Learning Like a Girl: Educating Our Daughters in Schools of Their Own

This is an excellent book for students, parents and especially teachers. It is a great story written by an amazing woman who REALLY cared about the education of her children. It also provides an extensive reference list for reading material for teachers. This is proof that one person CAN make a difference. Rock on Ms. Meehan !

You know how people say, "I don't have kids so I'm not really qualified to offer an opinion," Learning Like A Girl makes you feel qualified to start a school, join your condo association or coach your kids' soccer team. That's the big story here. I loved it.

The reason that private girls' schools are important is that girls are important. Yes, "children are our future," but if past is prologue, girls represent a much better future than boys. Traditionally, boys are taught to win (and, often, win at any cost). You have only to raise your eyes from this screen to see a world powered by such dog-eat-dog ethics, disguised as a concern for "shareholder value". Another generation or two of boys being raised to emulate their fathers, and the greatest Empire of the modern world may crumble in our lifetime. Girls, in contrast, tend to be collaborators. They look less for the win than the win-win. And when they achieve, they look to share and mentor. Or so says Diana Meehan, co-founder of the Archer School in Los Angeles, where girls go to class only with girls and are the better for it. You have heard the reasons why elsewhere: As boys and girls hit adolescence, the boys become classroom gods and the girls fall silent. The boys achieve; the girls support. And when it comes to science and math, guess who gets called on first? Meehan and two friends decided to start a school --- "where the best teachers could do their best teaching and the girls would have the tools, the risks, the chances to fail and to succeed" --- without having any experience launching a business or serving on a school board. Just as well. "New schools are models of chaos theory," Meehan writes. The story of how Meehan and her view actualized their "dream in a hurry" will be inspiring to anyone who's ever started any enterprise. You'll become an Archer booster early on, and the school's growing pains will make you wince. Granted, Meehan cherry-picked her anecdotes, but the girls you'll meet along the way are inspiring --- they're everything you'd want your own kids to be. And it all works out; although Archer girls don't grind and compete, they do amazingly well on tests and get into any college they want. How do you know if your town could use a new school? If the private schools turn away two-thirds of their applicants, there's a need. And an opportunity. But even if you read this book without a new school in mind, it's a great resource. There's a terrific appendix of summer programs for girls that, alone, is worth the cost of the book. There are aspects of this book that make me grimace. The introduction is by Tom Hanks, obviously an Archer parent and, by every account, a terrific human being --- but not likely to be coming to your town to help a struggling girls' school make a fortune at the Spring Benefit. And that's just the start of the specialness. The Archer board is a Who's Who of female Los Angeles. And then there is language that resides primarily on LA's West Side --- like Meehan saying she wrote the book, in part, to "share the journey." Only in LA can anyone say that with a straight face, and even then, it's better coming out of the mouth of a none-too-clever actress on Oscar night. But in the end, you come back to