty, about techniques that they might not be aware of. I’m not sure how often people refer to that, but they seemed interested in knowing that there were ways to teach that possibly would be different. A simple one is to not necessarily take the answer to a question from the first hand that goes up, to know that girls tend to have a delayed reaction, as well as some of the boys. Girls tend to emphasize interrelationships much more than boys do, and often work in a cooperative mode more easily than boys do. Encouraging the boys to learn how to do that, to collaborate with their classmates is important. There’s a sense that if the answer isn’t right, you spare the reticent student embarrassment by going on to someone else, and not coaching. That tends to be the girls more often, and it can be interpreted as, the teacher doesn’t want to hear from me. We need to make a conscious effort to help the student giving an answer. I think that boys do use attention-getting devices more readily than girls, like jumping out of their seat, and interestingly enough, the boys sometimes complain that the girls are not disciplined as 83

harshly as the boys, and my response to that is that it may be true, and the reason is that girls will respond to discipline in a milder form more quickly than the boys will. Academically, the girls are competing successfully, although of course from the numbers point of view, more boys get awards, but proportionally, the girls are coming out pretty well equal. That’s something we’re monitoring, to see whether we’re setting up appropriate qualifications. For the girls, a lot depends on their backgrounds, whether they’re coming in from the public schools, or someplace like AGS. For some girls, it’s like, “Oh, there are boys around,” and it’s a distraction. Others continue to to achieve just the way they had been. Whether it’s because of the girls or what, I think more attention is being paid to the new students as they come in, and there is much closer monitoring for all the students. It’s much more humane, I would say, than when my sons went here. I do think girls tend to get more stressed out about exams, and because they’re so sensitive to what’s going on around them, they are quick to pick up the mood--if one is upset, pretty soon there’ll be another one upset, and you’ll have a whole crisis. One area that has been difficult to handle, and it seems to be a societal problem, has to do with sexual harassment. I wouldn’t say it’s a gross problem, more the little remarks that kids make when they’re around the comer, out of the teacher’s hearing. We’ve all been concerned about that. We have put into place a policy on harassment, not just sexual, but having to do with minorities too....I think that the faculty has gradually learned that making derogatory remarks about a minority person, whether gender or color, even out of that person’s hearing, is not really acceptable behavior. There were some questions like, is it ok for a male teacher to joke around with the male students about girls, and by and large, I think it’s no. Now whether that’s always followed, I don’t know. It takes a long time for people to change their language and their form of expression, and I think one of the things that’s hardest when you’re sort of in the rush of the moment, for example, on the playing field where things happen so fast--how do you respond, what sort of language do you use? We sort of joke among ourselves at faculty meetings about how we’d better be careful about our language.

Discussion

Clearly, the adult participants in the study are thoughtful, concerned educators who want the best education possible for their students. They are well informed aabout the difficulties adolescent girls face in school, and have given much consideration to the issues involved. It also seems likely, and is probably inevitable, that the adults at each school are reflecting some bias toward their own school setting. This is not to suggest that any of their comments were less than accurate or sincere, but all participants were aware work was being done in both schools, and although I 84 assured them that the primary focus of my study was not to compare single-sex and coed settings to determine which is “better,” the desire to have one’s own school appear in the best possible light was a natural and inescapable part of the interview process. A CPS teacher, Mrs. Dunbar, confirmed some of Dr. Kay’s statements about the way that coeducation has changed the school:

Well, I do think some of our male teachers have toned themselves down at bit, and are not so intimidating in the classroom. But I ’ve taught girls before. I try to be aware of giving girls equal time. We were told that teachers often would not want to wait for girls to get finished with what they had to say, but I have some boys who are really slow getting through. When I didn’t have girls, there were boys who sort of took die place of girls-boys who were shier, or took longer to say what they wanted to say, and actually, the girls’ coming sort of removed them from the place that they had in class. Now they have to be boys. Before, they could take the more feminine role, and now, they’re not supposed to, so much.

Dr. Kay is well versed in the academic needs of girls, and she and Mrs. Dunbar are correct in pointing out that differences in classroom behavior are not sharply divided along gender lines. Many boys sometimes behave in ways generally ascribed to girls, and vice versa. It seems significant, however, that Dr. Kay focused almost entirely on the classroom, whereas Mrs. Beaton and Mrs. Cecil at AGS spoke of the social as well as academic advantages in an all girls setting. For example, Mrs. Cecil said: For one thing, I see a whole different sort of physical behavior here from what I saw in my coed school. The girls here will try to get to the theater early, and because the space is so wide open, they’ll do cartwheels, and all kinds of physical things that I have never seen middle school girls do in a coed setting, and I love that. I would love to see the full expression of whatever that childhood remnant is, you know, until it runs out and they don’t feel like doing cartwheels anymore. If an upper school girl wants to do a cartwheel, that’s ok, too. There’s a great story that somebody told me when I first came here, about a family looking for a school for their daughter, and before they had even visited a classroom the father, who happened to be a psychiatrist, said, “This is where we want our daughter to go to school.” And the mother said, “What are you basing that on? We haven’t even seen the school.” And he said, “Because, I do not see girls clasping books to their bosoms as they walk 85

down the hall, which is what you see in other schools.” And I think that it’s a wonderful story, and that it’s true. The girls are not embarrassed about their bodies and they are just less emotionally restrained when there aren’t boys around.

The difference that Mrs. Cecil noticed in the physical behavior of the girls when there are no boys around is something that is readily apparent to any school visitor. Not only do the girls feel free to do cartwheels and to be more relaxed about the way they sit, they are freer to show affection to each other. I often saw girls hugging each other in the halls at AGS or being physically affectionate in ways that I have never seen in coed schools. However, Mrs. Beaton’s comments about the differences she saw in girls when they were in class with and without boys raise some interesting questions. To be truly useful, the increased ability to speak their minds which girls gain in a single­ sex setting must carry over into situations where both sexes are present. Mrs. Beaton feels that several years of single-sex education will be of benefit to girls when they attend coed colleges, but the benefits of the single-sex setting at Laurel largely seemed to disappear when the girls were in cross-registration classes with boys. This is an important consideration, which will be further discussed. Although it is somewhat hard to define, there is a difference in style between the two schools. For example, at AGS, when I told Mrs. Beaton that I needed copies of the girls’ schedules in order to set up interviews, she had her secretary look them up and copy them for me. When I said the same thing at CPS, the upper school head sent me to the secretary who said “Here,” and handed me a large book of schedules so I could find the ones I needed and copy them. Rather amused by the difference, I mentioned it to Mrs. Dunbar, my “key informant” at CPS. She said, “I think the difference is in how women and men run things. Women try to take care of you, do things for you. CPS, run by men, for men, until recently, assumes you can take care of yourself.” 86 There were similar differences in the annual Open House nights held by both schools. ASG’s Open House was meticulously organized, with room numbers clearly marked, and a map provided. At CPS, there seemed to be more of an informal assumption that everyone knew what to do and where to go. The upper school head made an announcement to the effect that, “If you have any trouble finding a room, just ask somebody.” It is not a matter of one organizational style being preferable to another, but simply an interesting difference, and Mrs. Dunbar may be correct about the reason for it.

Presentation of Findings by Categories As described in Chapter III, data analysis involved using the interviews with the girls as the primary source of information, and coding and sorting the interview data into categories. Nine categories evolved, which seemed to reflect the range of concerns the girls discuessed in the interviews, and also relate in some way to self­ esteem issues. The categories are: 1.Self-Esteem and School Setting 2. School and Academics 3. The Value of Friendships 4. The Importance of Boys 5. Self-Image and Societal Expectations 6. School Image and Family Finances 7.The Importance of Home and Parents 8. The Role of Sports 9. The Role of Race The presentation of the data is arranged according to the number of comments each category contained. In other words, the first category discussed is the largest one, encompassing the most numerous comments. This category deals with how self-esteem may be affected by a single-sex setting. All of the girls had many 87 comments about this topic, because their feelings and opinions about either coed or single-sex settings was one of the opening questions for all participants. I have used this first category to introduce the girls and to explain the self-esteem ratings. Likewise, because there were several questions about their reading, the girls all had much to say about the topic of school and academics, the second category. Many of the girls spoke spontaneously, rather than in response to specific questions, about the importance of boys and friendships. On the other hand, the topic of race seldom arose unless I specifically asked about it. I approached each category by looking at how the topic seemed to be related to the girls’ self-esteem and ability (or lack thereof) to maintain strong voices, and how it related to my research questions.

Self-Esteem and School Setting Twenty-three girls participated in the study for the full two years. Nineteen of those filled out the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI). Four girls did not return the Inventory for one reason or another, so it was not included in their self­ esteem evaluation. The School Form of the SEI consists of 58 short statements which the participant checks as either “Like me,” or Unlike me.” There are 100 points possible on the SEI, with high scores corresponding to high self-esteem. In addition to supplemental behavioral observational ratings, the SEI manual suggests developing “local norms.” The mean score is in the 70-80 range, with scores in most studies skewed in the direction of high self esteem, which would probably be true for this study as well, because these girls are all aware that they are privileged in several ways. They know that they are “smart,” and are attending elite schools, and most of them come from families who are very comfortable financially. I had some initial reservations about the SEI, because, as with most questionnaires, it seems to me that it is obvious what the “correct” answers are. In addition, the girls sometimes found it difficult to check “Like me” or “Unlike me” to a statement because the most accurate answer would be “sometimes.” However, in 88 almost all cases, the SEI results confirmed my estimations of the girls’ self-esteem, and none of the girls scored more than three points out of a possible eight on the SEI “lie scale,” which indicates that they made a sincere effort to answer the questions accurately and honestly. As explained in Chapter III, I made a determination of the girls’ levels of self­ esteem and self-confidence as high, medium or low, based on the following criteria: (1) Body language and behavior during the interviews and observations, (2) Actual statements made during the interviews and their answers on the grounded surveys, and (3) The girls’ scores on the (SEI). According to these three criteria, of the eleven girls at AGS, seven had high self-esteem, and three were in the average range. Only one girl had such contradictions between her SEI score and other data that it was difficult to place her. Based on the SEI, I placed her in the low category. Of the twelve girls at CPS, three ranked high in self-esteem, five were average, and four were low. (See Table 2) 89 TABLE 2 SELF-ESTEEM RATINGS Bv School

AGS CPS High 7 girls 3 girls

Medium 3 girls 5 girls

Low 1 girl 4 girls

Bv Grade Level

seven nine eleven

High 2 girls 1 girl 5 girls

Medium 4 girls 2 girls 3 girls

Low 1 girls 3 girls 0 girls

The girls at AGS, then, received higher self-esteem ratings than at CPS, with twice as many scoring on the “high” end of the SEI. Authorities at ASG like to say that a single-sex setting can enhance girls’ self-esteem, because girls fill all the leadership positions, from student council president to captains of the sports teams. 90 While this may be true, the data in this study are not sufficient to attribute the lower scores of the CPS girls to the coed setting, particularly in light of the fact that four of them spent several years at AGS. Other factors which might contribute to their lower rankings include: (1) Several of the ninth-grade girls entered the school in seventh grade when the coed experience was still very new, and they were tormented in fairly serious ways by the middle school boys. At least two of the girls seemed to be still recovering from this experience; (2) Coming into this highly academic situation from a public school often causes the girls to suffer a drop in grades, which may affect their self-confidence. As might be expected, the older girls generally scored higher than the younger ones, which fits Brown and Gilligan’s finding that the peak of the struggle to maintain one’s own voice occurs in early adolescence. At both schools, the only girls to receive low self-esteem ratings were either seventh or ninth-graders. Because the major concern of this work is assisting girls in maintaining strong voices, I have chosen to present the data by using many direct quotes, allowing the girls to speak in their own voices rather than interpreting or summarizing all their words. This approach allow the reader to judge the validity of my conclusions.

Girls with High Self-Esteem Among the AGS girls with high SEI scores were two eleventh-graders, Brooke and Amy, who have been at AGS since preschool. They were not the most obviously self-confident, vivacious or outspoken of the girls. Based on interviews alone, I would have placed them in the high range, but not as high as they scored on the SEI. Brooke even seemed a little nervous, biting her nails both in class and during the interviews. However, she confidently described herself as outgoing, determined, intelligent, interesting, organized and well-liked. Both Brooke and Amy take their school work seriously and enjoyed discussing the books they have read. Both expressed a certain amount of curiosity about going to school with boys and 91 said they had considered switching to CPS when it went coed, but decided against it. Amy was at her most forceful in explaining: I think they over-push single-sex education here; it’s been shoved down your throat since first grade. That was part of the reason I wanted to leave in my freshman year. I was sick of it and I still think they do it too much. I understand that it’s a woman’s school and they want us to be strong and everything, but a lot of times I think they really push it. Like any professional that comes in to speak is gonna be a woman, like a role model- this is what you can be... 1 think we figured that out a long time ago...they give us articles. They’re always giving us this stuff, like this week in the Washington Post there’s this great article about the benefits of single-sex education. We know the benefits...You hear the groans every time the subject comes up. Like we know, we know.

She said she didn’t leave because she decided ‘The only reason 1 really wanted to was because some of my friends were going, and that really wasn’t the right reason.” The other two AGS eleventh graders, Bettie and Leisha, entered the school in ninth grade. Bettie had previously attended public school, and Leisha, an African American student, had attended a public alternative school and private Christian schools. Both had high SEI scores and their self-confidence was obvious. They were lively, exuberant, vivacious and outspoken. Bettie used some of the same words in describing herself that Brooke used: outgoing, intelligent, interesting. She also said that she was self-confident and happy. Although both Bettie and Leisha described some problems adjusting to the amount of school work expected from AGS students, both were generally happy to be there. Bettie, describing how AGS differed from her coed public middle school, said: One difference that was very obvious was that with boys, you have to pay attention to their learning style and here you don’t have to. I read an article that said that boys actually learn better with girls, because the girls are kind of a stimulus to work better, you know, to be smarter. They always wanna be smarter than the girls, so that’s why they work. And the girls aren’t supposed to be, so they don’t. So they’re the ones that miss out, and here we don’t have to worry about that A lot of times the boys got called on in class, and they got the new books first in our literature class. And the girls would sit in the front of the class and the boys would sit in the back because they were the rowdy ones. It was just always taking care of the attitude problem. Maybe that was just the public school, maybe the boys aren’t like that at CPS. But most of the 92

boys were the class clowns. I can’t remember a class when a girl was the class clown, you know? And made all the noise?

Bettie’s relief at leaving the boys behind was almost palpable:

A lot of pressure does come from boys.... 1 remember in seventh grade-it’s kind of embarrassing-they had this thing where they liked girls with big butts. And you know, I’m not thin, and I’m not fat, I’m kind of in between. And I always wanted to be really thin, like the models, and it’s just not the way I am, I can’t be that thin. But I didn’t accept that in seventh grade. And a lot of the boys would say, “Oh, you’ve got a big butt”—all the time, that’s all they said. And I would go home from school and cry. I did all these exercises, and! stopped eating. I really went through an anorexic period, but my father-he made me take my vitamins every morning and watched me very carefully cause he noticed it. He caught it very early on, and said stuff like, “You can’t be on the track team if you don’t eat dinner tonight; you’re going to be grounded if you do this, Bettie.” And he ended up taking me to a counselor, so he caught it before it was too late, and I got some help for it. But that’s definitely where the pressure is, and probably the second to last day of school, one of the boys who had always teased me about it—we were sitting there in class writing notes back and forth, and he said, “Why do you hate it so much when we say you have a big butt?” And I wrote back, and said, “Well, how would it make you feel if somebody said you have big legs, or a big head, or you’re fat? Big is associated with fat to me.” And he wrote back and said “No, this is a compliment-we like girls with big butts. It’s nice; we’re complimenting you.” And I thought, after all of this...! I can laugh alxnit it now, but there was a lot of pressure from that. I remember being nervous cause I had to stand up--I got some award, and I was so paranoid to get up there, because everybody would see the way my-my body-I just had never been that nervous about getting up in front of people.

Apparently, even a girl as bright as Bettie didn’t realize that it was really inappropriate for the boys to be commenting to her about her anatomy, even if they did mean it as a compliment Other types of sexual harassment, however, were more obvious: I don’t know if it’s just middle school-but the big problem with boys is sexual harassment. I couldn’t walk-you know the Umbro shorts that tie? Well, you couldn’t wear those without tying them. And the shorts that just have elastic waists? You couldn’t wear those to school--you could just not wear them. If you wore them, you had to have Umbros on on top of them, tied. You couldn’t bend down at your locker. When I came here, I always bent my knees to get my books out of my locker-I just didn’t bend over at all, because the boys would come up and slap you on the butt and I didn’t like that kind of stuff. I didn’t like the way it made me feel. It was very uncomfortable. At AGS you feel free of that. 93 Bettie’s comments echo those of Mrs. Johnson, AGS middle school head, who described her first impressions at AGS after coming from a coed setting:

I think the biggest difference was the tone-the tone of the school. When you have boys in your division, it automatically changes the tone of your classes, the tone of the hallways, the tone of your extracurricular activities. Boys are apt to be more physical. You always know when boys are present You don’t always know when girls are present. The first day of school here, we started school very calmly-we didn’t have all this high level of anxiety because we didn’t have boys jumping off the walls. And girls act differently around boys, so then you have them in competition with each other. So I noticed the first day of school here, it was a very calm day. We began with an assembly, the girls came in, yes they were giggly, yes they were talking, but they weren’t rowdy. They came in, they took their seats. At my other school, just coming in, the boys were slipping and sliding and pushing and shoving and then the girls were being loud because the boys were being loud, and they wanted to hear each other, and you had to take five or ten minutes just to calm them down, and then start our day. So I think the atmosphere is different when you have boys, and that atmosphere sets the tone of what your day is going to be like.

The ninth grader with the highest self-esteem rating was Liz, an irrepressibly lively, talkative dark-haired girl who came to AGS in the seventh grade from an upper-middle-class suburban school. She described the atmosphere at AGS as “laid back,” and said: 1 really like single-sex better. 1 think the environment suits me a lot more. In geography we were talking about politics, and I like to say what I’m thinking, and I don’t know if I still went to public school if I’d be as outspoken as I am here... It’s just that this whole environment-it lets you speak out more, and lets you be more yourself. You’re more flirtatious when there are guys around. It’s fun to go to school with guys, but you’re more yourself when you go to an all-girls school. You can be stupid or whatever and not think, “Oh, there’s the guy I like, I don’t wanna make a fool out of myself.” Here, you don’t care.

Two AGS seventh-graders received a high self-esteem ranking. One was Wendy, a thoughtful, articulate, delightful girl of mixed-race parentage, who described herself as funny, weird, a dreamer, and a bad speller. She came to AGS in fifth grade, having previously attended a coed Catholic school. There, she said, “Boys would just like show off in class and stuff. We didn’t get to do a lot of neat 94 projects and stuff because the boys were always, like, misbehaving.” However, I'm not sure the all-girls setting spared Wendy from self-esteem problems. In the second year of the study, when she was an eighth grader, she seemed somewhat less self-confident than she had as a seventh grader. The “I don’t know” phrase appeared for the first time in her talk, though she used it only three times. Many of the girls seemed somewhat more self-assured in the eighth grade than they had the year before, but for some, the difficult period may come a little later. Interestingly, the CPS girl with the highest SEI score was also a seventh grader—one of only three seventh-graders to receive a high self-esteem ranking. Like Brooke and Amy, Eileen seemed quiet and soft-spoken. She described herself as smart, athletic, kind, and a good leader. She also said she was a member of the “popular” group in her class (something no AGS girl would do), that she felt very secure with her friends, and that she found her school work easy. She previously attended a coed public school and was comfortable with the boys, who apparently are much more accepting of girls in their school than the seventh grade boys of a couple of years ago. There were no obvious changes in Eileen’s demeanor in the second year of the study. Of all the girls I spoke with, Eileen was perhaps the most successful at managing her middle school years successfully. She seemed to feel very secure at home as well as at school and with her friends. Another CPS girl with obvious self-confidence and a high SEI score was Lori, an eleventh-grader, who came to CPS in ninth grade from a small town school system with an excellent reputation, which, she says, is undeserved. Mature and self-possessed, she described herself as motivated, hard-working, secure and ambitious. She said she was very unhappy in her old school because the students had no work ethic and just wanted to party all the time. She had no particular feelings about coed vs. single-sex settings, but said she chose CPS because she is a competitive swimmer, and they have an excellent swim team. For her, she said, the change to CPS was: 95

...one of the best things I’ve ever done. Here you can work hard and get good grades, be a good athlete and not be made fun of. If somebody calls and says “Do you want to go to this concert?” and you say “No, I have too much homework, I have to study,” they don’t go “Nerd,” and like make fun of you. They’re like, “Oh yeah, I probably should stay in, too.” One of my good friends at my old school has changed incredibly. When I see him, I feel so sad, because he’s burnt. He drinks a lot. Drinking is big there. I think the school has burned him. He’s sick of the cliques, he’s sick of “I have to be this way to fit in.”...I don’t think it’s his parents who did it, I think it’s the school.

Girls with Low Self-Esteem The only AGS student with a low score on the SEI was Sally, a petite seventh-grader who has been at AGS since first grade. A good student, she has traveled a good deal with her family, and she seemed poised, self-possessed and articulate. Sally was one of the girls who seemed most interested in the study and loved discussing her reading. She spoke softly but quickly, with lots of hand movements, and was not shy. She described herself as pretty smart, a deep thinker, a good friend and a tough person. Based on the interviews alone, she would have been placed in the average range for self-esteem, her only obvious problem being that she was obsessed with the questions about friends and “popularity,” which seemed the main concern of all the seventh-graders at both schools. However, because her SEI score was so very low, I made a choice to be be conservative and placed Sally in the low category on the table. In examining the SEI subscales, I saw that she was the only girl in the study with a zero on the Home/Parents section, indicating that perhaps some problems at home were causing her to feel inadequate, at least on this particular day. The CPS seventh-grader with a very low SEI was an Asian student, who seemed very self-possessed in the interviews, but not very informative. She tended to give very brief answers, although she described herself as talkative and a blabbermouth. Those terms seemed to apply to her relationships with her friends. 96 She said she felt very secure with her friends, and like the other CPS seventh-graders, described herself as a member of the popular group in her class. Like Sally, she seemed to be feeling considerable pressure from home. She indicated that she felt her parents were “pushing” her, and scored only two points out of a possible eight on the Home/Parents subscale. It is possible that some of the statements on the SEI have a cultural bias which affects the scores of the Asian students. Relationships between parents and children are conducted somewhat differently in Asian cultures than in mainstream American culture. The third CPS seventh-grader had an SEI score in the average range. Like the other two, she seemed very confident of her friends, although she was a less able student and less confident about school. She definitely seemed to be suffering from pressure to be the “perfect” girl which Brown and Gilligan (1992) discuss, describing herself as generous, loving, and caring-all standard traits of the “good" woman image. She also used several times that word most abhorred by Brown and Gilligan, nice. Several of the CPS ninth-graders in my study had come from AGS in the seventh grade, which was the first year for coeducation at CPS. Some of the middle school boys resented the girls and definitely made things difficult for them, engaging in name-calling and overt harassment. Blair, an attractive but not very socially adept girl, had suffered from this treatment and was still fairly miserable in the ninth grade, but seemed unsure about whether things were better at AGS. She said: I felt like I was the scum of the earth last year. I was really scared. I just wanted to kill myself....I was really worried about what everyone thought of me....People were called me nerd, and I had prank phone calls at home. One told me to leave the school, that I wasn’t wanted. I was just like, oh my God, people must really hate me. But at AGS, I was having a really rough time with some of the girls who were being really jerky, too. Some people base the meaning of life on figures-like who’s flat, or large, or no waist, no ankles. But at AGS, if you didn’t have time to brush your hair, you didn’t worry about it...Here, I brush my hair every single day and last year, some guy said, “Some days it looks like you don’t brush your hair.” And some guy went, “Oh, dandruff. She’s got cooties, don’t touch her.” 97 Blair received a low score when she filled out the SEI during the second interview in the spring of the first year. Over the course of the study, however, her self-confidence appeared to improve considerably. She joined the school choir, where her singing ability was appreciated, her good grades brought her some recognition, and she reported that, as they got older, the boys were more accepting of the presence of the girls. By the end of the second year, Blair described herself as a much happier girl. Another CPS ninth-grader with a very low self-esteem ranking did not seem to make the same progress. Like Blair, Jeanne came to CPS from AGS in the seventh grade. She described herself as a procrastinator, and “a person who always takes the easy way ou t” She used the phrase “I don’t know” more than any other girl in the study, seven times in the first interview. She had been at AGS since preschool and said she made the switch: ...’cause of boys. I like it ‘cause it’s more normal....I just wanted a change....The social life just got so much better, ‘cause boys got to know you a lot more. When you’re not in the same school and you only talk to them at a dance or something, you know, they’re not gonna be, like, your really good friends.

Ironically, I believe the boys may have contributed to Jeanne’s low self-esteem. Like Blair, she had some experiences where the boys were really mean to her when she first came to the school. In the interviews, she chose not to relate specific incidents to me, but spoke in more general terms: When the boys made fun of like, heavy girls, sometimes you just laughed it off and you’re like nice, cause you want them to like you and you’re afraid if you’re like mean to them, they won’t like you and they’ll like make fun of you more, you’ll be like a social outcast. But once it gets to be like, day after day after day you’ve laughed it off, you get kind of sick of it, and after a while, I know it happened last year, people would like just break down. Really, it hurts, actually, and you get really mad after a while. But now, if anybody says anything, you laugh it off, but you’re more like, “Shut up,” you know, you have to be more strong, and like you don’t care what they say, but in some cases you do, cause they’re the popular people, I guess, and if they come up and make fun of you, sure, you’re gonna care what they say ‘cause a lot of people are influenced by them. But 98

in high school there’s not as much of that.

In saying that it would be “mean” to tell off the boys who were teasing, and that girls had to be “nice” even when the boys weren’t because “you want them to like you,” Jeanne seems a perfect example of a girl who has lost her voice, as described by Brown and Gilligan (1992). However, I cannot definitely ascribe her low self­ esteem to the coed setting, because I do not know what level of self-confidence she had before making the switch from AGS to CPS. Jeanne took the SEI in the fall of the second year of the study, and despite the fact that she reported “the boys have gotten nicer,” and she was “in love for the first time,” her SEI score was very low. She continued to say, however, that she was happier than she was at AGS, because, aside from the boys, “At AGS, I never felt like the headmistress really knew who I was, and here, I do.” For some of these girls, too, the coed/single-sex issue was not as important as being able to attend a school where an academic ethic prevails. Jessie, a ninth grader who came to CPS from a suburban coed public school, was very conscious of being a scholarship student Much of her lack of confidence seemed to stem from her awareness of how much more money other students’ families had and the fact that her parents complained about what it cost to send her to CPS, even with the scholarship. Like Lori, Jessie was unhappy with the social life developing at her old school, which included dating and sexual activity, as well as drugs and drinking, all beginning in middle school. She “loved” CPS and said: I feel more comfortable here because the people here are more intelligent and they’re here because of education...it helped me make friends easier because they were all smart people. Basically, in my old middle school, if you were smart, you weren’t cool, so basically the smart people kind of hung out together and we had the general classification of nerds... We’re cool here even if we are smart, because everyone’s smart. There was this girl down my street named Angie, and in elementary school we had a gifted program and she was in that. But she played dumb since third grade, because she wanted to have a lot of friends and that was the only way you could get them, to be dumb, to act dumb....Most of the smart people you knew about were guys. 99 In listening to Jessie, I was reminded of a comment made by AGS ninth- grader, Liz, who sniffed disdainfully about girls at her old school who “played dumb,” and declared, “/don’t think guys like like stupid girls! I don’t like stupid guys!” Discussion It is not a purpose of this study to compare the two schools which participated in the research for the purpose of determining whether the single-sex setting or the coed setting is “better” for girls. The data in this work are not sufficient to allow a judgment as to why the CPS girls, as a group, had lower self-esteem ratings than the AGS girls, particularly in light of the fact that several of the CPS girls had previously attended AGS. However, the almost uniformly high self-esteem ratings of the AGS girls may be an indication that an all-girls setting can enhance self­ esteem for girls, and therefore can play a role in helping girls maintain a strong voice. It seems clear, though, that many girls will thrive in any school, either coed or single­ sex, which respects their intellectual or athletic abilities. If parents do send their girls to single-sex schools for their entire education, they should see to it that their daughters have opportunities to interact with boys in other settings, not just as dates. Several girls who transferred from AGS to CPS indicated that they simply wanted more contact with boys. There are differences of opinion about whether girls who are shy and lacking in self-confidence do better in an all girls or a coed setting. CPS teacher Mrs. Dunbar has a daughter who attended AGS several years ago, and she pointed out that boys are not the only ones who can be mean, but that girls can be hard on one another as well. She added: I think that this year, most of our girls that I have in the ninth grade who didn’t come from AGS are, in general, very shy girls. I have one who is very shy, very soft-spoken, but I think if you put her at AGS, she’d never say a word. I think she’d be much more intimidated. She finds, I think, some comfort among the boys. There’s a sort of acceptance of her, because boys like girls. 100 On the other hand, one AGS seventh grader, Melissa, was very shy, and she said that she liked AGS, that the girls accepted her whereas the boys at her previous school had been the ones who intimidated her. In comparing AGS to her former coed public school, she said, “ I like it. It’s better...I like it all girls, because at the public school a lot of the boys got in trouble and would cause trouble.” Another AGS student, very outgoing herself, described having a good friend at her previous school who was very shy. It was her opinion that if her friend “...went to an all girls school-our class this year is close-knit and really friendly, and you know everyone-I think she’d be more loud.” Perhaps the discrepancy between the feelings of these girls and those of Mrs. Dunbar is due to the fact that the CPS girls Mrs. Dunbar teaches are older. It may be that “boys like girls” by the time they are ninth-graders, but most girls in the study did not seem to find any “comfort” among boys in the middle school years. There are also differences of opinion about the relative importance of physical appearance in a single sex or coed setting. Some participants suggested that girls can be jealous of one another, with or without boys around. Beth, a CPS ninth-grader, moved away before my study was completed and did not take the SEI, but it seemed that her self-esteem was very low, based mostly on her comments about her home situation and her weight. She had attended AGS in the seventh and eighth grades, and said: I don’t know, I really didn’t do too well. The atmosphere-I really didn’t like it much. It was extremely competitive-grades, sports, jewlery, family, boy-friends, everything....Here the atmosphere is much more relaxed.... At AGS, if you didn’t get the best of grades, were the best in sports, and the prettiest, and come from the wealthiest family, basically, you were a nobody.

None of the AGS participants, however, expressed these feelings. Most of the girls in my study indicated that the lack of jealousy and emphasis on appearance were two of the things they liked best about AGS. The only competition they acknowledged 101 was in sports and for grades. One AGS student specifically said, “I don’t think there’s an emphasis on how you look and stuff. There’s no competition about that, partly because of the dress code, and partly because there’re no guys here.” The contradiction might be explained by the understanding that different girls see things differently, and have different needs. Although a single-sex setting may be very beneficial for many girls, there will always be other girls, like Beth, who are happier in a coed setting. The AGS girls, particularly those who came in from coed schools, seem almost uniformly enthusiastic about their single-sex school, but for whatever reasons, it was clearly not fostering self-esteem for Beth. Although girls are certainly conscious of appearance, and more so when there are boys around, the girls’ self-esteem rankings had no connection to how attractive they actually were. Lori, for example, is a little plump and not particularly pretty by the usual standards, but she has plenty of self-esteem, stemming from her intellectual and athletic ability. Being pretty is no guarantee of self-esteem. Perhaps the most attractive girl in the study is a CPS eleventh-grader who unfortunately suffers from anorexia I would not presume to analyze the causes of her illness, but she described her good looks as part of her problem, because she felt that people only liked her for her appearance. In other words, given the culture’s emphasis on good looks for women, and assuming that girls’ self-esteem might depend partly on their ability to attract boys, one might expect some correlation between attractiveness and self-esteem. That just did not seem to be the case for these girls. Also, contrary to findings that many girls are unhappy with their physical appearance, most of the girls in this study, whether they fit conventional definitions of attractiveness or not, seemed self-confident about their looks. In only two cases did low self-esteem seem connected to their perceptions about their looks. CPS ninth-graders Blair and Jeanne were the only two who said they felt they were not as nice looking as most people. Ironically, the statement is patently untrue in both 102 cases. It seems that girls’ perceptions of the importance of physical attractiveness vary widely, based partly on their own self-esteem and partly on others’ reactions to them. Accepting and feeling comfortable with their own appearance appear to be more closely related to high self-esteem than is actual attractiveness. The SEI scores indicate that while good relationships at home do not guarantee high self-esteeem, poor relationships at home damage girls’ self-esteem in general. Though they might score higher on the Social or School sections, all the girls who had low scores in general also had low scores on the Home/Parents section. School and Academics

Academic Pressure Both AGS and APS are college prep schools which have high academic expectations for their students. Whether the amount of work expected is reasonable, and whether the expectations differ between the two schools, are matters often discussed among faculty, students and parents. What is clear is that many of the girls at both schools suffer in one way or another from the academic pressure and often describe themselves as overworked and stressed out. Adults in the schools are often aware of this, but don’t seem to know how, or even whether, to allieviate it. AGS Middle School Head, Mrs. Johnson, in talking about academic competition said: I don’t see it as being a problem It’s a natural phenomenon....It’s not a problem unless being competitive injures or brings harm to another person, or it makes you dishonest-then something’s wrong. I do think that we have some girls who are competitive to the point of being dishonest. Whether the school is fostering that or it comes from home, or from within, 1 don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we are without sin here. But I think the girls are hard on themselves. But I think in general competition is healthy. If you don’t have anything to compete for, then you’re going to settle for mediocrity. I think it’s healthy as long as it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else. Of course, you have to determine what you mean by what hurts. 103 Mrs. Dunbar, the CPS teacher whose daughter graduated from AGS several years ago, believes that the teachers at AGS tend to assign more “busy-work” because ‘The girls allow it After a point, a boy will say, ‘I’m not doing any more,’ but girls think they have to do everything the teacher assigns, even if it means staying up till two a.m.” CPS teacher Dr. Kay seems to agree: I just read a book about Andover, five years after they went coed, and one of things they said was that they used to give the boys these massive assignments, and when the girls came, of course they got them too, but the girls would do it all, and the boys wouldn’t. They had to figure out how to give assignments that were reasonable for both the girls and the boys, because the girls would sit there and take notes and do everything.

The problem is more acute for girls who have come into either CPS or AGS from less demanding schools. AGS eleventh-grader Leisha, who previously attended public alternative and private Christian schools, said: At first, I wasn’t organized enough. I was used to-ok, you have your notebook and your pencils. I didn’t come to class without my work prepared or without supplies, but it was like, you do your homework and you turn it in. If I don’t quite understand this, I’m gonna work at it, if I have a question, I ask. But it’s not that simple here. You gotta get a notebook for each subject, you have notes, tests, you have a list of questions for your teacher...The organization needed At AGS is something I think they need to explain when you first come in here. If it was up to me, I’d tell people when they came her, wait a minute, let me tell you what book bag to get, you gotta have an AGS book bag, not because of the stereotype of the the style, but because it’s big and it’s durable. I’ve had mine since ninth grade and I think it’s gonna make it to college. And you gotta have this type of notebook, and make sure your dividers are this way, and make sure you have notes.

Bettie, an AGS eleventh-grader who previously went to public school, explained her adjustment period this way: It was so hard, because at my middle-school, I was like the treasured one. I mean, I was the one who got all the awards, a straight-A student, and it was, “Oh, Bettie, she’s so smart.” And I came here, and everybody was just like me. And I’d not had that before. I’d always been different than everyone else. And that was very hard, adjusting to the amount of work. I’d always had to do maybe, at most, an hour of homework, and had the rest of the night to do what I wanted. And here, it was go home from school, do my homework, go to bed. I really resented it I had to give up a lot of, like, talking on the phone, a lot of free time watching tv or just relaxing. And now 104

I’ve learned to balance it....after three years, I’ve found that I can incorporate clubs, I can do service work outside, and I can juggle it all. Even last year, I had a lot of trouble juggling it, I didn’t sleep a lot, and it kind of cut in on my personal health, and this year I wanted not to do that, and realize, is it really so important that I get that done? I’d recopy something two times to make sure the handwriting’s perfect. Is it really that important? I heard a story my freshman year that really surprised me, I guess it happened when they were in middle school. There were these two girls, the top two girls in the class, and they competed fiercely for grades—in middle school! I just couldn’t comprehend it And there was a big math test the next day, and one girl stole the other girl’s math books so she couldn’t study for the math test. She actually, like, hid them. And the girl couldn’t study for the math test. I just couldn’t believe that somebody would do something like that. I haven’t seen anything that drastic since I’ve been here. There’s a lot of hesitancy about mentioning grades. I don’t necessarily know why. I’m very open with mine, if I get a bad grade, I’ll say, oh, I got this. I don’t even like to mention if I get a good grade, because I don’t want, you know, to feel that pressure, other people like, oh, she’s bragging, or whatever, so I just avoid the whole thing. But there’s some tension in mentioning grades, and I don’t know if that’s academic, or if that’s girls.

In spite of the pressure she feels, however, Bettie is clearly happy to be at

AGS. She said:

I’ve always loved school.... not doing the homework, or the tests, or anything, actually leaming-I love to learn. I’ve always been like that, and I’ve always wanted to succeed in school, but I know that when I came to CSG, I really flipped. I mean, it’s just like the right environment, and it’s warm and the teachers here~the teacher relationships that you have are just so much closer. You know, they’re willing to go that extra mile for you, they’re always for you, I mean they always have time for you. Sometimes they seem almost as stressed out as we do, because they’re working so hard to keep up with us, to stay on top of us. I really think that you didn’t see that at the other school.

Younger girls feel the pressure, too, and the seventh-graders at AGS seem to feel it more than those at CPS, who all said they found their work easy. AGS seventh grader Sally, said “It’s more difficult than I thought it would be. From fifth grade to sixth grade is a really big change.” A classmate agreed there is a lot more homework in middle school than in elementary school, but she seemed to take it in stride: “Well, sometimes it’s like a lot, but I go home and I just do it so I can get it over with. Sometimes you get more homework, and you’re up a little later, but 105 I really don’t get stressed out about i t ” By ninth grade, the pressure seems to really hit, at both schools. One girl commented wryly, “Idid have a social life before I came to AGS.” An AGS ninth- grader said, ”1 get very stressed out. I think too much pressure is put on around exam -if you do well on exams, you’ll get a good grade, you’ll succeed, you’ll get into better colleges.” CPS ninth-grader Carrie, who came from a wealthy suburban system, said: It was really hard, last year. I’ve got it more under control now, but sometimes it gets crazy. I think that going to school for six hours a day and going home and having so much homework-an hour and a half or two hours every night-everyone is so stressed out and has so much to do they really can’t focus on anything else. Before a test everyone’s all nervous. I think there’s a lot of pressure from home. Most of my friends have so much pressure from their parents. Sometimes I think the teachers go too fast...but I feel free to go to diem and ask for help. Here that’s like a regular thing, but at my other school you didn’t do that.

CPS ninth-grader Tonya is Asian, and may be an example of a student with too much parental pressure. In the interviews, she semed shy and giggly, tending to give short answers to questions. She was the only girl in the study who ended many of her statements with a rise in pitch, a question-like inflection which has been identified as a common female speech pattern. She was also the only one who gave the impression that she was trying to give the answers that I, as an adult, “expected” her to give. She scored in the average range on the SEI, but her lowest score came in the section on Home/Parents. The only other girls with Home/Parents scores as low as Tonya’s all ranked as having low self-esteem in general. She said, “My dad makes me study three hours a night, and then I have a science tutor twice a week for an hour, and a geometry tutor once a week for an hour and a half.” Again, there may be some cultural influence affecting the SEI score. Parents as well as students sometimes complain about the amount of homework and the pressure that students feel, especially around exam time. I heard several times, from parents and teachers, that CPS does not assign an overload of 106 homework quite as much as AGS, although other parents with children in both schools said they noticed little difference. Four CPS girls, including all three seventh-graders, said they never felt too stressed out about school work, compared to only one girl at AGS. The only girls who put “strongly agree” to the grounded survey statement, “Often, I feel too stressed our about school work” were AGS girls. However, there was about an equal number of girls who said that “sometimes” they were too stressed out about school work. Parents grumbled to me that ’’half the girls at AGS” had scoliosis (curvature of the spine) from carrying around “ridiculously heavy” book bags, that their girls had no time for elective courses or extracurricular activities, and that they were tired of their daughters being traumatized and teary-eyed before exams. On the other hand, some teachers undoubtedly feel that much of the pressure which makes girls “teary- eyed” before exams comes from home.

The Role of Reading My discussions with the girls about the influences of their reading centered around the following issues: I asked them to tell me about some works they had read in school which they particularly enjoyed, some school reading which they had not particularly liked, what sort of reading they engaged in for pleasure outside of school, how their reading tastes had changed over the years, whether they thought their attitudes, values or behavior were much influenced by what they read and if they found role models in their reading. This last question led into discussions about the importance of female characters or women authors.

In-School Reading. There were no noticeable differences between AGS and CPS in the types of comments the girls made about their reading. Both schools use many of the same books, though not necessarily at the same grade levels. Although the question was 107 not limited to reading in English classes, few students mentioned other subject area reading. The first question was what they had read in school recently which they had particularly enjoyed. The number of works the girls said they enjoyed was large and varied. Perhaps the most striking thing about their in-school reading was the individuality of their responses and the lack of agreement about what they liked and didn’t like. (Seventh and Eighth Grade) At AGS, the seventh-graders had recently read liked Lord of the Flies. Most of the girls said they had enjoyed the book, and no one mentioned that it had no female characters. They made comments such as, “It made you think,” “It had action and adventure,” and “I liked the symbolism.” Other girls mentioned Oliver Twist (“It was suspenseful and exciting,” “full of adventure,” “I'm a rebel like Oliver”), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (“because it's about the human plight”), and Beowulf (“It was a challenge,” “I liked the rhythm”). There were also favorable comments about Fahrenheit 451 (“I liked the plot.”), The Call of the Wild (“It was fun, exciting and truthful.”!. Animal Farm (“I liked the symbolism of the animals.”) and Little Women (“It was exciting.”). Girls this age are also interested in World War II and the Holocaust. They mentioned I am Rosemarie. Night. Hiroshima, and The Diary of Anne Frank as books they had enjoyed. Students who had been in German class liked Maus. a German book about the Holocaust told in comic strip format. The girls seemed to like it because they were learning about serious subject matter in an unusual and entertaining format. The most frequent reasons for liking a particular book were that it aroused strong feelings (the Holocaust books), that the plot was exciting, or that “it made you think.” The second question was what school reading they had not especially enjoyed. There was more widespread agreement in this group about the book most 108 disliked. The Jungle (not read at CPS) was listed by almost half of the AGS girls as their least favorite, with comments such as “It was boring,” “It dragged,” “It was too sad,” “It was disgusting.” By almost as big a margin, the girls did not like Beowulf, although it was mentioned by two as their favorite. They complained that it was too long, that it dragged, that the plot was too simple and unrealistic, (“I am not into stories with monsters and dragons”) and that the language was difficult. One student said, “It was stupid. I just never cared about the character.” Two girls found The Red Badge of Courage boring, although one said, “The title is neat” Oliver Twist and Fahrenheit 451. although listed by some students as favorites, were more often on the most disliked list Oliver Twist “dragged too much” and the “language was too difficult.” One girl said she didn’t like Night because it was too depressing, and three students listed Hiroshima as most disliked because it didn't arouse enough feeling. Considering the subject matter, this may seem suprising, but the book is written in a detached, factual, journalistic manner, requiring the reader to supply the emotion. It may have been the first time for this age group to encounter such a style. One girl said The Hessian was boring and another made the same comment about Dove. although others liked both books. A special mention is needed concerning Of Mice and Mea At AGS, one of the seventh-grade teachers read this book aloud to her students (skillfully editing out most of the expletives) and she said that at the end of the book, the whole class (including the teacher) was in tears. She described this as an intensely moving, shared experience for the girls, which could not have taken place in the same way with boys in the classroom because the girls, and she, herself, would not have felt so free to express their emotions. Most of the girls I spoke with said they liked the book, although one thought “It had no plot and it was boring.” (Ninth and Tenth Grade) At CPS, students read Of Mice and Men in the ninth grade, and several girls there also listed it as a favorite. One said “it was a touching novel of two friends who 109 stick together through hardships and try to reach their dream.” Night and The Diary of Anne Frank are also read at this level at CPS and were still common favorites. One girl said she loved the “old stuff.” Antigone. The Odvssev. Romeo and Juliet, because they provided an escape from everyday life. The same student said she also enjoyed the contemporary novel Yellow Raft in Blue Water because it gave a “different perspective on life, reading about those people who had no money, and a different heritage.” This book was also named by another student who said, “It made me more culturally aware of people outside this sheltered little world we live in.” Romeo and Juliet was also mentioned as a favorite by others (“because it's romantic”) while some preferred more contemporary works. To Kill a Mockingbird (“It was such a heartwarming story.”) and Catcher in the Rve (“because it was told from the point of view of a teenager....it was easier to relate to than Hawthorne or Shakespeare,” ‘The characters became very personal.”) were particular favorites. The girls found these books easy to read, and they enjoyed the plot and liked the characters. Girls at CPS liked McTeague. (not read at AGS) because “the characters seemed real.” One girl mentioned The Miracle Child, about Helen Keller, because “I admire her very much.” Other titles mentioned were Their Eves Were Watching God (“I could relate to it, it was very realistic. I could understand someone being ill- treated and wanting to find a better life for herself.”), Inherit the Wind (“It was real”) and Roll of Thunder. Hear MvCrv. One girl had enjoyed The Crucible. because “it was a neat subject, and easy to get into.” One girl said that although there was too much description in The Scarlet Letter, she liked Hester because “I liked that after she was shunned, she didn’t want to be a part of it any more even after the town would have accepted her.” This same student said she thought Ordinary People was “a really important book” that “kids should read because it teaches you that you can’t have a perfect family.” One girl said she loved Little Women, although “I really wanted Jo to marry Laurie.” 110 Books that some girls disliked included The Odvssev and The Bible (“Both were really boring and hard to read because they were written a long time ago and are very descriptive.”) One girl explained that it wasn’t so much a matter of not liking The Bible as that it was “hard to comprehend.” Also mentioned were Of Mice and Men and McTeaeue (too depressing). One girl also mentioned disliking “any form of poetry,” and three did not like The Scarlet Letter (‘Too hard.” “Too long, tedious, flowery.” “I figured out who the father was, and further reading seemed pointless.” “I need a main character I can relate to.”), Romeo and Juliet (“boring”), The Crucible (“I just couldn’t relate to i t ”), and Huckleberry Finn (“I didn't like the characters or the plot”). One girl commented that she liked books more for the plot than the characters, and that nothing much happened in Huckleberry Finn. Another student, however, liked Huckleberry Finn because. “It’s the only book we read in school that has a happy ending.” (Eleventh and Twelfth Grade) School books which the older girls enjoyed included Jane Evre. (“1 loved the story. It has suspense and romance and really kept my interest.”) and The Grapes of Wrath (“because of its literary style,” “It was interesting.”) One girl said, Waiting to Exhale was “good in some ways, it was interesting, I cared about the characters.” This same student said she enjoved I Know Whv the Caged Bird Sings, “because I saw people I knew.” Several students mentioned The Great Gatsbv. (“I loved all the characters, the time, the setting.”), and one said she liked The Old Man and the Sea (“Some people think it’s boring, but really, a lot happens.”), and A Farewell to Arms (“although I didn’t like that Catherine dies.”). One student felt that she had been able to relate to Anna Karenina, although “She was too needy at times. Sometimes I liked her, sometimes I hated her." The same student “really loved The Fountain head. It is my favorite book.” One student mentioned enjoying Poe’s poetry, but not his short stories, and another liked the “simplistic writing style” of Twain. One girl liked reading Shakespeare but said that her favorite was Tess of the D’Urbervilles. because Ill of “the way it dealt with prejudice towards women in the nineteenth century.” One girl said she did like Hamlet and Macbeth, but that she had enjoyed them less than other reading, because “I really do not care for Shakespeare.” Another student, speaking of the same plays, said, ‘They are so tragic and predictable. I couldn’t get into the characters.” One girl was vehement about The Mosquito Coast: “I hated that book, hated the things that happened to that family. I still haven’t figured out what we were supposed to get from that book.” She also did not like The Kitchen God’s Wife, “because I couldn’t get into the characters.” Another student disliked Beowulf “because it seemed to have no point and it was so difficult to understand.” She also found Oedipus Rex “too farfetched” and Death of a Salesman “too depressing.” The variety of works read and the enthusiasm with which the girls talked about books they liked and disliked were both surprising and gratifying. These students take their school reading seriously.

Outside Reading. In discussing reading as a leisure time activity, one of the comments that I heard from girls at both schools, but especially AGS, was “I wish I had time to read more.” These students have a great deal of homework, which they do very conscientiously. They are often involved in sports, drama productions, or other extra-curricular activities which require time after school and on week-ends. After factoring in church and family activities and the need to maintain some social life, these girls often feel truly pressed for time. This is particularly true of the older girls, who frequently use the term “stressed-out” to describe themselves. It is a great irony that while public school teachers commonly mourn that “students don’t read any more,” some of our very brightest students in the private schools would love to read more, and just don’t have time to do so. 112 (Seventh and Eighth Grade) For reading outside of school, mysteries were by far the most popular genre for these girls. Authors mentioned by name were Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Lois Duncan, Maiy Higgins Clark, Agatha Christie, John Grisham, and Sue Grafton. The girls said they enjoy the suspense in these books. They also listed fantasy or "scary” books such as those by R. L. Stine, Christopher Pike and Brian Jacques. 1\vo girls mentioned biographies, two listed historical fiction, and Gone with the Wind. One mentioned The Godfather, another, The Water is Wide, and another, Cold SassvTree. One girl mentioned enjoying adventure and survival books and another said she liked the Christy Miller books, a Christian-values series which she described as “about a teenager and life as it really is.” Only one student said she read nothing outside of school assignments, and only one student mentioned romance books. Several students listed magazines or newspapers as part of their outside reading, One had an interesting list of magazine subscriptions: Teea Seventeen. YM. Glamour. Sassv. and Time. One student said she liked to read anything happy, "because the stuff we read in school is so depressing,” and another girl said she liked easy reading because the school reading is so difficult. One seventh-grader at CPS said she read books in the Babysitter’s Club series. (Ninth and Tenth Grade) These girls still like mysteries, mentioning Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, John Grisham, and the works of V.C. Andrews. One girl said she liked Stephen King books because ‘The plots keep you wanting to keep reading and are always interesting.” Another girl said she liked fantasy novels because “It’s nice to slip into a different world, with things more exciting and fantastic than in the real world. For me, reading an adventurous fantasy novel is like watching a movie or TV program.” She liked the vampire novels of Anne Rice because “they actually have a point. The vampire didn’t want to lose his humanness, but when you’ve lived that long and seen 113 that much-he couldn’t help it” They also listed non-fiction books by a local author and by Robert Fulgham (whom one girl called “my idol”) and both popular and classic novels among their outside reading: Frannv and Zoev. Death Be Not Proud. The Grapes of Wrath. The Age of Innocence (“because I liked the movie.”), Main Street. East of Eden. Jurassic Park. The Firm. The Lords of Discipline. Fried Green Tomatoes (“because I was interested in the characters.”), and The Secret History. One girl said she was reading Like Water for Chocolate because “with more serious boyfriends and dating I want to understand love more.” Another girl mentioned the novels of Piers Anthony, “Not the cheap romances, but ones where a couple has to go through some struggle together.” A couple of girls mentioned magazines like Newsweek., and one said, rather apologetically, “Oh, magazines, the fashion bit. I don’t have time for all that hair and make-up stuff in the morning, but Teen sometimes has a story about something important. But there’s usually way too much stress on looks.” (Eleventh and Twelfth Grade) Several of these girls also mentioned enjoying mysteries. One girl said she didn’t read much outside of school, but that she enjoyed magazines because “they are fun, casual and non-serious. This gives me a relaxing break from my huge workload.” Another agreed that she didn’t have enough spare time to read much except magazines, although another girl complained that “Magazines for teens are so stupid and fake-most of them are an insult.” One girl said she enjoyed mysteries, the espionage novels of Tom Clancy and books about law because she wanted to be a lawyer. This same student was the only girl in the study who said she enjoyed romance novels, because “I am a hopeless romantic.” She said she didn’t like the kind that had "sex every five pages,” but enjoyed those with good dialogue and character development, with either period or modem settings. “I enjoy these as an escape,” she said, “because we read so much heavy stuff in school. For my leisure reading I want to know there’s a good ending.” This girl also mentioned that her 114 mother reads romance novels. The ninth-grade girls seem to read more outside of school than the other grade levels. Although mystery novels were by far the favorite genre for leisure reading, a wide variety of material was mentioned. Perhaps educators need to consider the number of girls who made comments to the effect that their school reading is too “heavy,” or “depressing.”

Changing Tastes. (Seventh and Eighth Grade)

In discussing the changes in their reading tastes over the past few years a number of the younger girls said, as if making a confession, that they used to read series books like the Babysitter’s Club books, but they all (except one girl) felt that they had now outgrown such childishness. One girl said, “I used to read Babysitter’s Club. Ugh!” She added that she had enjoyed these books when she was younger because she looked forward to being old enough to babysit, but now that she was, she realized that the way babysitting was portrayed in the books was not particularly realistic. Another girl mentioned having outgrown the books of adolescent horror writers, Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. Although some girls said they didn’t see much change in their reading tastes, (“I still like sad books and stories that deal with everyday life.”) girls this age generally seem to treasure their growing independence and increased responsibilities, and consider themselves light-years removed from the elementary school students they used to be. They say proudly that they read “more difficult” books now. One mentioned that she had started to like historical fiction. (Ninth and Tenth Grade) The ninth-graders, too, spoke of having outgrown teen romances and the series type of books. One girls pointed out that the quality of these books varies. 115 “Some are too soap-operaish,” she said, but some are more real.” One girl said, “I need more plot now. I sometimes read Babysitters Club books for fun, but they’re like a magazine. There’s just not enough detail, plus the reading doesn’t challenge me at all, and I can’t relate to such simple dilemmas any more.” Several girls said they had just never been interested in the teen romances, although one girl said, “In sixth grade I used to read romance novels because 1 was just starting to discover what went on between the sexes. Now they seem so cheesy.” Another student explained, “My mom called them trash and basically wouldn’t allow me to read them. I have a friend who reads them. She doesn’t have much of a social life. She lives through the books.” Another girl said she never liked the romance books because “all the girls are so ditzy. Like the kind of girls who go try out for the Miss Teenage America Pagent.” After a moment, she added disgustedly, “Of course, all the books written for girls are like that-except maybe for some of the ones by Judy Blume.” Another girl said disdainfully, “Those books make you feel like you need a boyfriend.” One student used to like Danielle Steele books, but “ I read them till I could see that they were all alike.” These girls too, are proud of reading “longer, adult books now, because I can understand them.” (Eleventh and Twelfth Grade) These girls tended to see less change in their reading tastes, indicating that there is probably not as dramatic a difference between the tenth and twelfth-grade years as there is between the seventh and ninth grade years. One senior girl mentioned reading teen romances in the fifth or sixth grade. “I was starting to get interested in boys-it was a fantasy time. Then I just outgrew them. It suddenly occurred to me that the girls were totally fake and all the books were the same.” One girl said “I read more classics on my own now,” and another said, “I am now more open-minded about what I read. I’m not as concerned with the time and place of the story; I just enjoy getting into the characters.” 116 The Influence of Reading. Whether their reading influences them much in terms of their beliefs, attitudes, values or behaviors was not something that some of the girls, particularly the younger ones, had ever considered. They tended to take reading for granted as either school work or pleasure. They knew they were expected to learn things from books, and they had formed many opinions about books, but it seems that the younger girls had not often thought about whether their reading affected them in any way. When I asked a seventh-grader if she had been much influenced by her reading, it was typical for her to first say, “No, I don’t think so,” and then, upon further reflection and discussion, to conclude that she probably had been more influenced than she had realized. Some of the older girls, however, stated particular instances in which their reading sometimes changed their thinking. (Seventh and Eighth Grade) Even the seventh-graders sometimes realized that they were influenced by their reading. One student said “I think Anne Frank has been a role model for me because Anne always made the best of what she had and I think everyone should do that” Another girl mentioned that she really liked the female main character in a series she was reading because “She’s tough but has a soft spot in her heart for animals. Her dad’s a vet and that’s what she wants to be when she grows up." But the student hadn't specifically considered the character a role model. One girl, in explaining why she didn’t find role models in her reading said, “I take reading seriously, but not that seriously.”One girl insisted, “I believe in being myself,” but later, in discussing what she read in magazines like Teen and Seventeen, she mused, “I don’t really realize it, but it probably does influence me.” All of these girls said it didn’t matter to them whether characters were male or female. (Ninth and Tenth Grade) As they get older, the girls are beginning to read more serious books, and to think about them more seriously. A common statement was, “I’m learning about 117 life.” One girl mentioned that some of her reading has “taught me a lesson about life or a different perspective on life.” Another explained that reading about people from different backgrounds made her feel differently about “things I might see on the news, for example. Like, I can relate more to those peoples’ lives.” They are also becoming more aware of the vicarious experience involved in reading. One girl said, “1 guess 1 just like having other people’s experiences.” About Robert Fulghum’s work, she said “Reading his stuff makes me feel wise in a weird way. Like I know something everyone else doesn’t.” These older girls were more able to recognize how they had been influenced by literature than the seventh graders were. Several of these girls said they felt influenced by their reading, but did not find specific characters to serve as role models. One girl, however, said, “If I have a choice, I guess I’d rather read a book about a girl than a boy,” and she mentioned that the boys in her class had not enjoyed reading Edith Wharton’s Summer because there were no male characters. Another girl said reading is “more exciting if there are female characters I can relate to,” but she added that she could relate to male characters too, because “girls dig deeper than boys.” One girl who enjoyed adventure or fantasy novels specifically mentioned King Arthur’s sister Morganna from The Mists of Avalon as a role model because of “how she served her land above everything and defended her religion to the end.” Another said, “When I read Christy and Little Women. I felt like it happened to me. I ached for Jo when she turned down Laurie.” The student who most articulately expressed the influences of her reading said: I’m greatly influenced by my reading. After I’ve finished it, I feel like I am the character, and I feel quite insightful. I am especially influenced to talk to people that I don’t know much about, or those I’ve had personal prejudices about. Most of the books I read teach you to think of how you can become a better person. I am often influenced by things I read in school to be a strong, intelligent girl and not to give up. Mostly, all characters in books who don’t give up get something good in return. Ellen Foster has been a role model-teaching me to hang in there. Antigone influenced me to believe that I 118

can be a strong and powerful woman and earn respect.

This seems to indicate that self-esteem can certainly be affected by what girls read.

(Eleventh and Twelfth Grade) At AGS, by the time students get to the upper grades, they have been made very aware of the school’s interest in promoting strong self-esteem for women, and sexism in literature is an overt topic of discussion. These girls usually had the most to say about how books influenced them, and whether it was important to have female authors or characters. One of the girls from CPS who had transferred in from a public school said, “In an environment like this students are more influenced by reading because they take it more seriously and examine it more carefully.” Only one of the older girls said she felt that her reading had little influence on her (“ I don’t usually apply things from a book to my own life.”) and that none of the characters in her reading had been role models. One girl said she appreciated the fact that Shakespeare had a number of strong female characters, but that it was sometimes hard to identify with them because “times have changed so much.” Another girl noted that in reading Pride and Prejudice she realized how much women’s role has changed over time, and that she had noticed in The Grapes of Wrath it was the grandmother who really held the family together. One girl said, “You read about other people to learn about them. I cared about the characters in Waiting to Exhale, but I wouldn’t say it influenced me. It didn’t have a lot in common with me.” One student said that Toni Morrison had given her new insights into life, and that “I liked her style of writing. She has characters a young girl can relate to.” A student said The Prince of Tides “made me see myself in a whole new light. I have morals against adultery, but when he committed adultery I was happy for him because he got the love he needed.” Another student mentioned the same book, saying “After I read that, 1 started noticing little things that never stood out before. That book really made me think.” Although acknowledging that 119 books can change her thinking, this student said that for role models, “I look to real people.” Another girl said that she had become fascinated with the idea of being a lawyer after reading several books about law. She said a character in a Dean Koontz novel was a role model for her because of “her perseverance and strength. She showed me to never give up.” One student had obviously thought deeply about Anna Karenina, saying, “What a poor, sad life she had. I don’t want that said about me. I don’t know what I’d do in her situation. I really think she was victim of her society. I can’t imagine ever being totally dependent on a man like that.” Other girls, however, insisted that an author or a character did not have to be female to affect or influence them. One girl who reads a great deal and enjoys many different kinds of books said, “I don’t really pay any attention to whether it’s a male or female I’m reading about.” She mentioned liking the books of Joseph Conrad (The Secret Sharer. Heart of Darkness) because he “stripped away characters to their most essential parts. It doesn’t matter, then, whether they’re male or female.” One student said about the main character in The Fountainhead. “I love the way he thinks, so independent-I had considered myself a socialist and I loved the way the book totally challenged that idea, making me think about something new." The same student said that reading Toni Morrison had convinced her that “the idea of the melting pot is wrong, that we need to recognize differences in people." Most of the girls actively resisted the idea that they need to read books specifically by or about women. One senior said, “Finally, what the book is about is more important than the sex of the author.” Another said emphatically that “We should just read good books.” One girl said that at a coed Catholic school where some of her friends went, there was one reading list for boys and another for girls. “That made me so mad, when I heard that. I don’t think you should pay any attention to the gender of books.” She added, “We need a balance between male role models and female role modes so we can just have human role models.” 120 Discussion

In terms of self-esteem, for most girls, the homework load and the pressure to make good grades seem to have little negative effect if the girls find support among friends and family. Generally, they are bright girls, and they know that they are. When they have difficulty, they do not see themselves at fault; they simply think the school is too hard, although many of the girls have positive things to say about their teachers. It does seem unfortunate for girls to feel “stressed out” so much of the time at such a vulnerable age, and the academic pressure is an issue that the schools might want to address at some point, but it is reassuring to find that while the girls may have negative feelings about school, this does not result in negative feelings about themselves, unless, as in Tonya’s case, it is accompanied by negative pressure from home. As an English teacher, of course I find it distressing to hear girls say that they don’t have time to read outside of school. However, the difference that some adults mentioned in the way that boys will refuse to do what seems to them an unreasonable amount of work, while girls feel that they must do all that is asked of them, is an issue worth exploring. It may be an indication of the pressure for girls to fit society’s “nice,” cooperative, female image. Although it may be true that many of our students do not read as much as students in previous times before the advent of television, these girls illustrate that there are students who read a great deal, who read many different types of things, and find much of their reading enjoyable. It seems clear that the girls are, indeed, influenced by their reading, and that the older ones are more aware of this than the younger ones. Morals, prejudices, self-esteem and general perspective on life were all factors which seemed to have been affected by things the girls read. There was great individuality and diversity in the responses to my questions about reading. There was little agreement about specific books. In many cases, a book one girl disliked intensely would be another’s favorite. Some girls disliked 121 reading that seemed difficult, while others enjoyed that challenge. For all ages, the most important factors in finding a book enjoyable seemed to be an interesting plot and characters that the girls could relate to. It was an enjoyable experience for me, as an English teacher, to participate in these conversations where the girls spoke about their reading with such insight and enthusiasm. Generally, they take their reading seriously and talk about plots and characters as if they were real. They were articulate and forthright about their likes and dislikes. It was particularly gratifying to hear them make comments recognizing occasions when their reading challenged or changed their thinking, or inspired them, as Lee said, to believe “that I can be a strong and powerful woman and earn respect” Several girls echoed the Moffit (1987) study discussed in Chapter II in their comments about using books (though not necessarily teen romance novels) to learn about relationships between the sexes. Recognizing that they are influenced in terms of having their thinking challenged is more common for them than finding specific characters to use as role models. Although Culp (1977) found that her students were most influenced by outside reading rather than school reading, and that teacher input made little difference, the girls in my study discussed their school reading with more passion than their leisure reading. Although they clearly enjoyed outside reading when they had time for it, they tended to dismiss it as “fantasy,” or “escape.” When they spoke about books which changed their thinking, the books had usually been discussed in English class. Certainly, most of these girls were not put off reading selections because they were school assignments. Only a few mentioned that they enjoyed outside reading more than school assignments. There is a definite feeling among many of the girls, however, that school reading tends to be “heavy,” or even “depressing.” As in Culp’s study, the novel seemed to be the most influential genre. Some girls seemed apologitic about admitting that they enjoyed magazines, or books that have little literary merit 122 Racial identity seems to play a small, but perhaps important, role in determining which books the girls like. White students often, though not always, mentioned books by African-American or other ethnic authors among their favorites. They feel that one of the roles of literature is to teach them about people different from themselves. African-American students always mentioned books by white authors among those they liked, but they also invariably named at least one book by an African-American among their favorites. It seems that they can enjoy reading books by white authors as long as they know there will be a balance, with some African- Americans represented as well. They do not always necessarily like the African- American books better than any others, but they like knowing that the curriculum is “fair.” It is significant, then, that these girls resist focusing on gender issues in reading literature. It is socially acceptable in this school culture to advocate ethnic diversity, but gender equity is more problematical. In my visit to Laurel School, the same was true. When I talked to girls there about my research, they adamantly refuted the idea that they should read any book “just because it was written by a woman.” As at AGS, the girls insisted, “We should just read literature because it’s good literature, no matter who wrote it.” They are wary of feminism. They want very much to be strong, independent, self-sufficient, and on an equal footing with men. At the same time, they are intensely interested in boys, in being attractive and feminine, and in having a boyfriend, desires which they seem to perceive as contrary to a feminist ethic. Indeed, strength and independence are simply not qualities which have been considered compatible with attractiveness and femininity in our culture. Girls can find examples in their reading, however, of characters who combine these qualities. Perhaps future authors will create more such characters to serve as role models for girls. 123

The Value of Friendships It was very common for the girls at both schools to discuss the importance of friendships. AGS eleventh-grader Amy said flatly, 'The most important thing about self-esteem around here is friendships." She added: I think that relationships here get to be a lot stronger than in public schools. Friendships are really, really strong. I think that’s because we’re at school together, all day, just girls, and we can talk about the girl stuff and talk about guys--you know, if you were in public school, you wouldn’t talk about the guy you’re in love with with him right there. It’s very easy here to talk with anybody at any time, including a lot of the teachers.

Peer acceptance is paramount to young people, and may be even more important at an all girls school where the admiration of boys is not a daily source of self-esteem. Blair, when she was feeling miserable at CPS, sighed: Some days I’d love to be at AGS with my friends. I think the girls here feel that they have raised themselves to a higher level because they go to school with boys. But I can’t have a civilized conversation with them about what I’m reading like I could with my friends at AGS.

The seventh-graders at both schools talked more about the concept of “popularity” than any other issue. The main difference I noticed was that all of the seventh-graders at CPS assured me with pride that they were among the most popular girls in the class, while at AGS, the girls generally agreed across grade levels that there was a popular group, but they all claimed disinterest in belonging to it. AGS seventh-grader Sally wasn’t sure how girls become popular, but she said “If they’re really popular, they have a lot of power over everybody else. They can tell you how to do things and everything.” When I asked if it’s always the same girls who are popular from year to year, she said, “Not really, because in the past few years, there was this one girl who was really popular, and now this year she’s not popular at all, and the people that she was friends with don’t like her.” AGS seventh- grader Wendy said, “It’s harder to have friends at this age because when we were younger, everyone was friends with everyone. But as they get older and know more, 124 that’s when it starts to happen. People talk behind other people’s backs, about really stupid things.” CPS ninth-grader Jeanne remembered that in middle school: There were a few girls that just cared about being with boys, and they’d be mean to you. A lot of the girls used each other to get boys, to be cool. For the most part, they were ail really nice, but everybody talked behind everybody’s back. But people didn’t find out as much as they do here. There aren’t as many girls here, and if you tell a boy something, they don’t keep secrets very well.

Adults at the schools are aware of the problems girls have with restructuring their friendships, and seem to consider it a normal middle school phenomenon. AGS drama teacher, Mrs. Cecil, said: The problems I see the girls having here center around friendships- the changing constellation of friendships is hard, and that’s often a seventh grade issue. I heard someone say once that there are girls who will assume die role of the boys that we are trying to segregate them from-that there will be a girl who will take that role in a class, and be the one who issues the put- downs. I see that, and it’s something I’m concerned about. I see difficulty working together in groups and making compromises, difficulties in assuming leadership, or in giving over and letting somebody else be leader. 1 think some of those problems are a little more intense in the middle school than I see in the upper school.

As might be expected, some of the girls suggested that popularity is tied to appearance, because the prettiest girls get the most boys. CPS ninth-grader Jeanne said, “If you’re fat or ugly or something, people aren’t gonna want to be your friend. A lot of the girls just want to be with guys, hang out with them, and if you're not pretty, you think that the guys don’t like you. In middle school, it's almost extreme.” The older girls have almost entirely abandoned the concept of popularity. AGS eleventh-grader Amy commented: I think middle school is when you figure out who you’re going to be friends with. I don’t think there are many changes in friendships in high school. We were cruel in middle school. There were things that I did, not alone, but with other people, that I look back on now and I’m really ashamed of. I have a feeling that it’s part of growing up. 125 In describing the differences between middle school and upper school AGS eleventh- grader Bettie remarked: I think in middle school you’re really unsure about yourself, you know, just going into puberty, and you really don’t know who you are, and until you find out who you are, you have to take on different personalities. You know, if there’s something that you like, but that your friends don’t like, you’ll drop it. And things that you didn’t even think of liking, you will if they do, because you’re really unsure. I went through that. I’d be friends with somebody, and find myself almost dressing like they did. I remember that, and it was really frustrating. But the cattiness is still at AGS. I mean, I can see it when I walk down the middle school hallway-I mean, our freshman hallway in the old school used to be right at the end of the middle school hall, and every day, there was a fight after lunch, I mean, girls would be crying, every day. We just used to laugh about it, ’cause here we were, freshmen, and I guess we had just come out of that.

It was very common for the older AGS girls to speak of the way that a single-sex setting fosters friendships between girls. Bettie said:

It seems as if, at the coed middle school, the friendships we made were superficial. If you were a pretty girl and you dressed right, you had to be friends with the other girls who were pretty and dressed right, so you could attract the boys. A lot of times it didn’t even matter if you were nice-I don’t know, the friendships weren’t real. And here they’re not based on what you wear, obviously, because we all wear the same thing, or what you look like, or if you’re friends with her, are you going to get a chance to go out with that guy. It’s all because you get along, you know, and that’s the most important thing in school.

Bettie, who came to AGS from a suburban public school described how the girls at AGS treated her when she first enrolled in the ninth grade:

Honestly, they were really friendly. I don’t know how to explain it—it was kind of like an opening, and they just took me in. I mean I’d always had friends, and groups of friends around me, but this was the first time that I really thought that they liked me for me. I’d always felt just a little bit different, you know, the way I dressed, or the way I wore my hair ‘cause they used to curl their hair, and I just never did that. My hair won’t do it, and I was always a little bit different-just something that I always thought was a little bit wrong. Then I came here and I didn’t have that feeling. I don’t know, I can’t put it into words, the friendships that I’ve made. And I know these are gonna last, they’re not just gonna be for boys, or whatever. 126

To be honest, 1 had trouble coming here, because I always seemed to have better friendships with boys, because they were less catty. If there was one thing I could not stand about girls in middle school, it was the cattiness, and the talking behind the backs, and the material things. I just wasn’t like that. So I made a lot of friendships with boys, and I kind of had to forfeit all that. They couldn’t understand what AGS was. I left a lot of that behind, but then I made new friends, and I’ve made really good friends with other boys, but I kind of miss seeing them every day. But I still wouldn’t give this up.

The CPS girls, however, voice many of the same feelings about their friendships at their coed school, although they often described pettiness and cattiness in the public schools they had attended. CPS ninth-grader Carrie, who came from a wealthy suburban school, said: At my old school I didn’t have any close friends....The girls there were mean. There were all these cliques, and things were run by one girl, who had a lot of power. People didn’t really like her but they were afraid of her. She could make you feel real stupid. There were these little groups who had all grown up together, their parents knew each other, and it was real hard to get into a group. Especially if you weren’t attractive, you had a hard time.

Another CPS eleventh-grader who has friends in the same system said, “I used to feel so sorry for them, because in middle school they would tell stories about how they’d been isolated at school over trivial things like clothing and ridiculous thing like that...as they got older I think the cliques have broken up.’’ Both this girl and another girl who came to CPS from a different suburb felt that either the wealthiest students or the best looking ones “ran” things at their old schools. CPS eleventh-grader Lori, who is much happier than she was in her previous school because there were too many drugs and too much drinking there, added, “There is definitely partying here....but people here respect my decision and they do not ask me to drink and they don’t get in my face and call me nerd or tightass for not doing i t ” Laura also pointed out that, given the right environment, girls can have close friendships with boys. “I’d say the majority of my friends are boys. I have a lot of good girlfriends, but a lot of my friends are boys. One of my best friends is a 127 Discussion

Mrs. Beaton suggested that the high school years would be the most critical time for girls to be away from the pressure of cross-sex socialization during school, but the girls’ comments about the sexual harassment they experienced from middle school boys indicates that perhaps middle school might be the best time for girls to have a separate setting. However, the girls make it clear that middle school girls can be beastly to one another as well, so the best choice of all might be to eliminate middle school entirely, as Simmons and Blythe (1987) have suggested. Certainly it seems that changing friendships are a most important concern for middle-schoolers. An interesting difference in response was that the CPS seventh- graders were so willing to identify themselves as members of the popular group and the AGS girls were not. It may be simply coincidental that the CPS girls really were among the most popular girls in the class, and that none of the AGS girls were. However, it seemed that the AGS girls would have felt that it was bragging to claim popularity, and that concept seemed not to bother the CPS girls at all. It is clear that these CPS seventh-graders are having an easier time with the boys in their class than the new seventh-graders did two years ago. In middle school, boyfriends are becoming an issue, even for girls who attend single-sex schools. There are dances and football games and numerous activities which serve as a prelude to dating, and it is not uncommon to hear ASG middle school girls discuss who is “going with” whom, which refers to talking on the phone in most cases. The girls are generally in a hurry to grow up, and the “popular” girls are the ones who attract the boys first, or simply the ones who have the self- confidence to seize a leadership role for themselves. Middle school is also a time, as the older girls realized, when the girls are forming their own conscious identities, and a reshuffling of friendships seems to be part of the process. As AGS seventh-grader Wendy said, “when you get older, you 128 know more.” They are beginning to know more about themselves, and are looking for friends with whom they share common interests. Hurt feelings are probably inevitable as some elementary school friendships fall by the wayside. The opportunity to form close friendships with boys, as Lori has at CPS, is undoubtedly a valuable experience. However, it seems to be a rare experience in most coed schools, where the sexual tension is high. Partly because the girls are still a small minority, partly because of the dress code, and largely because of the emphasis on academics, CPS is not a typical coed school in this regard. It seems likely that both sexes could benefit from a diminishing of sexual tension in coed schools so that students could take advantage of the opportunity to form cross-sex friendships. The single-sex setting does seem to foster long-term, close female friendships, because the girls depend on each other more, and because there is no competition, at least during school hours, for male attention.

The Importance of Bovs If seventh grade girls are somewhat confused about their changing friendships, they are equally confused about boys. In response to direct questions, seventh-graders and ninth-graders generally said that having a boyfriend was not important, and that girls’ self esteem was not affected by boys’ opinions. However, in conversations with the girls, it became obvious that the opinions boys express about them are very important. The older girls more often acknowledged that their self-esteem is influenced by their relationships with boys. Although one cannot assume a heterosexual orientation, none of the girls suggested any other orientation, and it did not seem appropriate to question my participants about this issue. AGS seventh-grader Penny described an example of the confusion which girls her age sometimes feel as they enter into relationships with boys: I see some girls act weird around boys, like start to show off. There are several people who are like, different when they’re with a friend than when they’re with boys. They don’t really talk to you the same way....One 129

of my friends, she went to CPS, and she’s just like totally different. Her voice is different now, and she just tries to be so nice to you.

A CPS eleventh-grader felt that girls become more self-assured around boys as they get olden Acting different around boys-putting on makeup and acting kind of stupid...yes...I think a lot of, maybe, freshmen are like that. But I think that once people get older they realize that they can just be themselves and they don’t really need to act in a particlar way or do certain things or say certain things.

Eleventh-grader Bettie felt that some long-time AGS students found it more difficult to talk with boys than do girls like herself who had some experience in coed schools: ... like my friends who have been here since preschool. I don’t really hear them talk about it, but I do know that they are less confident about going up and talking to boys. Sunday I was skiing, and there was a boy that we met and he had friends and they were supposed to meet us in the lodge to eat dinner. He was late, but his friend was standing there, and we were kind of behind the ski lift going, “You go talk to him,” “No, you go,” and so 1 walked up to him. I mean, here we snejuniors-so I said, “All right, I will,” and my friend gave me this kind of surprised look, like “You’re really gonna do it?” I guess I’m more used to that.

She added, however, that there are opportunities at AGS for girls to see boys, and pointed out that AGS girls are not immune from the type of rumors common in coed schools:

We have dances all the time, we’re not sheltered. I mean, you should see the boys that come in here after school-especially for the freshmen. I’ve never seen that many, not the herd that comes now. And they stay. They sit there and play cards, and talk. I think my class is kind of a recluse class. We’re active, but we’re also known as, I guess, the prudes, too. There are rumors, you know, about how active girls are and what they’ll do, and we’re kind of the ones that are like, “Oh, the junior class at CSG, you don’t wanna mess with them.”

Bettie spoke articulately about some of the difficulties AGS girls face in their relationships with boys: 130

When you tell a boy you go to an all girls school, the first thing he says is why? And then they start to see how smart you are. I guess they feel threatened. Any committee I’ve ever been on, or when I lifeguard at the pool, all the boys--they try to be smarter than me. It’s funny. A lot of times you find yourself at a loss for words. We talked about this yesterday in my self- defense class, when a guy says, "Oh, what do you think you’re actually gonna be able to do against somebody like me?” And you try to tell him, and they really put you in a position where you can’t-they’re gonna fight you from all angles, and they’ll get you, whatever you say, to get you to back down. They’re threatened by your confidence because they don’t get that from other girls they know.

Bettie also explained, with a mixture of pride, dismay and amusement, the differences boys see between AGS girls and girls from a nearby coed parochial school: I was talking to a friend over the summer who has dated both AGS girls and Simpson girls, and he says all of the guys know this—I just love this —he says there is a difference. And I said “What do you mean?” and he said, “Well, if I want a girl that I can-that I know I’m gonna get some, one night, no commitment, I’ll go to Simpson. If I want a girl that I can bring home to meet my family, that I can have an intelligent conservation with, and have an actual relationship, I’ll go to AGS.” I just loved it—I don’t know know if he meant it as a compliment, maybe he meant we can’t have fun, but I thought it was neat that even a boy could see the difference. He said, if you walk in a room , you can tell the Simpson girl and AGS girls~an AGS girl will have her head up-not her nose up in the air, but she’s got her head up, looking around the room, and the Simpson girl has her head down. It’s not that they teach you here how to walk into a room, or how to be confident with boys, but I think that the success that you find here-the success with your studies-I guess maybe that carries on into your social life. You know, if I can succeed here, I can succeed anywhere.

Discussion

Although all the girls are interested in boys to some degree, there is some confusion about just how important boys are, or ought to be. In general, the grounded survey data indicate that boys are distinctly more important to the girls at CPS than at AGS. To the statement “Boys are not very important in my life,” six girls put “agree,” four from AGS. Seven girls wrote “disagree,” three from AGS. The other girls put “undecided.” The data for the other survey statements, worded in 131 somewhat less personal terms, are dearer. Ten girls wrote “agree” to the statement on the grounded survey which said, “The opinions of boys are important to a girl’s self-image.” Seven of them were from CPS and three from AGS. Six girls put “disagree” or “strongly disagree,” and all but one were from AGS. To the statement, “Most girls at my school are too concerned about what boys think of them,” ten girls wrote “disagree,” seven from AGS and three from CPS. To the statement, “It’s important to a girl’s self-esteem to have a boyfriend,” eleven girls said “disagree,” only three from CPS. (See Table 3)

TABLE 3 RESPONSES TO GROUNDED SURVEY STATEMENTS ABOUT BOYS

Grounded Survey Statements Agree Disagree

Boys are not very important in my life. 4 AGS girls 3 AGS girls 2 CPS girls 4 CPS girls

The opinions of boys are important to 3 AGS girls 5 AGS girls a girl’s self-esteem. 7 CPS girls 1 CPS girl

Most girls at my school are too concerned 4 AGS girls 7 AGS girls about what boys think of them. 5 CPS girls 3 CPS girls

It’s important to a girl’s self-esteem to 2 AGS girls 8 AGS girls have a boy friend. 4 CPS girls 3 CPS girls

It seems reasonable that girls who consider boys important would be more likely to choose CPS than AGS, and it also seems likely that the setting at CPS makes boys seem more important to girls who are there. In other words, it is difficult to say whether boys are more important to the CPS girls because they are attending a coed school, or whether they are attending a coed school because they think boys are more 132 inportant It is also possible that the AGS girls have been “taught” that they are not “supposed” to consider boys very important. Generally, the girls with the highest self-esteem levels seemed to feel less pressured by boys’ opinions. Although the pattern from school to school was clear, there was no discernible pattern between grade levels. Apparently, relationships with boys remain problematical even for older, more mature girls. For AGS girls, the problems are compounded by the issues that Bettie discussed: that AGS girls sometimes intimidate or alienate boys because they are stronger, more independent and more outspoken than other girls the boys are used to dating, and that they are sometimes considered “prudes.” While both mothers and teachers may be happy that their girls tend not to become sexually active at an early age, they do want girls to enjoy romantic relationships with boys, and to eventually marry and have families. I have heard adult women discussing whether, in seeking to make girls strong, we are making it more difficult for them to form relationships with boys, to find dates and to make happy marriages. There is a real need to educate both boys and girls in the formation of relationships of equal partnership, and the current generation of adults often do not provide good role models in this regard, because they are struggling with the concept themselves. Bettie “loved” the fact that the boy she quoted thought the AGS girls were “different” but she was “not sure he meant it as a compliment.”

Self-Image and Societal Expectations In terms of maintaining a strong voice, one of the key statements on the grounded survey is “Generally, I feel free to be myself.” Seven of the AGS girls put “strongly agree,’’including all four of the eleventh graders. Only one girl at CPS marked “strongly agree.” Three others at AGS and five at CPS marked “agree." No one put “disagree.” The girls who marked “undecided” were all seventh or ninth graders. This seems consistent with the self-esteem evaluations and the SEI scores, indicating that the AGS girls have a stronger sense of self in general, and that girls at 133 both schools develop more self-esteem as they leave middle school. However, there was more variation in the responses to the statement, “When I feel angry or upset, I feel free to let it show.” Three of the AGS girls said “strongly agree,” and three more said “agree.” Five CPS girls said agree. Girls who put “undecided” or “disagree” were evenly divided between the two schools, but again, tended to be seventh or ninth-graders. Expressing themselves becomes more problematical for girls when strong negative feelings are involved. CPS teacher, Mrs. Dunbar, in describing the differences she sees in boys and girls, said: The boys are obvious-they say what they want to say. If somebody’s in their chair, they say, “Get out of here, you can’t sit there.” Girls are more subtle--which is more dangerous, I think. They wouldn’t say to someone, “Get out of my seat," but they might give another girl a sort of look, like, notice how she didn’t get out of my seat. You don’t see the same sort of competition between boys and girls that you see between boys and boys or girls and girls. Maybe because of jealousy. I don’t think that boys are jealous of girls in the same way a boy would be jealous of a boy or a girl would be of a girl. Girls voice their unhappiness in more subtle ways, and I believe in ways that hurt more. It’s one thing to have someone say to you, “Oh I don’t believe what you’re saying,” because you can answer back or whatever. It’s worse to have someone look to someone else and give them a look like, “Can you believe that?” You can’t fight it, and it becomes more than one on one. The girls bring other people into it, they bring their friends in. They don’t have an open confrontation, which means the problem can’t get resolved. I believe it’s the way they’ve been brought up. I think that a mother would be more apt to say to her little girl, “Well, did so-and-so’s feelings get hurt?" If her little boy came home and said two people were fighting on the playground, I doubt if the mother would say, “Oh my goodness, did anybody’s feelings get hurt?” They expect the girls to be sensitive and caring, and I don’t think they expect the boys to be that way. We’re not allowed to go out and hit people or push them down, but we are allowed to give sort of a look. But boys are allowed to go push them down, so we have to come up with our own methods. I think it would be better if girls did say, “Get up out of my chair.” Boys confront, and it’s over. The girls don’t confront, and it’s not over.

Many of the girls agreed with Mrs. Dunbar’s descriptions of how girls avoid confrontations. CPS ninth-grader Jeanne explained: 134

Girls are like, more sensitive than boys. Boys tend to say things to your face, and girls think that would mean, you know, to say it to the person....But if you’d just say it to their face so the person knows, it’s so much better because then you don’t need to talk behind a person’s back.

I asked Jeanne whether she thought this difference in approach was innate, or whether girls learned such behavior. She responded, “It’s more acceptable for the boys to be like go-getters, like get out there and like they can be ruthless and everything, but it’s ok, ‘cause they’re just trying to pursue their career. But if a woman does it, it’s more like, she’s a bitch.”

Explaining how she felt about this difference, Jeanne said:

I don’t like it I mean, I don’t know why people would just say that because they just expect you to be nice, I guess, just ‘cause they’re women. I guess ‘cause they’re supposed to be like mothers and they’re supposed to have a feminine touch, they aren’t supposed to be like, mean....It makes it harder for them to get places. Men like usually don’t care who they step on on the way to get up there, but when women do it, it’s a lot harder....! don’t know. I think women should be able to be more like, aggressive.

AGS eleventh-grader Amy seemed to agree. She said that if she could change one thing about her friends, it would be to make them more able to deal with confrontations: ... to be able to say, I really don’t like it when you do this, instead of just keeping quiet and letting it grow up to be humongus. When you confront someone finally, it’s such a shock to the person being confronted. It eventually happens, but it happens too late I think like, we’re not supposed to get angry. You get, like from male friends, “Oh, you’re PMS-ing. Why are you so moody? You’re being a bitch.” You can never be mad. You’re not supposed to get mad unless something really tragic happens. On the other hand, people at this school have the freedom to like, cry and express your emotions a lot easier than you would anywhere else. Cry over grades, cry over stress, over anything. I mean, it’s a common thing to walk down the hall and see somebody crying, you don’t think twice about it. You just say, “Well, I’m sorry whatever’s going on is going on.

T\vo of the CPS eleventh-graders who seemed to have a strong sense of voice claimed they always say what they think. Lori said: I say what I think, and sometimes it gets me into trouble.... If I’m shopping and they charge me wrong, I say something. I’m 135

not afraid to stand up for myself. If someone is making me mad by saying something, I’m not afraid to say, “Shut up,” to a girl or a guy.

Jennifer agreed, and gave her parents credit, saying, “I’m one to express my feelings....I don’t keep back my anger or anything. I think my parents are pretty good at that, like letting me be myself and not tellling me to act like a lady or anything.” Another aspect of societal expectations for women is the pressure not only to be “nice,” but to be attractive. Speaking of the culture’s emphasis on fashion-model thinness, CPS ninth-grader Blair, sighed, “I don’t think I’d think this way about myself if society didn’t say, you gotta looke likethis .” AGS eleventh-grader Bettie talked about the pressure to be thin, but said she had finally overcome it: I think you just reach the point where you’re going to have a mental breakdown if you keep caring that much about the way you look, because there’s nothing you can do. Yeah, I was losing weight, but did I want to make myself go through that? Did I want to make myself worry every time I walked into a room if somebody was gonna think I was fat? You miss a lot of fun too. When you get together with your friends, you wanna eat stuff, you know, and I’d be the one who couldn’t eat and then you start to feel sorry for yourself, and who wants to have that when you’re all together with your friends? And I just thought, you can keep doing this, and drive yourself insane, and become a person that nobody wants to be around because you’re gonna be so depressed all the time, or you can just give up and not care about it—just say, “I don’t care anymore, this is how I am and this is what I feel comfortable with.”

The girls are very aware of the mixed messages they get from the popular media. CPS eleventh-grader Rita commented:

There’s the women’s lib movement, and women as business executives and all that now, but you turn on MTV and you see women being exploited, you know, scanty clothing, dancing around flaunting their bodies, and the men are completely clothed. The shorts for guys have gotten longer while the shorts for girls have gotten shorter. I mean, it’s sort of a contradiction-it doesn’t seem right. I think that society confuses a lot of people, especially teenagers and adolescents, because you don’t know what to think because of these mixed messages coming from society. I think that’s a large contributor to why girls are maybe insecure. 136

The girls at both schools attributed the uniform to helping them resist some of pressure about how girls are “supposed” to look. Rita said:

I think here it’s less of a problem than it is in other schools. 1 mean at other schools, from what I hear, how to dress is a major problem. I hate the uniform and I can’t stand to wear it but sometimes I’m so thankful that I don’t have to take the time to find clothes. On “dress down” day we had to wear a college tee shirt, and I literally spent half an hour going through my clothes trying to find a college shirt, and that was just a pain.

Still, there is a need for individual expression, too. Odd hair colors or styles are not uncommon at AGS, and a few girls have multiple earrings or pierced nostrils. The administration seems to overlook such quirks and minor infractions of the dress code as long as they don’t become too outrageous. Naturally, clothes are a primary way to define personality outside of school. Several girls described hours spent searching for distinctive things to wear, and finding that “everybody shops at the same places,” and “the stores all carry the same stuff.” AGS ninth-grader Lee described the need to “fit in,” and yet be "different”: Last year, I was really concerned. I wanted to be totally different from everybody else, and I got all this new stuff to wear. I just wanted to stand out in the crowd. Most people still dressed alike-everybody got matching things from The Gap and stuff. This year, people are branching out a little bit more. Now, I’m not so radical....It’s more like, I’m not normal, but I’m not different either.

Discussion This category, dealing with self-image and the the expectations of society, is the area in which the girls seem to have the most difficulty in struggling to maintain their strong voices and sense of self. As they get older, girls sometimes find themselves changing against their will, and they realize that they can sometimes choose to change themselves, that there are many different facets to each personality, that there are many different images they can choose to project It is difficult to maintain a sense of self when a girl is not sure who her “self’ is from week to week. Especially among the seventh and ninth-graders, determining who the “self’ is, or who they want to be, is a serious preoccupation, complicated by the conflicting 137 messages the culture sends about the role of women. Lee’s concern with finding the right clothes to wear is not trivial. Clothes are an expression of how a girl sees herself this week, which personality she is trying on. The uniform provides some relief from this concern during school hours. It is rather startling for girls this age to realize that one’s “self’ can no longer be taken for granted, that it is not fixed and immutable, that, to some degree, one can choose who to be. How to relate to others, and more specifically, how to solve conflicts with others, are important components of the process of self-determination. Mrs. Dunbar, Jeanne and Amy all suggested that girls need to be bolder about speaking their minds and learning not to fear confrontations. However, always saying exactly what is one one’s mind is not necessarily a desirable trait, and confrontations are not always the best solution to conflict. Much of Brown and Gilligan's Meeting at the Crossroads (1992) is devoted the texts of interviews with the girls at Laurel. The point of most of them is that the girls learn to compromise, to cover up their true feelings as they get older. Questions can be raised about what the researchers seem to be saying. Why is it that the capacity for being “really mad” strikes them as authentic, and the desire to be “nice” is assumed to have been imposed by adults? It sometimes seems that Brown and Gilligan think the girls are psychologically healthy only when they’re in conflict. Consider this comment: ...we hear what sound like disembodied lines from parents and teachers that drop into Jessie’s ears and into her world about what to know and what not to know, what to say and what not to say: “Cooperating is better than fighting,” Jessie says.” (p. 56)

Why is advice from parents and teachers categorized in such a negative way as “disembodied lines” that “drop into her ears?” Is the implication that cooperating is not better than fighting? Jessie should not have to repress her true feelings if she doesn’t want to, but if, at the age of 11, she chooses to remain silent sometimes 138 rather than risk conflict with friends, isn’t that permissible? Brown and Gilligan (1992) say: If she chooses to stay out of the disagreement, Jessie risks herself and her feelings....On the other hand, if she stays with herself and her feelings and gets involved in public confrontation, she risks the “terrifying” feeling of starting fights she cannot stop.

A good deal of experience is necessary for anyone to learn to deal gracefully with conflicts. Perhaps an eleven-year-old should not be considered repressed because she sometimes chooses to avoid conflict that she is not ready to deal with. In working with people in the adult world, getting “really mad” is not usually very productive, and it could be argued that learning to make compromises between their own feelings and the feelings of others is a necessary skill for both sexes; that neither boys nor girls should be expected to repress their feelings, but that both sexes should learn to express those feelings with some degree of tact and consideration for others. In discussing this topic, AGS drama teacher Mrs. Cecil remarked: I think the civilizing influence of female style, of saying things in a way to make them more palatable, or approaching it in a softer kind of tone— what’s wrong with that? And we’ve got to acknowledge the fact that we women, we faculty in this all girls school, find ourselves highly agitated by girls who do not behave this way. It is our personal style, and we have trouble valuing the strongly confrontational style, and I don’t know if we should.

On the other hand, teachers at Laurel dealt with the same question during the Brown and Gilligan study, and came to feel that they, as adult women, had often “silenced” themselves to the point that they contributed to the repression of their students. In Meeting at the Crossroads. Patricia Flanders Hall, a psychologist and Dean of Students at Laurel, declared: We could not avoid recognizing that [girls’] behavior reflected a similar kind of behavior among women at the school. We were not open with each other in public settings and, like the girls, had silenced ourselves beyond the walls of our classrooms or offices or in the presence of authority.... We did not publicly disagree with policy, with each other, with men, with the 139

Head of the School or the lunch menu. Above all, we began to fear that we were teaching girls to do exactly the same thing, and were perpetuating the same feelings of loss and inauthenticity that we recognized had colored our lives at the school, (p. 220)

Hall and several teachers began a series of retreats with Brown and Gilligan to

determine how to learn to speak and encourage the girls to speak their thoughts and feelings. Back at the school, with a new perspective, she said: It was first with a sense of shock and then a deep, knowing sadness that we listened to the voices of the girls tell us that it was the adult women in their lives that provided the models for silencing themselves and behaving like “good little girls.” Unless we, as grown women, were willing to give up all the “good little girl” things we continued to do and give up our expectations that the girls in our charge would be as good as we were, we could not successfully empower young women to act on their own knowledge and feelings. Unless we stopped hiding in expectations of goodness and control, our behavior would silence any words to girls about speaking in their own voice. (Brown & Gilligan, 1992, p. 221)

Brown and Gilligan explain how the Laurel teachers implemented their new insights:

Claudia Boatright, a most courteous and also scrupulously organized teacher, found herself permitting a loud personal argument in her classroom and was astonished to be thanked by the two girls for not interrupting them when it reached its natural conclusion. In another class, Claudia actively resisted her impulse to close off an emotionally tense conflict over a heated political question...she also let the class run over and continue beyond the end of the hour. (p. 222)

My observations at AGS and CPS strongly suggest that many of the teachers at both schools are willing to allow the type of conflict and dissension that the Laurel teachers came to value. Few of the faculty at either school seem concerned about presenting a “perfect” or “good little girl” image. As a former boys school, CPS simply has no tradition of this type of repression. Mrs. Lee, AGS counselor for the middle and lower school, described how the school encourages girls to speak their minds and solve their problems: ...there’s definitely voice, it’s definitely here. Some teachers, I’m sure, think that we let the kids get away with too much. But most of the time, I think, when their behavior is within reason, they ask questions, and move 140

around the class, and think, and say whatever they think. I think that their voice is strongly encouraged. You know, there’s that fine line about what’s good manners for anybody, no matter what sex, and what’s being rude and disturbing the class, what’s encouraging them to have voice, and leam, and what’s being disruptive and counterproductive, and each teacher draws the line in their own place. We talk to teachers about ways that the girls can express their feelings in ways that are not destructive, that their feelings are all ok. If they’re upset with someone to go tell them-those are words, language that is used by preschool teachers a lot. We say, if they have a problem, “What do you want to do about that?” It’s sort of like empowering them. We say, “You are strong, and you can figure out ways to deal with this.” The eighth grade, a couple of weeks ago, was complaining about all the rules, like if they don’t have their book, they get a detention, if their shirts aren’t tucked in they get a detention, so we said, “Well, if you were running the school, what would you do? Why don’t you write down the things that you would change?” So they got a committee together and started it, but it kind of fizzled about half-way through, because they said “We can’t think of anything better.” But it wasn’t like, “You’re being foolish, we won’t listen to you.” It was like, “Well, if you’ve got a better idea we want to hear it, because we want the school to run smoothly so that everybody gets a good education, and if you have some good ideas, we sure want to hear them.” And I think that’s the approach. I think that’s done a lot. We had a couple of the eighth graders who were getting into trouble with drugs and alcohol, and 1 had to say that “If you’re making some choices that are hurting you, I have to call your parents because they love you.” After a while, after several parents had come in, I told the girls, “I can see that you want us to stay out of your life, but if you want to be in a place where people don’t care about you, you’re in the wrong school, and if you’re making choices that are harmful to you, your teachers and your parents should work together to help you make some better choices.” So they said they wanted an eighth grade meeting without any teachers, and the officers stood up in front of the whole class and said, “We’re getting a bad reputation. We have to change, to do something different. Let’s all take a pledge that we won’t use drugs or drink or smoke. We don’t want our class to get a bad reputation.” So that was taking ownership of the problem, and I see that kind of thing time after time.

Two other events which were described to me supported the notion that AGS makes a real effort to allow the girls to speak with strong voices. Three years ago, in the seventh grade, the girls still had to wear saddle shoes, which they hated. Near the end of the year, everybody’s saddle shoes were badly worn, and the seventh-graders circulated a petition and presented it to the middle school head, saying that they 141 needed decent looking shoes for the end-of-the-year awards programs, and that they didn’t think their parents should have to pay for new saddle shoes at this time, when next year in eighth grade they’d all be wearing loafers. Although some of the girls’ parents could have bought the store as well as the shoes, the girls pointed out in their petition that some girls were on scholarships, and that it was a waste of money to have to buy shoes which would be worn for only a few weeks. The middle school head was amused, and, I think, pleased by their audacity and their assurance in stating their case, and he agreed to let them wear loafers for the rest of the year. The next year, in the eighth grade, a science teacher asked one student to make some class posters and said she’d give her some extra credit. The other girls in the class thought it was very unfair that they hadn’t all been given a chance to earn the extra credit, and they greeted the teacher at the classroom door the next day with picket signs and protest chants about unfair practices. The teacher said she couldn’t change what had already been done, but she agreed that in the future, extra credit would be made available to everyone. Certainly, these don’t seem to be girls who are feeling repressed, or voiceless. In one issue of the AGS newspaper, there was a student-written editorial satirizing “political correctness.” In the next issue, there was a letter to the editor from the teacher-advisorof the paper, criticizing the editorial as insensitive to the needs of minorities. It seems that the advisor must give the students freedom to print what they want, even when she doesn’t agree with them.

However, I understand that there is a difference between standing up to authority figures as a group of peers, and speaking one’s mind to an individual peer. I found, as Brown and Gilligan found at Laurel, that the girls in my study had a fear of hurting someone elses’s feelings, a typically “female” trait. I also found, as they did, that the problem is extremely acute at around the seventh grade. It is difficult to determine, when educators say we want girls to maintain a strong voice, just how 142 assertive or confrontational we want to encourage them to be. Some of the examples in Meeting at the Crossroads are troubling. Consider the case of Gail, a Laurel student who described how she had changed in the past school yean

I think I’ve gotten along better with people...I don’t disagree as much...and I don’t get into fights as much. Like arguments with my friends....Maybe because I can understand how they think now and accept them...accept what they think, instead of being just one-way minded...So I can think, I can understand how they think as well as what I think. (Brown & Gilligan, 1992, p. 91- 92)

In response to Gail’s statement, Brown and Gilligan assert:

The change in herself that Gail describes would seem like clear evidence of her maturing capacity to embrace the fact of difference and listen to other people. To insist on her thoughts and disagree a lot with her friends, as she did in the past, Gail says was “one-way minded” and led to unnecessary fights. Now that she understands her friends and accepts them, she is open-minded because she can “understand how they think....” But to make this move Gail has to suspend what she really feels...which in effect removes her from genuine relationship....Linking arguing with losing relationships, Gail joins “thinking” and “understanding” with “accepting” what others say, suggesting that, as Gail becomes more discerning of others' ways of seeing and thinking she also becomes less able to say what she thinks and feels. Clear evidence of developmental gains go hand-in-hand with a sense of genuine loss....Agreement is easier and neater, but it comes at the expense of genuine relationship-that is, relationships in which Gail can say what she thinks is right, in which conflict and disagreement and strong feelings can occur.” (pp. 92-93)

But losing the spontaneity and the unflinching honesty of childhood may be an inevitable part of growing up. Most of our relationships turn out to be comfortable but relatively superficial ones. What Brown and Gilligan call “genuine” relationship seems to become reserved for family and a few very close friends. However, as Gail learns to understand and accept the feelings of others, are they not also becoming more understanding and accepting of her feelings? Shouldn’t it be possible to have your own feelings and still accept the fact that your friends may feel differently? 143 Brown and Gilligan say: As we listen to these ten-and eleven-year-old girls’ struggle to know what they know and say what they feel, we begin to trace their puzzlement at the discrepancy between what they see and hear, what they know about relationships and feeling through experience, and how the relational world and world of feelings is supposed to be known and seen. As these girls become more psychologically astute, this discrepancy between their experiences and what they hear adults say, see adults doing, captures their attention, fascinates and frustrates them.” (pp. 93-94)

One might assume they were talking about the sort of adult hypocrisy which “Miss Manners” calls The Little White Lie, and The Polite Fiction. However, Gail protested unfairness because her older sister was allowed to go off on her own at the mall and she was not: “1 was probably jealous....At that time I probably thought that’s unfair and then I realized that it wasn’t really unfair because she didn’t want me to get lost and I really didn’t want to get lost anyway” (p. 96). Clearly, Brown and Gilligan feel that Gail was losing her own voice in deciding that her mother’s action was not really unfair, but it could be argued that Gail is exactly right, and mature, in coming to realize that it is reasonable for the rules to be be different for her and her older sister. In another example from Meeting at the Crossroads, a girl named Edie said:

Well, sometimes when I want to go to a party, a sleep-over, maybe, and my mom would say no, because she maybe doesn’t trust the people or something. And I think it’s unfair. But then I know that she's caring, and you know, she’s like loving and she’s caring about me and she’s making it so I don’t get hurt or anything, she’s doing it for my own good, then I know that after, but then at the time I got mad, but just for awhile.” (pp. 96-97)

Brown and Gilligan interpret Edie’s comments a sign that she is losing her voice:

Edie’s struggle to name unfairness and to stay with her feelings and thoughts about being overruled by her mother is overshadowed by her mother’s seemingly selfless love and concern. In the end, this reconfiguration leaves both Edie and her mother voiceless and out of relationship.” (p. 97)

What is unfair about a mother making reasonable rules for an eleven-year-old and the child understanding and accepting those rules? It would not be preferable 144 that the mother abdicate her responsibilities and let Edie do just as she pleases, nor that the child stay angry forever, insisting on her own eleven-year-old version of unfairness. The authors seem to be on firmer ground when they discuss Madeline, who has been hurt by some of the actions of the other girls, and “dilutes her feelings with the almost unbelievable power of polite behavior to cover over, to bury, the meanest remarks.” Madeline uses very polite and indirect confrontation: “Like, I’d say very nicely, not ‘ ’why did you do that?’ I would just say, ‘Why were you making up a club yesterday?” Her question, asked “nicely,” apparently passes the scrutiny of those in the club and “so it turned out well.”....Like Madeline, other girls speak as though “I’m sorry” or other simple expressions of apology have the power to cover cruel or mean behavior or resolve ardent disagreements...they know the benefits of being the perfect, happy girl, at least on the surface, (p. 99)

Like Brown and Gilligan, I’m suspicious of the “perfect, happy girl.”

The question of adult roles in solving these conflicts is an interesting one.

Teachers seem to be aware of the painful reshuffling of friendships at this age, and attempt to minimize the hurt The teachers at Laurel, for example, began making the girls walk to and from places in single File so no one was left out of a group. Brown and Gilligan observe that this probably simply moved the conflict underground. “What remains visible, then, are the nice feelings, the polite conversations. As a result, girls find it more and more difficult to tell the difference between genuine pleasure and love in relationship and the pretense of pleasure and love.” (p. 105) This is a legitimate point, and I think that parents and teachers deal differently with these friendship-conflicts in boys, where the usual course if just to leave them alone to work it out for themselves-a more painful, but probably better solution. However, it is not clear how much we should encourage girls to fit Brown and Gilligan’s idea of a “resister”:

Anna speaks what she thinks and expresses what she feels, knowing she is disruptive and disturbing. Saying what she thinks, interrupting the flow of nice conversations, has in fact kept Anna out of school social clubs 145

and popular cliques and has often made her classmates furious with her. But Anna has come to a conclusion: “I think I’ve hit a point where I don’t care what all the popular people think,’ she says. ‘[Before] I really cared about fitting in, but now I have my own bunch of friends, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks of me.” (p. 193) She imagines that she “will be one of those people who go through college and get a Ph.D and I’ll live at the bottom of mountain in Montana, just one of those weird people. Have a chicken farm. I don’t know. Then I’ll just write books or something.” (p. 194)

Surely it should not be necessay for girls to feel “weird,” or become some kind of hermit in order to maintain a strong voice. What then becomes of the concept of relationship with other people which Brown and Gilligan identify as being so important to women? Helping girls figure out how to voice disagreement with people firmly but tactfully, and to maintain concern for the feelings of others without silencing themselves about their own feelings, seems to me to be what educators need to do. As girls like Jeanne and Amy attest, expressing negative feelings continues to be difficult for girls, and solving conflicts with friends continues to be problematical. To return to Mrs. Dunbar’s example of a student who finds another student sitting in his or her accustomed seat, we need to teach both boys and girls that there is a middle ground between simply turning away or being rude. We need to teach both sexes the alternative of saying “ Excuse me, I think you’re in my chair.”

School Image and Family Finances One problem that students at CPS and AGS share is the fact that much of the general public has a negative perception of expensive, private schools. This was not a topic I sought to explore, but it came up in the interviews when I asked girls if they felt there was a particular school image they were expected to live up to. I expected the girls to respond as did CPS eleventh-grader Rita, who acknowledged that school administrators do attempt to maintain a certain school image: School image-hmmm--I’m picturing an innocent little school girl with braids in her hair and little plaid skirts. Yes, I know there’s an image, 146

and the school tries somewhat to keep that image-like kids who’ve been caught drinking are expelled.

However, girls at each school responded more frequently by explaining that they often encounter both young people and adults who have an image of their school as a place for rich snobs; an image they feel is unfair. Girls who came to AGS or CPS from other schools often said that students in their previous schools were actually more concerned with money, status and name-brand clothing than their present classmates. Many girls recounted incidents when they were made to feel uncomfortable because of assumptions which others made about them based on their enrollment at these undeniably expensive schools. Particularly when their family is, indeed, wealthy, girls are at a loss about how to defend themselves against these assumptions. An AGS ninth-grader said, “I hate to even tell people where I go to school. They just roll their eyes, like, “Oooh, all those rich spoiled brats.” An eleventh-grader exclaimed, “It’s just not fair! We work so hard, and we have to meet such higher standards than students in other schools, and then we get all this grief, like we’re all rich, and spoiled and stuck-up, and it’s just not true!” I invariably heard responses such as Bettie’s: A lot of people see us-even my friends when I told them I was going to come here-the image is, snotty girls, girls who drive Mercedeses, you know, rich girls, stuck up. That’s really absolutely not what we are. These are the most real, unstuffy people I ’ve ever met in my life. Actually, the kids that I went to school with before, who felt this way about AGS, were much more like that than we are, about the Guess jeans and Polo shirts- those were all a big deal. Here it’s, who cares? It doesn’t matter, that has nothing to do with anything, really. But there’s that image, and I hate it I hate to see that, but I guess I can’t fight it.

CPS student Rita agreed that the “rich kids” stereotype was unfair I met someone for the first time, and told him I go to school here, and he said, “I can imagine you sitting in your house in your giant room, and you have a huge front lawn and a long driveway, and your parents drive nice cars, and you have a closet full of clothes.’’... I went to this kid’s house and his house was ten times the size of mine. But there is definitely a stereotype that other people have of private schools. 147 When I pointed out that many of the students at both schools, are, in fact, quite wealthy, and asked if that wasn’t important, I received varying responses. CPS ninth-grader Carrie said, “People do sort of judge others by their clothes and houses and stuff....Maybe just because we live in a society that’s impressed by money.” She believed, however, that students did not make conscious decisions about who to be friends with based on family finances, but that, “It's unconscious. It’s in the background.” CPS eleventh-grader Rita said: I think there are some kids who’re unbelievably wealthy and they think that they’re really cool. They try to be friends with everyone, I think, because some of them are not really comfortable with themselves. Some are snobs. They deserve the stereotype. I think kids who have scholarships-I don’t think that matters. You pretty much know who’s on a scholarship, but it doesn’t matter.

The great majority of the girls in both schools denied that family financial standing was of any importance at all in school. All but one of the AGS girls (who put “agree”) marked “disagree” or “strongly disagree” to the statement on the grounded survey which said, “People who have a lot of money are the more important people at my school. A few girls, however, brought up the subject as an important factor in popularity. CPS ninth-grader, Blair said, “Social status comes with monetary status. The kids that have the money are the popular ones. People think that if they hang out with them they’ll have a higher status in the school.” The interesting thing about this is that Blair’s own family is, by most standards, very well off. One might suspect that the students who had the least money would be the most concerned about it, but this did not seem to be the case except with one girl, CPS ninth-grader, Jessie. As stated previously, Jessie’s self-esteem seemed to be suffering, not so much because of her scholarship status at the school, as from her parents’ complaints about the cost of her schooling and her general feeling that things at home were not financially secure. She was the only study participant who marked “strongly agree” to the survey statement about the importance of money. Even Jessie, however, said, “’’When I look around the classroom, I can't tell who has the most 148 money. It’s not like you can tell, and not like we talk about it a lot, either.” Generally, there seemed to be no correlation between the attitude about money and the financial background of the individual participant There might be slightly more concern about family finances at CPS than at AGS. Three CPS girls, one seventh-grader, one ninth-grader, and one eleventh-grader, marked “undecided” to the survey statement that “People who have a lot of money are the more important people at my school.” However, CPS eleventh-grader Lori was typical of girls who said that money was less important at AGS or CPS than at her previous suburban school: When I came here, I thought I’d find that a lot, but I find that there’s much less snobbery and not so much cliquishness here as where I was before. I am sure there are some people here for whom it counts, but not as much as at my old school. I know a boy who is by no means wealthy at all, but he’s one of the best friends of other boys who are quite wealthy. And it doesn’t matter. They don’t look at that, they look at each other as people.

The AGS girls were usually vehement about denying that family money was important Seventh-grader Melissa said, “You don’t go around asking who’s on scholarship, because it’s not really your business.” Ninth-grader Liz, whose family is very well-to-do, was thoughtful enough to realize that girls from less affluent homes might see things differently: I don’t think the amount of money you have is important, but maybe some of the girls who don’t have much-maybe they do mind. Once last year when we had to do our community service, I did one where we went to peoples’s houses and planted flowers and I mowed the lawn. It made me really sad. When I walked back to school for a track thing, I was so sad-I mean, I think I realized that I have a lot and that other people don’t but it really hit home that day. I was like, gosh, just look at these houses I’m walking by, it wasn’t like this where I was today.

Liz realizes that one of the reasons the school requires service projects is to make students aware of different economic situations. In discussing how sheltered AGS girls generally are from poverty and hardship, she said, “It varies, according to how much your parents expose you and how much you wanna know. You might say, “I 149 don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna think about that” But I think it’s important to think about that. I really do.” Their awareness of students’ different financial positions is one of the reasons that students at both schools like wearing uniforms. Liz said, “Nobody ever says, ‘Oh, she’s wearing the same thing again.”' CPS eleventh-grader Lori said, “At my old school, you had to wear certain clothes, or you just couldn’t be in certain groups.” CPS ninth-grader Carrie pointed out, however, that there are white turtlenecks which are expensive, and white turtlenecks which are not. ‘There can be different levels to the uniform. You can still tell who doesn’t have as much money as someone else.” Liz, however, insisted, “Someone might be wearing a Polo sweater, but you could get it from a warehouse store, or whatever.” CPS eleventh-grader Jennifer seemed to speak for most of the girls at both schools when she said, “You can’t tell who does or doesn’t have a lot of money, because we’re all wearing the same thing. I think that everyone here is a little too classy to be mean to someone just because they’re here on a scholarship.”

Discussion It appears that most of the girls in both schools try to minimize the importance of money. Family wealth did not prevent some girls from having self-esteem problems, and some girls seemed more embarrassed than proud to be in a high economic bracket However, their dismay about the public perception of their schools did not appear to be a major difficulty. Although they are bothered by the “little rich girl” stereotype, they do not encounter it frequently enough for it to be a serious problem. When they related incidents to me, they expressed dismay, then shrugged it off because they feel that there is little they can do to change the image. In times past, the private school stereotype may have been a more accurate reflection than is currently the case. Mrs. Cecil described a conversation with AGS alumni who seemed to typify the usual public image: 150

Recently there were some alums here, women who must have graduated in the early sixties. I find it so offensive that we call the girls “ladies,” I can’t stand it. They are girls, they’regirls. “Ladies” is really offensive to me, and I mentioned it to one of these women, who just was very, very impassioned about the fact that one of the things that a school like this can offer is a sort of elegance, a style, and that it’s too bad that we’re not teaching girls to set a beautiful table and all that stuff.

I previously described some of the documents I collected at AGS, including promotional material such as a postcard to send in to request more information about the school and a one-page calendar of events—plays, admissions open-house, and parent sessions-titled “Special Opportunities to visit AGS.” Although none of the adults mentioned “school image,” in our conversations, these documents might indicate that the school is interested in increased visibility in the community. Possibly, if the school is more widely known, it will attract more support, a wider pool of applicants to choose from, and will be less vulnerable to negative public perceptions. I think this may be a departure from past policy, when the school kept a low profile, except among the wealthy section of the community. All of the other material I collected had to do with parent programs. There was a flyer for a course in ‘The Art of Positive Parenting,” a schedule of “Box Lunch Talks for Parents” on topics such as “Conversations about Sexuality and Values,” a flyer for a parents’ workshop presented by the Drug-Free Schools Consortium, a notice of parents’ morning “coffee and conversation” events, and a brochure about a parent-to-parent drug prevention workshop. This material seems to indicate that the school is less sheltered from the world’s harsher realities than might be expected from such a generally privileged community. One might assume that these parents, being for the most part highly successful people, would not think that they need much help in raising their children. It seems as if it might be very easy for a school like this to say, “Drugs? Not our kids!” Apparently, both school administrators and parents are more realistic 151 than that. In the final analysis, however, there is probably little that either school administrators or students can do to alter the common public perception of private schools as sheltered, elitist institutions. The girls seem to deal with the issue without undue stress. Actual family finances may be a different matter. In most cases, if some of the less wealthy girls are bothered by the monetary differences between them and their classmates, they hide it well. It was very difficult to tell from the girls’ comments how much family finances actually affected interpersonal relationships. However, the fact that her family had financial difficulites, while most of her classmates were very well-to-do, was a definite problem for Jessie. The similarity of the girls’ comments about this issue indicates again that, despite significant differences between coed and single-sex settings, CPS and AGS are alike in many ways, and both schools are quite different from the typical coed public school, even those in wealthy suburban communities. I believe the most important reasons for the differences are: (1) Students at AGS and CPS must pass an entrance exam. This does not mean that all the students are intellectually brilliant, but the focus on academics is undiluted by “slow learners,” and the amount of work expected eliminates lazy students. (2) The schools have high expectations in terms of behavior as well as academics. Students caught cheating, for example, can be expelled. Drinking or drug use, even at non-school related events, is cause for disciplinary action or expulsion. (3) Parents are generally very supportive. They have complaints, of course, but people do not pay $10,000 a year to send their children to school if they are uninterested in the educational outcomes. Generally, the values of the schools and the values of the students’ homes reinforce each other. 152 Home and Parents Girls who had high levels of self-esteem, in discussing what they attributed their strength and self-confidence to, invariably mentioned their parents and particularly their mothers. This finding was reinforced by their answers on the SEI. All the girls who had high self-esteem levels seemed to enjoy good relationships with their families and scored high on the Home/Parents subscale. Most of the girls also expressed some belief that people are inherently different and that to some degree, personality, including self-confidence, seems to be “just inborn.” AGS ninth-grader, Liz, said, “It also does depend on the person. You might have two sisters, and the mom treats them both the same way, but one might take criticism differently.” Also, the girls recognized that when problems at school occur, parents may be powerless, and girls “have to learn to work things out for themselves.” In describing how unhappy she had been in middle school because of the cliques, CPS ninth- grader Carrie said she hadn't discussed the problem with her mother, because “My mother would have cared, but it wasn't like she could do anything about i t ” Many girls, however, felt that a strong mother was the most important role model a girl could have. In Meeting at the Crossroads. Brown and Gilligan refer to the girls who maintain strong voices as “resisters.’’ They say that such girls usually have close relationships with their mothers, who do not fit conventional images of “nice” women. AGS seventh grader Penny said, “My mom really doesn't care what other people think, and that has influenced me. I know other people's moms and they’re much different from mine.” Another AGS seventh-grader stressed the importance of having parents who “encourage” you, but “don’t pressure you too much.” AGS ninth-grader Liz said about her mother, “She’s, like, shown us that you can do whatever you want, and my dad, too. They’ve let us know that you should stand up for what you believe in.” Liz also gave an example of how parents can damage self-esteem: “I’m sure any parent wouldn’t want their child or daughter to be 153 insecure. But there is someone in our class who says her mom and dad always tell her, ‘You’re so fat, you’re so fat,’ and I think that really does lower her self-esteem. You can just tell, it comes out.” Every girl who had a low self-esteem rating had a low score on the Home/Parents subscale of the SEI. A CPS eleventh-grader, Jennifer, spoke about the ability to resist peer pressure: ‘There are some people who just aren’t as strong as others. They want to hang out with the right crowd and things like that If I don’t approve of something, I don’t do i t ” She said her parents did not take credit for the fact that she and her brother had always been leaders rather than followers, but that ‘They’re always saying they’re very lucky about that” She was grateful to have found a boyfriend who shared her values. “We don’t do anything wrong,” she said. “We don’t drink, we don’t stay out past our curfew....I don’t know where that comes from. Maybe it’s because my parents just expect that from me.” AGS eleventh-grader Lori said, “Home and school are both important, but I think you’ll be really strong about things that you’ve had drilled into your mind in the early years of your life.” For herself, she said the things which her mother had drilled into her mind were: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t get pregnant, don’t be a cheerleader. Those are the main ones. My mom drilled it into my mind, don’t be a cheerleader, be the one being cheered on. That’s probably the main piece of advice she’s given me.

The advice seems to be standing Lori in good stead, as she is developing into a thoughtful, articulate young woman who is strong and independent, and also well- liked by her peers.

The Role of Sports The advice of Lori’s mother, “Don’t be a cheerleader, be the one being cheered on,” is a good introduction to the topic of sports. Both teachers and students 154 frequently mentioned sports as a useful tool in building self-esteem for girls. The camaraderie, teamwork and sportsmanship involved have traditionally been touted as beneficial for the character of young men, and now girls are enjoying the benefits as well. Mrs. Lee, school counselor for the middle and lower school divisions at AGS, said she felt that she had maintained a strong sense of self all through adolescence, that she had never “lost” her voice. She was an active athlete in her youth, and attributed her strong self-esteem largely to her participation in sports. In discussing the advantages of single-sex education, AGS Upper School Head Mrs. Beaton remarked on the role of sports: They have the experience, if they’re playing a sport, of having spectators come to see them-not because there’s not a boy’s game that day. Women’s athletics have grow tremendously in all settings, but it’s a total natural here, it's not something we have to seek to promote.

In discussing the change to coeducation at CPS, Mrs. Dunbar said:

One of the things that I see here that I just love is there’s a very strong sense of loyalty to the girls’ field hockey team. I mean, those girls are loyal to the death, to the other field hockey girls. The girls are out there, and they’re getting physically fit, and they’re running together, and they’re tired together, and they’re successful together. And I don’t think girls had that much before. I think that’s one of the best things that we can do, encourage these group sports for girls. I think it’s the group sports for guys that have helped them, too. It used to be just for boys, but now the little girls are playing, and they’re having people clap for them, and they’re allowed to take the ball away from someone else and go make a basket.

Dr. Kay, in describing CPS’ move to coeducation, also mentioned sports as a factor in increasing the amount of respect the boys felt for girls: “One of the things which has worked well has been the athletic program. Our girls have done very well, and are well respected as athletes. As a single-sex school, the boys had no respect at all for giris as athletes.” One very shy AGS seventh grader seemed to find a satisfaction in playing field hockey that she didn’t find at home or in her social life: “ I like to run and it’s fun because some of my friends play. I like the competition and the teamwork... 155 you have to talk to each other, work together.” The loyalty and close friendships engendered by playing together and the personal sense of accomplishment in improving one’s skills were two of the most frequently mentioned benefits of sports. Eleventh-grade CPS student Lori said one of the changes she liked best about coming to CPS from her old school was the respect accorded the swim team: Nobody cared about the swim team at my old school. Here, people come to the meets, and they talk about it, and the people on the team are friends I can depend on. My swimming has improved, and I’ve become more dedicated to it, which got me to the Junior National level. I’m really pushing to be at Senior National level, and that will help my self-confidence tremendously.

Another eleventh grade CPS student, Rita, also talked about the benefits of being on the swim team: I think having an opportunity to compete and train individually helps a lot in learning about yourself. It helps you work towards a goal. The coaches are really good. They help you plan what you want from the season, how you want to train, how you’re going to get there. Most of my friends are swimmers and so we spend months, it seems, together because of our practice schedules. Practice in the morning and practice after school and practice at night. So we’re just together all the time.

CPS eleventh-grader Jennifer plays tennis:

I think that if you stay with something until you can see that you’re improving, I think that’s good to see that you can do something and stick with it My freshman year I made varsity third team and sophomore year I was second and now I’m first. Seeing that I could accomplish something, setting my mind to doing something, it’s good to have that. And the girls on the team, it’s nice to have friends there.

Discussion Girls are enjoying increased opportunities to demonstrate physical prowess in all types of schools. Neither AGS nor CPS has cheerleaders, but even cheerleading in many public schools has become increasingly athletic, with girls performing flips 156 and other stunts, rather than simply looking cute and waving pom-poms around. In many schools, cheerleading has become almost a sport in its own right, and boys try out for the squad as well. Although few sports teams are gender-integrated, girls’ teams are increasing in number everywhere. In 1972, According to Holly Knox, Director of the Project on Equal Education Rights of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, for every one girl on a high school sports team, there were 12 boys. By 1979, the ratio was one girl to every two boys, a tremendous rate of progress. In most schools, however, interest and attendance at girls* games still falls far behind that at boys’ games. AGS ninth-grader Lee, who is not athletic, lamented the fact, indicating that it would provide a connection with boys, and that it would be a source of self-esteem: “Sometimes I am upset that I don’t play more sports, because it has separated me from guys. I feel I’d get along with them more if I did. It’s also frustrating not to have anything that I’m particularly good at.” Lee and a few other girls mentioned finding some of the same satisfactions in being in school music or drama productions, but however excellent they may be, school plays simply do not elicit the same kind of cheers from schoolmates that a lacrosse game does. If interest in women’s sports continues to grow, it seems likely that the self-esteem of girls will benefit.

The Role of Race The growing racial diversity of the nation is something that both AGS and CPS are sensitive to and the present percentage of minority students at both schools represents an increase from times past However, there are as yet no minority faculty members in the middle or upper school at CPS. AGS has three African-American staff members: a woman as Head of the Middle School, a man who teaches science in the middle school, and an woman who teaches Spanish in the upper school. 157 It seems that AGS may be somewhat more successful in making African- American students feel comfortable and accepted. This may be partly due to the presence of African-American faculty members, but is most likely because only girls participated in the study. Since all girls are a minority at CPS, African-American girls are an even smaller minority. When I asked a white ninth-grader if she thought the African-American girls felt accepted, she said “Urn, 1 think they have a hard time, sometimes, ‘cause they’re really such a minority. I think they have friends, but they’re like school friendships. I don’t think it’s a weekend thing.” The African- American student I talked with at CPS confirmed this. She spoke of feeling rather isolated: “Everybody at school is nice enough, but I don’t see them outside of school. My real friends are in my neighborhood.” Boys at CPS may feel differently, and it must be remembered that all the girls at CPS have come from other schools within the past two or three years, so they may not have had time to form close friendships. At AGS, there are students who have been together for many years, sometimes since preschool. Racial issues seldom came up in my interviews with the girls, and never with Caucasian girls, unless I specifically asked. In response to my questions, most students at AGS said they felt that all races were accepted in their school. One ninth- grader said AGS was much more diverse than her previous suburban school. One African-American seventh-grader at AGS said she didn’t feel any racial prejudice at the school, adding, “I’ve known most of these people since preschool. I grew up here. I have one friend from Pakistan, another one from India. They’re brought in equally, too.” However, Wendy, an African-American seventh-grader who came into AGS the year before from a coed, Catholic middle-school, said: I know some kids that are racist. So they like never talk to anyone not in their race or whatever. And some people have different religions, and they don’t like them because of thaL..but they just like ignore each other. They’re not really mean, they just sorta, I don’t know, they stay away from a certain person. I wouldn’t say anybody’s done anything really mean. They might 158

talk about a certain person behind their back.

Recognizing that the school disapproves of racist attitudes, Wendy said “Everybody was getting into fights in our class last year, and we had this little thing where we'd have meetings with Mrs. Johnson [middle -school head], the whole entire class, and Mr. Brown and Mrs. Burton [teachers], and we talked about like what was going on in our class and how people were different” When minority students have come into AGS from another school, how comfortable they feel appears to depend somewhat on their previous situation. Leisha, a lively, articulate and outspoken eleventh-grader, came to AGS in the ninth grade. She lives in a primarily black neighborhood and previously attended small, all-black, private Christian schools. She described her adjustment to AGS this way: Well, it wasn't too hard. I mean, I hadn't been around only black people all my life. I would go some place with my parents and see white people here, white people there. I mean, you all are here. But to be with them every day, for them to dominate my classes and to be my only teachers- it wasn't difficult, it was just an adjustment.

In discussing how easily the girls had accepted her, she said:

...that was a surprise on my part. I won't say I had ignorant friends before, but because of the stereotype that AGS has to the outside public-that it’s rich white girls—they told me you’re gonna go there and act funny. They don’t like anybody else, they only like the AGS community. Not to say they were prejudiced, but they said, “You shouldn’t go there.” But it just so happened that my parents really liked the school, they wanted to send me here, and they could afford it, so they did. And it was shocking to me. I didn’t know anything. My parents have always taught me to judge things for myself, but because of the negative feedback from my friends, I came in with my mind set—I am not going here, I am not going to this school. The first day of school I didn’t have my uniform 'cause I would not go get it Finally about, like, eleven o’clock, I said to my mom, “All right, let’s go get the skirt.” And we got the skirt, and I came and walked around the school and everybody was nice. They give you a buddy and my buddy was real nice. And I did not expect everybody to be so nice. I mean there are always some people you are going to have personality problems with, but overall, there was not one person who dogged me. 159 However, even though she has come to like the school, Leisha describes herself as having a foot in two worlds. She feels that her friends at AGS know little of her life out of school, and that she can never make her friends at home understand life at her school: Well, I think it’s really important to remember that the people here, and the people that I go back to sometimes go through different things and live in different environments. In the beginning I felt like I was missing out with my friends. I would come here and it was a totally different world, but I think I have merged them successfully together, and stayed sane at the same time....I think when you come into an all-white environment, and you go home to an all-white environment, you just think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. For me, it’s different. I go home to all black family, all black friends. I come here, I see all white people.

Although Leisha sees the school as “all white people,” Wendy sees it differently: At my old school, my sister and I were the only black kids in the entire school, from first to eighth grade. Not that we felt left out or anything- just-it was sorta different. I was really surprised when I came to this school that there were so many other minority kids. I know some kids in my class who say this school isn’t very diverse, but I think it is.

Actually, Wendy is a child of mixed race. When I asked if her mixed parentage was ever a problem for her, Wendy said: I don’t think so. I never really pay attention to it. There was one girl in my class last year-she didn’t like the fact that my parents were different colors, or whatever. So 1, like, didn’t develop a very good friendship with her. This year she’s a lot nicer to me. I don’t think anyone really cares. I certainly don’t. I don’t even pay attention to it.

Discussion

As mentioned in Chapter II, a nationwide survey commissioned by the AAUW in 1990 found that in elementary school, 55% of white girls and 65% of black girls reported being “happy the way I am.” In high school, the numbers drop to 22% of white girls, compared to 58% of black girls. However, black girls did not have high levels of self esteem in areas related to school. 160 It may be that the racial differences in this survey can be accounted for by cultural factors. Discussions with African-American girls suggest that the pressure for girls to be “nice” which Brown and Gilligan (1992) describe is primarily a feature of white society. African-American culture has a long-standing tradition of strong women. It is more acceptable in African-American culture for women to be strong, to be loud, and to speak their minds than it has traditionally been in Caucasian culture. Furthermore, body image for women is not as restricted in African-American culture, where it is more acceptable to be plump. As the girls quoted in Tavris’ book, Schoolgirls (1992), made clear, many African-American girls do not face the same intensity of pressure to be thin that many white girls experience. The fact that African-American girls generally do not express high self-esteem in matters related to school, however, is a concern for educators. Administrators at both AGS and CPS say they are committed to fairness and ethnic diversity. The percentage of minority students at both schools is greater than in many of the surrounding suburban public schools. For the most part, the students appear comfortable with one another and they interact in class, school activities and on sports teams without displaying consciousness of ethnic differences. They seem to enjoy the international aspect that students from different countries bring to the schools. In one class at AGS, the girls sang “Happy Birthday” to a Japanese student, and she passed out treats of Japanese crackers and candy, explaining their contents and the celebration of birthdays in Japan. A major reason for the smoothness of ethnic integration at these schools may be that most of the girls share similar socioeconomic status. Virtually all students, whatever their backgrounds, share a value system which stresses hard work in academics and the common goal of going to college. Good sportsmanship and consideration of others are also required of students, and those who engage in unacceptable behavior, including racial or ethnic slurs, are disciplined or dismissed. Parents who do not share these values are unlikely to send their children to these 161 types of schools. Of course, as Wendy’s comments illustrate, no school setting can totally insulate students from the effects of racism in society. Although all of the girls in the study, except for two CPS students, put “agree,” or “strongly agree” to the statement on the grounded survey which said, “Students of all creeds and races are accepted at my school,” Wendy has noticed that race seems to be a factor in friendships for some students. Several girls acknowledged that parties and socializing outside of school hours tend to occur within same-race groups, and in the AGS commons area, black girls tend to group together. Students attribute this to cultural factors-that people are simply most comfortable with others who are most like themselves. African- American students who attend either school sometimes feel, like Leisha, that they live in two different worlds at school and at home. “When you come from a different environment every day, you go back and forth. You don’t get confused, but you just get tired,” she said. “You don’t have to switch your personality on and off, you just have to fit in the environment. There’s certain words I say at home I don’t say at school.” The school administrators appear to understand the need for ethnic bonding. At AGS, there is a Black Awareness Group for students, and CPS has a Multicultural Club. Both schools have black parents’ groups. Such groups strive to help minority students maintain ethnic identities while still being part of the whole school. Racial issues occasionally become a topic of class discussion. The reading curriculum at both schools includes books dealing with racial and ethnic issues, and several students said they enjoyed such reading. In one class I observed at AGS, a black girl recited a poem she had memorized about being tired of being everyone’s “one black friend.” In this particular case, the other girls applauded the poem, but the teacher did not follow up on what seemed like a good opportunity to discuss the extra burdens minority students carry. 162 It must be remembered that racial stereotypes exist for students other than African- American students. Tonya is the CPS ninth-grader whose Chinese- American parents have very high expectations in terms of grades. When I asked Tonya if she ever felt pressured to be somebody she’s not, she said,”Well, when other people think of Oriental people, they have to be really smart.” This stereotype and pressure from parents to make excellent grades may have caused the two Asian students in the study to have lower self-esteem ratings than they might have had otherwise. As suggested earlier, cultural biases may have also affected the self­ esteem ratings for these girls. However, the African-American girls in this study maintained high self­ esteem and strong voices in all areas, including school. They appeared to have strong support from home which helped them make the necessary adaptations to the school environment, and they felt self-confident about their intellect. As one girl said, “If I wasn’t smart, I wouldn’t be here.” CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Summary of the Study This inquiry was undertaken to explore self-esteem issues for adolescent girls, specifically how self-esteem might be affected by single-sex schooling and by the literature that girls read. The impetus for this research came from numerous publications, particularly Brown and Gilligan’s Meeting at the Crossroads (1992), which find that adolescence is a time of crisis for girls in American culture when they often experience a drop in self-esteem and a loss of voice as they try to fit themselves into society’s images of womanhood. The purpose of the study was to determine school factors that might assist girls in maintaining a strong sense of self and voice. Twenty-three girls in grades seven/eight, nine/ten and eleven/twelve participated in the full two years of the study. Eleven of the girls attend an all-girls school (AGS) and twelve attend a coed school (CPS). Both are independent, college preparatory schools and are similar institutions except for the single-sex/coed setting. Eight adults-administrators, teachers and counselors-also participated in the research. All participants were volunteers. Previous to the actual research, a pilot study was conducted in the same two schools. Five girls from each school participated. Seven of these girls also participated in the two-year study. This study employed the methodology of qualitative research. The primary methods for gathering data were interviews, observations and questionnaires. Interview transcripts were analyzed for recurrent themes, and coding of the transcripts and development of categories were used to classify and organize the data for analysis and reporting. Observations and questionnaires were used for additional data collection and triangulation. Findings were reported using the categories which emerged from the data as an organizational format. 163 164 Extensive descriptions of the schools have been included in reporting findings, in an attempt to enable readers to form a clear picture of the school cultures in the study. Many direct quotes from participants have been used throughout the reporting, to allow participants to speak for themselves, and to allow readers to form opinions as to the validity of my interpretations.

Conclusions

In the first chapter the research questions were stated as follows: (1) What school factors might aid some girls in successfully resisting the repression and loss of voice described by Brown and Gilligan (1992) and others, helping them remain strong and self-confident through the adolescent years? (2) What are the influences of a single-sex educational environment on the self-esteem of girls? Does a single-sex setting contribute to self-esteem, or help girls resist losing their voices? (3) Does the type of reading that girls do provide them with role models or otherwise influence their ability to manage this difficult period in their lives? Does reading an increased number of works by or about women have a positive effect on girls’ self-esteem? (4) What can we learn about building strength and self-confidence for girls that teachers, particularly English teachers, can apply in the mixed-sex public schools where most of our students will continue to be educated? The data from this study indicate that many girls can benefit from a single-sex setting in school. Probably it would be advantageous for girls if such schools were more readily available, at least for the middle school and high school years. Academically, it seems clear that a single-sex setting allows girls to concentrate more on school work. Several girls made comments like ninth-grader Jeanne, who transferred from AGS to CPS: “In classes at AGS you always seemed to pay 165 attention, but here the boys are a lot more distracting. I know in a lot of classes, you don’t tend to pay attention as well.” In addition, it appears from the data that single-sex schools can enhance self­ esteem and assist many girls in the struggle to maintain a strong voice. The girls themselves say this over and over, particularly those who came to AGS from coed settings. Ninth-grader Liz, for example, said, “It’s fun to go to school with guys, but you’re more yourself when you go to an all-girls school. You can be stupid or whatever and not think, ‘Oh, there’s the guy I like, I don’t wanna make a fool out of myself.’” AGS drama teacher Mrs. Cecil spoke about how much less physically restrained the girls are in a single-sex setting, and how much more of themselves they are willing to share in presenting assignments: “ I’ve taught the same assignments in coed schools and not had the same emotional content.” AGS Upper School Head Mrs. Beaton, who has also taught in coed situations, said, “...sometimes I had the same girls in both kinds of classes, and in every case I saw a difference in the classroom behavior and performance of the girls when they were in class without boys and when they were in class with boys.” However, some of the girls’ comments in this study also indicate that it is not necessary, or perhaps even desirable, for girls to attend single-sex schools for their entire education from preschool through college. Some of the girls who had been at AGS since preschool or first grade seemed to wonder if they might have missed something by not going to school with boys. CPS teacher Dr. Kay is correct in feeling that boys and girls need some familiarity with each other, because, as she put it, “it is a coed world.” If girls do attend an all-girls school for their entire education, parents should see to it that their daughters have plenty of opportunities to interact with boys in other settings as friends, not just as dates. Mrs. Beaton said, “I think the girls will make that happen. I’m not sure that in high school parents need to worry about creating those opportunities.” However, it seemed that some of the long-time AGS girls really had been very sheltered in terms of their relationships with 166 boys. Some of the former AGS girls who had switched to CPS made it clear that they simply wanted more contact with boys. It is also appears that a coed setting such as CPS can be a very good experience for some girls. CPS eleventh-grader Lori and ninth-grader Jessie both have a strong sense of voice, and had been miserable in their coed, public schools where those voices were not respected, where their intellect was not respected, and where the majority of the other girls “played dumb." The single-sex/coed question was insignificant for Lori and Jessie compared to finding a school with an academic ethic. CPS, which expects girls to be good students, provided an environment in which these girls were thriving. Although their differences are important, because of the goals and expectations which both schools share, and because of the attention currently being given to the needs of girls, CPS seems to have more in common with AGS than with other coed schools in the public systems. Undoubtedly, there will always be some girls, who, for various reasons, will simply be happier in a coed school. This is fortunate, because boys seem to benefit from the presence of girls in school. Several times, study participants said that CPS was friendlier and “more humane” since the move to coeducation. It seems to be true, as Dr. Kay said, that “it’s very easy for a boy in a male culture to grow up unaware of many of the issues that women have.” The findings of this study support Mrs. Beaton’s statement that there need to be “options in the world.” It is important to the self-esteem of girls in any school setting that the female faculty are aware of the need to encourage girls to maintain strong voices, and to serve as role models in that regard. Brown and Gilligan’s (1992) report of the experiences of the teachers at Laurel indicates that teachers can play a critical role in either encouraging or discouraging girls from expressing strong voices. Several girls in my study indicated that the degree to which they feel they can speak their minds in the classroom depends largely on the attitude of the teacher. 167 Another school factor which emerged from this study as a method to help build self-esteem for girls is sports activities. Many girls in both schools clearly derived great satisfaction from their participation on school teams. In recent years, the importance and prestige of girls' sports have generally increased at every level of school, but in most places, compared with the resources provided for boys’ teams, the girls’ teams still receive far from equitable treatment. Educators should work to ensure that this situation improves in the future. In terms of academics, it seems that what girls read can influence their self­ esteem and their perception of the female role in society. In coed schools, it may be particularly important for the self-esteem of girls to include a fair number of books by and about women in the curriculum. Girls at both CPS and AGS discussed their reading with interest and enthusiasm, indicating that their attitudes and values are sometimes influenced by the literature they read. The older girls were more likely than the younger ones to articulate ways in which their reading had influenced them. A common reason given for liking a book was that “It made you think.” It seems likely that one influence of literature could be to improve self-esteem for girls by having them read more works by women, in the same way that African-American students benefit from reading works by authors like themselves. Sexism in literature is sometimes a topic of discussion in English classes in these schools, and clearly, the girls are aware of the changing roles of women in society, and how those changing roles are reflected in literature. Several girls mentioned a preference for female protagonists, and they admire strong female characters, even though they sometimes resist referring to them as role models. This may be because the girls interpret the term “role model” to mean a character that they might imitate, and they appear to believe that they should be themselves, rather than patterning themselves after another-an indication that they are trying to maintain a strong sense of self and voice. However, one girl said “I think 168 Anne Frank has been a role model for me because Anne always made the best of what she had and I think everyone should do that.” Another commented, “Ellen Foster has been a role model-teaching me to hang in there. Antigone influenced me to believe that I can be a strong and powerful woman and earn respect.” It seems likely that past neglect of the female point of view in literature has contributed to low self-esteem for some of our female students. On two different occasions, when I mentioned to mothers of AGS students that of the ten books most commonly studied in school, only one was written by a woman, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, both listeners surprised me by saying, “Oh, really? I didn’t realize that was a woman.” Apparently, even when some teachers have taught a female author, they haven’t thought it worth mentioning. The message of traditional curriculum in every area of school seems to have been that women don’t count for much. Both CPS and AGS now make it a point to have girls read a diverse body of literature, including modern works, multicultural works, and books by women, though much of the reading is from the traditional canon. My participants seemed to find characters whom they could relate to in a meaningful way in books from the traditional canon as well as in newer additions to the curriculum. Books the girls enjoyed ranged from Of Mice and Men to Little Women, from Jane Evre and Anna Karenina to The Old Man and the Sea and The Jov Luck Club. It is important to note that the girls resist an overtly feminist approach to the reading curriculum. They feel that they should read a book because it has something worthwhile to say, not just because it has a female author or protagonist. AGS had, at one time, a course in Women’s Literature. The class was dropped because it came to be considered demeaning to separate “women’s literature” from the entire body of all literature. Both schools in this study seem to be adept at incorporating books by women into the curriculum. Obviously, whatever influence literature has on our students, it is only one influence among many: parents, friends, television, magazines, movies, popular 169 music. It may be that students in schools such as those in this study are more influenced by their reading than students in the public schools, because they do more reading, and, as one student pointed out, they take it more seriously. In my experience, it is not uncommon to find high school students in the public schools who have never read an entire book, and when asked what they have read in school that they have enjoyed, they are quite likely to reply, “Nothing.” Teachers are often grateful when such students read anything, but we must not lose sight of the fact that it does matter what children read. It is important to acknowledge that students identify with characters, and that reading can play a role in attitudes, moral development and self-esteem. David Darland (1981), when he was Associate Director, Instruction and Professional Development of the National Education Association, said “The idea that one book is as good as another, or that it doesn’t make any difference what a child reads just as long as he or she reads something is pure sop” (p. 4). Unfortunately, trash literature is plentiful, and a new category has just been added to the teen market with the publication of Bantam’s Bloodlust series. A cross between horror and romance novels, the opening scene in one of these books describes in gory detail how a young man, driven mad by her perfume, kills his blonde cheerleader date by ripping her to shreds with his teeth. Other girls in the story express some envy about the depth of the young man’s passion for the girl he killed. On the inside front cover, this book is suggested for ages 14 and up. Teachers concerned about the self-esteem of girls must protest such exploitation. The power of reading to influence thinking and the importance of making the literature curriculum more inclusive and fair to women is one concept from this study which can be applied in the coed public schools where most of our children are educated. 170 Implications for Educators

Tyack and Hansot (1990) summarize an important current debate by saying that: Some feminists believe that schools should consciously strive to create a gender-blind pedagogical order that will enlarge aspirations for both girls and boys and promote greater equality of opportunity by eliminating differential treatment of the sexes. Other feminists argue that male-defined values and practices permeate schools and that affirming and strengthening feminine qualities and ethical principles-making schools gender-sensitive rather than seemingly gender-neutral-is a worthier goal” (p. 34).

This difference of opinion is an important one for all educators, not just those who might define themselves as feminists. For the time being, it seems useless for teachers in coed public schools to attempt to be gender-blind, because the students most certainly are not. Many of them come to class with their minds saturated by sex-role stereotypes. They often believe that math is a boys’ subject and reading and writing are activities for girls; that girls are gossipy, silly, and concerned only with their looks; that boys are concerned with more serious matters; that girls should be quiet in class and that boys should express themselves. Educators must become gender-sensitive, become aware of sex-equity issues, and work towards increasing self-esteem for girls. This will benefit many boys as well as girls. As both Dr. Kay and Mrs. Dunbar in my study observed, behaviors do not fall neatly into gender categories, and traditional stereotypes not only limit the potential of girls, but also lock boys into playing macho roles that they may not always be comfortable with. Despite all the recent publicity the problem has received, there are still many teachers who are not even convinced that inequity exists, that boys do monopolize classroom time and teachers’ attention. Among teachers who are aware, many still have no idea how to address the issue. More teacher training, both at the pre-service level in education colleges and at the in-service workshop level for practicing teachers, is needed. Teaching practices should be diverse and adapted to different 171 learning styles, including those identified as “male” or “female." Gender-sensitivitiy is also necessary for educators to recognize sexual harassment in school, which has been identified as a problem for girls in various studies, including this one. Dr. Kay described the efforts being made at CPS to increase awareness of hurtful comments that male students and even teachers sometimes make unthinkingly. In many schools, even serious harassment often goes unnoticed. The study quoted in the AAUW Report (1992) which said that up to 40% of 4,200 girls surveyed reported that they were harassed daily, also said that when they told a teacher or administrator, nothing happened almost half the time. Such behavior has been dismissed with a “boys will be boys” attitude far too often. This sends a message to girls that it is acceptable for boys to mistreat them, which is damaging to self-esteem and discourages girls from speaking out. The federal law called Title IX, passed in 1972, forbids sexual harassment or discrimination in schools, and several states and school districts are writing policies about sexual harassment, but policies are useless if they are not taken seriously and enforced. Coed public school systems could take many other steps to improve the level of equity between boys and girls in school. Having established that the literature students read can affect attitudes, including self-esteem, we must continue to look critically at the curriculum, finding possibilities for expansion. The Good Earth. Gone With The Wind. The House of Mirth. I Know Whv the Cased Bird Sines. Ordinary People. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The King Must Die. Rebecca. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The Fountainhead. The Jov Luck Club. The Woman Warrior. Song of Solomon. July’s People. Northaneer Abbey. Wutherine Heights. Frankenstein, and Jane Evre are some of the books by women authors added to the reading list at CPS since coeducation was established. The list indicates the wide range of possibilities for making a more gender-fair English curriculum. Books for teachers such as Weaving in the Women by Liz Whaley and Liz Dodge (1993) give specific suggestions for using works by women. 172 It should be noted that curriculum can become more inclusive of women in areas other than English class. Social studies is another area where more attention can be given to the contributions of women, and some textbook publishers have recently cooperated in this effort by producing books which reflect the influences of women throughout history. At AGS, efforts have also been made to acknowledge the work of women in the field of science. One science teacher told me that, without making an issue of it, she had begun including more information about the important contributions of women in her science course. The girls hadn’t said much about the change, she reported, but she noticed that at the end of the class when students chose a scientist to write about in a term paper, a majority of the girls chose women scientists. The gender-faimess of testing and assessment procedures should also be considered. One recommended practice is to combine standardized tests with performance-based assessments such as portfolios or projects. Again, this would benefit many boys as well as girls. It is also not out of the question that coed public schools might consider some single-sex classes, and not necessarily just in math and science. In Sounds from the Heart (1995), Maureen Barbieri describes how she found it absolutely impossible to give the girls in her coed English class the time and attention they needed, even though she had previously taught at Laurel, and was well aware of the research documenting how boys dominate school rooms: ...writing conferences were problematic because, as I tried to talk to one person at a time, the boys would seize the opportunity for fun....I did get to know the girls better in the conferences, but it was at the price of a higher level of turmoil in the room....In class discussions of literature, if I called on girls too much, or if a particularly enthusiastic young man did not get the floor the minute he wanted it, we would have chaos....Many boys would not hesitate to disagree with me or with one another, vehemently and loudly. Few girls dared to challenge a boy’s ideas, even when they disagreed.... I needed to keep the boys talking or risk losing them entirely, but I also needed to get closer to the girls to discover what they knew and what they needed.... As I prepared to write comments at the end of our first six weeks, I was startled to discover that it was the boys who were clearer in my mind. I knew who had a snake up in his bedroom and who had stood face to face with a turkey in the woods at dawn. I knew whose sister was off at college 173

and whose brother was dating a girl in my eleventh grade class. I knew whose parents owned a restaurant, whose mother was a disaster on the ski slopes, and whose dad was a basketball coach. When I thought of the girls, I was not as sure. The girls seemed bunched together in my mind, a cute, quiet group....I didn’t know them as people, the way I knew the boys how had I let this happen?...! knew the girls’ voices were being stifled in my classroom, and this was intolerable to me....(pp. 218-219)

Barbieri decided that the only solution was to divide the class into gender groups. She and another teacher cooperated to create one boys’ section and one girls’ section for English and social studies. Although the students protested at first, and “the boys felt even freer to be gross," Barbieri found the experiment very successful for the boys as well as the girls: Several young men who had been quiet and shy earlier emerged as funny, bright, sensitive thinkers. Freed from the tension of competing with their more aggressive friends for the girls’ attention, they relaxed and focused more on reading and writing, (p. 219)

As for the girls’ section:

We spent much more time sharing writing as a group, and the girls’ work seemed to me more thoughtful; they took risks now-points of view, internal conflict, attention to sensory detail-that had not been possible earlier. New voices rang out in the room-”Can I share my piece today?”~and I realized we were making progress at last. (p. 220)

The separation lasted for twenty-four weeks. For the last six weeks of school, the classes were recombined and Barbieri found that:

Some girls reverted to their previous shy ways, as did a few boys. But, in spite of this, I saw an honest effort on most of their parts to listen to one another more earnestly....the girls were more eager to share their writing, and the boys did not balk at giving them equal time....Many girls seemed more assertive now, more willing to challenge boys’ opinions, (pp. 225-226)

Concerning the benefits of single-sex situations, AGS Upper School Head Mrs. Beaton said: Even some public schools are starting to consider separate math classes for girls. I think there is sometimes a need for some groups of people for part of their education to be separate, to be distinct, to look at what elements of their education need to be different. I think homogenized milk is 174

great, but there are times when you want skimmed milk or whipping cream. Most people are going to be in coed situations most of their lives, but this doesn’t mean that there won’t be times when they can benefit from different situations. I think if we reach the point where women in our society are totally equal in terms of opportunities, educational, economic, of all kinds-to men-there may not be that necessity, but I’m not going to live to see it.

Suggestions for Future Research

In order to confirm that a single-sex setting can help girls maintain a strong sense of self and voice, larger scale studies are needed with more rigorous controls in selecting participants. The girls in my study were all volunteers, and while they generally come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and attend similar schools, they may have little else in common. This makes it difficult to be certain how much their self-esteem was affected by school factors and how much it was determined by factors outside of school. Some of the girls I worked with had been in their current school setting for two or three years, and some for much longer periods of time. It was impossible to know how they might have scored on self-esteem evaluations before coming to their current schools. My conclusions are essentially based on what the girls’ own perceptions were, on what they told me in the interviews. It is very important to clarify whether and how the strong voices which some girls exhibit in single-sex classes carry over into coed situations. AGS Upper School Head Mrs. Beaton indicated that the girls she taught in a primarily single-sex school behaved differently as soon as they were in cross-registration classes where boys were present. Barbieri (1995), on the other hand, found that some of her female students seemed to develop stronger voices after several weeks of separation from boys, and maintained their new assertiveness when the boys returned. It would be useful to know how much time, on average, is necessary for girls to spend in a single-sex setting in order to develop a stronger sense of voice which will be permanent. 175 Several AGS girls in my study indicated that they are more assertive in coed situations than other girls, but this may only be a reflection of what they think they are “supposed” to be. It is possible that a single-sex school, which touts the benefits of such education for girls, can inflict its own sort of repression by creating another image that girls have to strive to fulfill—that of the assertive, strong, independent woman. It would be useful to conduct studies which follow girls from single-sex schools for a longer time period, through the identified crisis period in early adolescence and into college. It is important to know if girls can maintain their strong voices as they enter competitive, coeducational colleges and universities. Mrs. Beaton reported that when alumni who have moved on to college return to visit AGS, they indicate that it takes very little time for them to become used to having boys in their classes, and that they feel that they are more outspoken than girls who have attended coed schools, but again, we need more than anecdotal evidence. Investigating other experiments such as Barbieri’s (1995) single-sex grouping within the coed school would also provide pertinent information. The majority of our nation’s students will undoubtedly continue to be educated in coed schools for the foreseeable future, but if such grouping within schools proves to be useful, it would be a simple option to implement. We also need to explore and define the factors which could make coed schools better environments for both girls and boys. To this end, it would be useful to study other independent, college preparatory schools like CPS, which have specifically expressed an interest in meeting the needs of girls, but which been coeducational institutions long enough for the novelty to have worn off, and see how the girls are faring there. For example, it would be interesting to know whether girls are ever elected student body president at such schools. It is also important to continue to explore and define the role that literature can play in the lives of young people. There seems to have been little follow-up to Culp’s 176 1977 study on the influence that literature can have on values, attitudes and behaviors. My study indicates, like Culp’s, that literature can affect values, including self-esteem, in a general sense. However, in 1991, Pardeck described using books as a “useful treatment strategy,” as well as an “extremely effective preventive tool” for teenage alcohol and drug abuse. He describes three uses of this “bibliotherapy”-a s treatment for emotional problems, dealing with adjustments problems, and helping young people deal with developmental concerns. If books can specifically assist in treating such serious problems as drug abuse, the role that literature might have in helping teens establish other values is certainly worth investigating further. In this process, we should investigate the reasons that so many students comment on the “depressing” aspect of much of their school reading, and whether we sometimes encourage students to read adult books at too early an age. For example, despite obvious literary value, because of the language and brutality of certain scenes, it is questionable whether The Bluest Eve. Like Water for Chocolate, or The Women of Brewster Place belong on reading lists for middle school girls. Some of the conflicting ideas which emerged from this study, such as the differences in opinion about whether physical appearance is more or less important in a single-sex setting than in a coed setting, are interesting. Two AGS ninth-graders who considered switching to CPS reported after a day-long visit, ‘The girls in the classes didn’t speak. And if they did, it was only the pretty girls.” However, this was not the case in my observations at the school, where I noticed no hesitancy among any of the girls to talk in class, although I did not observe in math and science classes, the most usual “problem” areas for girls. Further research might clarify just how and why appearance affects self-esteem, and what effect it has on school experience. 177

Final Concerns

Numerous comments from the girls in this study about the public schools which they attended before coming to either AGS or CPS are disturbing. They seem to describe an adolescent subculture in which drugs, drinking and sexual activity begin in middle school, in which good looks and name-brand clothes are more important in forming friendships than character, and making good grades is a sure way for a girl to become a social outcast. It is important to note that these were not urban, inner-city situations, which we realize are ridden with problems. The schools the students in my study had previously attended were middle or upper-middle-class suburban systems, precisely the types of schools which parents have flocked to in recent years to get their children out of the urban settings. They are schools with reasonably good reputations academically. Over and over, however, the girls in my study described these schools as places where hard work and good grades are not valued by peers and the “cool” kids are the ones who drink, smoke and engage in other risky behavior. Such schools are deadly to the self-esteem of girls, and cannot be healthy environments for boys, either. Educators must work to find ways of improving this situation. This seems to mean engaging in the difficult pursuit of challenging the values of the popular culture. Schools do not operate in a vaccuum. Improvement in the academic progress of our students is not likely without a change in the values of the current social culture. Another concern is that it seems likely that this generation of girls finds relationships with boys more problematical than girls in the past when sex-roles were more clearly defined. Today’s girls belong to the first generation of women who are expected to fill what was once two separate roles: to go to college and have successful careers as well as become wives and mothers with all the kind, nurturing qualities for which women have been celebrated in the past. Educators must find ways to assist girls in their efforts to combine these roles successfully, to define a feminism which is 178 not man-hating. At the same time, we must educate boys out of their traditional ways of thinking about girls, and teach them the value of forming and maintaining equal partnerships. AGS eleventh-grader Bettie described what she says is a typical problem for some of her friends: It’s really frustrating when you go out to a dance or something. I was sitting beside a girl one time when a St. Pat’s boy walked up to her and asked her what school she went to, and when she said AGS, he just walked away. I could not believe that. I thought, well, obviously, that’s not the kind of guy I want to get to know, anyway.

If we teach girls to be strong and independent, to speak their minds and to refuse to play a subservient role, we must also teach boys to value those characteristics, to stop regarding girls as lesser creatures to be used and exploited. Boys must Ieam to respect and value the same qualities in girls that they value in themselves. Some of the mothers of the current generation of high school girls have been involved in the struggle to form a new identity for women which can encompass both feminine, nurturing qualities as well as strength and independence, but it is not yet clear what this new female model will look like, or how long it will take for her to be accepted when she finally takes shape. In the meantime, girls continue to be surrounded by conflicting images from the media: lush, lewd Playboy centerfolds, highly paid, reed-thin fashion models, sharp-tongued television career women, self- centered soap-opera “witches,” and spunky movie heroines whose true happiness still comes from ending up with the right man. I remain concerned about the detrimental effect that such media images of women have on girls, and I believe there is a need for educators to find ways to combat such images. One possibility is increased study of literature which provides more realistic role models for girls. Shaping cultural values is an enormous task-the popular media is a powerful force-but virtually every person in our society passes through the school system, and the potential influence of education is also enormous. Appendix A

Sample interview questions for students

1. Tell me some thing about what it’s like to be in seventh (or ninth or eleventh) grade. How does it compare with last year?

2. How do you think you’ve changed in the last year or two?

3. Do you think it’s pretty easy to make friends at your school?

4. Is there a “popular” group at your school? What does it take to be in the popular group?

5. How would you describe yourself to yourself?

6. How do you think other people see you?

7. Do you like (not) going to school with boys?

8. Do you worry about how you’ll get along with boys in your classes when you go to college?

9. Do you ever feel that there’s a particular image you have to try to live up to?

10. Do you feel pretty free to be yourself at school, to say what you think, to write what you think?

11. Do you think it’s important to have a boy friend?

12. Are students of all ethnic groups accepted at your school?

13. Is having a lot of money helpful to being popular?

179 180 14. Would you describe yourself as a self-confident person?

15. Do your parents have high expectations for you?

16. Do you feel a lot of pressure to succeed academically?

17. Do you ever feel pressure to be different from what you really are?

18. What kinds of things make you angry? How do you react when you get angry?

19. Do you feel you can confide in your parents or your teachers when you have a problem? Do yiou have people in your life who really listen to you?

20. What makes a good friend? Do you have many close friends?

21. Do you ever feel as if your parents or your school expect you to be perfect?

22. Are the girls at your school too concerned about how they look?

23. What do you think you want to do with your future?

24. Do you think most people are honest about their thoughts and feelings? Do they really say what they think?

25. Being a teenager if often considered a difficult time for girls. Do you think this is true? Appendix B

Sample questions for adults

1. Tell me your perceptions about why your school chose to reamain a single-sex institution (or to become coed).

2. What do you see as the advantages or disadvantages of this type of school setting?

3. In light of what we know about how difficult a period adolescence can be, how do you think the girls at your school are coping?

4. What specific problems do you see girls having?

5. What specific strengths do you see in the girls you work with?

6. Do you think the girls at your school are encouraged to express themselves honestly and fully?

7. Do you think that we as a society tend to push girls into some idealized model of how women are “supposed” to be? How can schools help girls fight this tendency?

8. Do you remember, in your own life, having the sort of adolescent crisis which is frequently described today?

9. What do you think are the biggest influences in helping girls to maintain their “voices,” to become strong and self-confident?

10. What role can literature play? Do you see girls being influenced by their reading?

11. Do you recall being influenced by your own adolescent reading? Were there characters in books who served as role models for you? 181 Appendix C Grounded Survey This is a survey that contains material from the interviews I did with girls at your school in the pilot study for my dissertation research. I would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to answer the questions, using the following scale: S A - strongly agree A - agree U - uncertain D - disagree SD - strongly disagree

1 . _____ Generally, I like school.

2 . ____ Often, I feel too stressed out about school work.

3 . ____ Sometimes, I feel too stressed out about school work,

4 . ____ Generally, I feel pretty good about myself.

5 . _____ Psychologically, I think this is a difficult year for me.

6 . _____ The opinions of boys are very important to a girl’s self-image.

7 . _____ I feel very secure with my friends.

8 . _____ I think 1 belong to the “popular” group at school.

9 ._____ I wish I belonged to the “popular” group at school.

10 . _____ I don’t think there is a “popular” group at my school.

11 . _____ Generally, [ feel free to be myself.

12 . _____ Often, I feel pressure to live up to an “image" other people have. 13 . _____ Most girls at my school are too concerned about what boys think of them.

14 . _____ It’s important to a girl’s self-esteem to have a boyfriend.

15 . ____ Most girls at this school are not too concerned about what other people think of them.

16 . _____ When I feel angry or upset, I feel free to let it show.

17 . _____ People who have a lot of money are the more important people at my school.

18. I feel that students of all races and creeds are accepted at my school.

19 .____ I am too pressured by grades.

20 ._____Boys are not very important in my life.

21 . _____ There is a lot of racial or ethnic predjudice at my school.

22 . _____ The amount of money a person has is unconnected to how many friends they have.

Grade level ______

If there are any other comments you would like to make about the material in the interviews or the survey, or if you have any questions for me, please feel free to write in the space below. Thank you for your help! Appendix D

Sample Questions from The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory

You will find here a list of statements about feelings. If a statement describes how you usually feel, put an X in the column "Like Me. ” If the statement does not describe how you usually feel, put an X in the column "Unlike Me." There are no right or wrong answers.

General Self Like Unlike Me Me 1. Things usually don't bother me.

Social Self-Peers Like Unlike Me Me 2. Kids usually follow my ideas.

Home-Parents

T-iire Unlike Me Me 3 .1 usually feel as if my parents are pushing me.

School-Academic Like Unlike Me Me 4 .1 like to be called on in class.

From the CoopmmiA Self-Eiteem Inventory - School Foim by Stanley Coopewmilh, Ph.D. Copyright 1967 by W. H. Freemen A Co. All rigfati rcaerved.

184 Appendix E Reliability and validity data for the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory A sample of the studies which have confirmed the reliability and validity of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory includes Spatz and

Johnston (1973), who gave the Coopersmith SEI to students in grades five, nine and twelve, and calculated Kuder-Richardson reliability estimates for 100 students in each grade level. Obtained coefficients were .81 for grade Eve,

.86 for grade nine, and .80 for grade twelve, indicating adequate internal consistency at all three levels. Other studies were performed by Fullerton

(1987), who reported a split-half reliability coefficient of .87, and Taylor and Reitz (1968), who reported .90.

Kimball (1972) administered the SEI to 7,600 students in two school districts. The sample was designed to be representative of the general population of the U.S. The study confirmed the validity of the Inventory. A study of SEI construct validity was conducted by Kokenes (1974,1978) with more than 7,60 students. She investigated the subscales designed to indicate self-esteem relative to home, peers, and school, and confirmed their construct validity. Many other studies are reported in the SEI manual.

On the basis of studies conducted or reviewed by Coopersmith, SEI scores were found to be significantly related to the ability to resist group pressure and the willingness to express unpopular opinions.

185 REFERENCES

American Association of University Women’s Education Foundation & Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. (1992). How schools shortchange girls. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women’s Education Foundation.

Applebee, A. (1989). A Study of book-length works. ERIC Document No. ED 309 453.

Amot, M. (1983). A cloud over co-education: An analysis of the forms of transmission of class and gender relations. In S. Walker & L. Barton (Eds.) Gender, class and education. Barcombe, Lewes: The Falmer Press.

Ball, S. (1990). Self-doubt and soft data: social and technical trajectories in ethnographic fieldwork. Qualitative studies in education. 3.2, 157-171.

Barbieri, Maureen. (1995). Sounds from the Heart. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., Tarule, J.M. (1986). Women’s wavs of knowing. Basic Books, 1986.

Beyard-Tyler, K. & Sullivan, H. (1980). Adolescent reading preferences for type of theme and sex of character. Reading research quarterly. 16. 1, 104-120.

Bleich, D.(1988). The double perspective: Language, literacy and social relations.

Bogdan, R. & Biklen, S. (1992) Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Brown, L. & Gilligan, C.(1992). Meeting at the crossroads: Women’s psychology and girls’ development Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bush, D. & Simmons, R. (1987) Gender and coping with the entry into early adolescence. In R. Barnett, L. Biener, & G. Baruch, (Eds.) Gender and stress. New York: Free Press.

Bruch, H.(1979) Anorexia nervosa. In S. Feinstein and P. Giovachini (Eds.), Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 5 of Development and Clinical Studies. New York: Jason Aronson.

Brunberg, J.J.( 19881. Fasting girls: The emergenge of anorexia nervosa as a modern disease. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

186 187

Campbell, P. & Wirtenberg, J. (1980). How books influence children: What the research shows. Interracial books for children bulletin 11,6, 3-6.

Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Coleman, J.S. (1961). The adolescent society. New York: The Free Press.

Connell, R.W. (1987). Gender and power: Society, the person, and sexual politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Coopersmith, S. (1981). Self-esteem inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.

Crockett, L. & Peterson, A. (1987). Pubertal status and psychological development: Findings from early adolescence study. In R. Lemer & T. Foch (eds.). Biological-Psvchosocial interactions in earlv adolescence. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Culp, M.B. (1977). Case studies of the influence of literature on the attitudes, values, and behavior of adolescents. Research in the teaching of English. 11. 245- 253).

D ’Angelo, D.A. (1989a). Developmental tasks in literature for adolescents: Has the adolescent female protagonist changed? Child study journal. 19. 219-38.

D’Angelo, D.A. (1989b, November). The female character in middle school fiction: Do contemporary adolescent characters reflect realistic developmental role models? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, Baltimore, MD. (ERIC Document ED 321 258).

Darland, D. (1981). The new preteen and teenage romances -A report to educators and parents issued in concert with the National Education Association. Interracial books for children. 12. 4.

Debold, E., Wilson, M., & Malave, I. (1993). Mother/daughter revolution. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Donnelson, K.L. & Nilsen, A.P. (1989) Literature for today’s vounp adults. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman and Co.

Dwyer, C.A. (1973). Sex differences in reading: An evaluation and a critique of current theories. Review of educational research 43.455.

Eagle, C. & Coleman, C. (1993). All that she can be. New York: Simon and Schuster. 188

Elder, G., Nguyen, T. & Caspi, A. (1985) Linking family hardship to childrens’s lives. Child development 56. 361-75.

Fetterly, J. (1981). The resisting reader A feminist approach to American fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Flynn, E. (1983). Gender and reading. College English. 45. 3, 236-253. Galdston, R. (1974) Mind over mattter: Observations on 50 patients hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. Journal of the American academy of child psychiatry L. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gilligan, C., Lyons, N., Hanmer, T. (Eds.) (1990). Making connections: The relational worlds of adolescent girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Glesne, C. & Peshkin, A. (1992). Becoming qualitative reserchers: An introduction. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Gunnar, M.R. & Colllins, W.A. (1988). Development during the transition to adolescence: The Minnesota symposia on child psychology, 21, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hancock, E. (1989). The girl within. New York: Ballantine Books.

Hall, M.J., et al. (1987). Understanding the nature and scope of sex differences. Paper presented at the Mid-South Educational Research Conference, Mobile, AL, Nov. 11-13.

Harvey, B. (1981). Wildfire: Tame but deadly. Interracial books for children. 12.4- 10.

Hunt, C.W. (1910). Good taste and bad taste in girls’ books. Ladies home journal. 27*52.

Jones, C. (1984). Sexual tyranny: Male violence in a mixed secondary school. In G. Weiner (Ed.). Just a bunch of girls: Feminist approaches to schooling. Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press. Kazemek, F.E. (1985). Reading and moral development: From a feminine perspective. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Washington Communication Conference, Seattle, WA. (ERIC Document No. ED 268 510).

Klein, J.D. (1993). She learns, he learns. Cleveland now. Spring. 189

Knox, H. (1979). An interview on Title IX with Shirley Chisholm, Holly Knox, Leslie R. Wolfe, Cynthia G. Brown, and Mary Kaaren Jolly. Harvard Educational Review 49.4.

Kohlberg, L. (1981). The philosophy of moral development. San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Kolodny, A. (1980). Dancing through the minefield: Some observations of the theory, practice and politics of a feminist literary criticism. Feminist studies 6 ,1.

Lanes, S. (1981). Here come the blockbusters - Teen books go big time. Interracial books for children. 12. 5-7.

Lee, V. & Bryk, A. (1986a). Effects of single-sex secondary schools on student achievement and attitudes. Journal of educational psychology. 7 8 .381-395.

Lee, V., & Bryk, A. (1986b). Effects of single-sex schools: Response to Marsh. Journal of educational psychology. 81. 647-650.

Lee, V. & Marks, H. (1990). Sustained effects of the single-sex secondary school experience on attitudes, behaviors, and values in college. Journal of educational psychology. 82. 578-592.

Lever, J. (1976). Sex differences in the games children play. Social problems. 23. 478-487.

Mahony, R (1985). Schools for the boys? Coeducation reassesed. London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd.

Marsh, H., (1989) Effects of attending single-sex and coeducational high schools on achievement, attitudes, behaviors and sex differences. Journal of educational psvcholoev. 81.70-85.

Matthews, D. (1973). An adolescent’s glimpse of the faces of Eve. Illinois English bulletin. 60. 1-14.

McArthur, L. & Eisen, S. (1976). Achievements of male and female storybook characters as determinants of achievement behavior by boys and girls. Journal of personality and social psychology. 3 3 .469-473.

Moffitt, M.A. (May, 1987). Understanding the appeal of the romance novel for the adolescent girl: A reader-response approach. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, Montreal, Canada. (ERIC Document No. ED 284 190) 190

Nudd, D.M. (1991). Establishing the balance: Re-examining students’ androcentric readings of Katherine Anne Porter’s “Rope.” Communication-Education. 40. 1, 49-59.

Orenstein, P. (19941. Schoolgirls. New York. Doubleday.

Pardeck, J. T. (1991). Using books to prevent and treat adolescent chemical dependency. Adolescence. 26. 101,201-207.

Patton, M. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Newbury Park: Sage.

Peterson, A., Sarigiani, P., & Kennedy, R.( 1991) Adolescent depression: Why more girls?” Journal of youth and adolescence. 20.247-271.

Petrosky, A. (1976). The effects of reality perception and fantasy on response to literature: Two case studies. Research in the teaching of English. 10.3. 239- 257.

Pipher, M. (1994). Reviving Ophelia. New York: Grosset/Putnam.

Radway, J.A. (1984). Reading the Romance. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Rosenblatt, L.(1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Reinharz, S. (19921. Feminist methods in social research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Riordan, C. (1985). Public and Catholic schooling: The effects of gender context policy. American journal of education. 5 .519-541.

Rosenbaum, M. B. (1979) The changing body image of the adolescent girl. In Female adolescent develoment. Sugar, M. (Ed.)

Rutter, M. (1986). The developmental psychopathology of depression: Issues and perspectives. In M. Rutter, C. Izzard & P. Read (Eds.) Depression in voune people: Developmental and clinical perspectives. New York: Guilford Press.

Sadker, D. & M.(1994) Failing at fairness: How America’s schools cheat girls. New York: Charles Scribner.

Simmons R. & Blyth, D. (19871. Moving into adolescence: The impact of pubertal change and the school context. New York: Aldine de Gruyter Press.

Squire, J.R. (1964). The responses of adolescents while reading four short stories. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. 191

Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. ('1990V Basics of qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Tavris, C. (1992). The Mismeasure of woman. New York: Simon & Schuster. lyack, D., & Hansot, E. (1990V Learning together: A history of coeducation in American schools. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Wax, R.(1971). Doing fieldwork: Warnings and advice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Whaley, E. & Dodge, E. (1993) Weaving in the women. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Werner, E. & Smith, R. (1982). Vulnerable but invincible: A study of resilient children. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Willis, S. & Kenway, J. (1986). On overcoming sexism in schooling: To marginalize or mainstream. Australian Journal of Education. 30 (2) 132-149.

Woolf, Virginia (1929) A room of one’s own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.