Today, educating boys looks no different than educating girls. Studies have shown that “various regions of the brain develop in a different sequence and tempo in girls compared with boys. In some regions of the brain, such as the parietal gray matter (info integration) –the region of the brain most involved with integrating information from different sensory modalities–girls and boys develop along similar trajectories, but the pace of the girls’ development is roughly two years ahead of the boys’.” (Boys Adrift, Sax, p. 17)

Further, a study from the University of Georgia & Columbia University (Cornwell, Mustard, Parys), showed that grading practices disadvantage boys in the classroom. Boys that score equally well on subject-tests have worse overall grades in the classes. Researchers identified differences in non-cognitive skills as the source of these differences in grades. Further, boys that map their non-cognitive skills onto those of their female peers actually see a grade boost reward even higher than the girls. In short, we punish boys for being boys and reward boys for trying to imitate girls.

As young fathers with boys, this is unacceptable, and we’re seeking to provide the remedy that these studies suggest: set up education that is made specifically for boys.

Studies have found that girls and boys respond to different forms of discipline differently: some that work well for boys, don’t for girls; and vice-versa. Schools have selected for the methods that work well for girls, even if they hurt boys’ development.

Studies have also found that boys respond to in-class competition (quiz competition / team competition / etc.) with boosts to their motivation. On the contrary, girls respond to in-class competition with demotivation. For that reason, schools do not employ competition in their classrooms.

All-boys schools out East are known for doing year long competition periods at the end of the school day where students are sorted into different teams, intermixing the grades, to compete against one another. Sometimes they compete in knowledge quiz bowls, sometimes debates, sometimes athletics feats, sometimes chess tournaments. When boys are engaged, their motivation increases; when boys are motivated, they do better in every area of life.

At Crown of Thorns Academy, we want to see boys thrive as boys. When boys thrive as boys, they thrive as people. When men thrive as people, they’re better friends, brothers, fathers, husbands, neighbors, employees, and employers.

This question could also be phrased, “Why does it matter if all-boys education is Catholic (Christian) or not?”

All-Boys education is vastly improved & supported by a Christian-Catholic worldview. Our Lord models sacrifice, virtue, wisdom, and self-denial perfectly. When a man doesn’t know Christ, they grow vain and self-centered. When a man is vain and self-centered, he is dangerous and chaotic.

All-Boys Catholic education focuses first on what we owe God in justice, out of obligation—which includes worship of God, commitment to prayer, study of the faith, moral rectitude, technical precision—and culminates in a love of God anchored in truth. Caritas in Veritate (Truth in Love) was the 3rd encyclical of the late Pope Benedict XVI—it stressed the necessary relationship between truth and love. When we love without truth, our love degrades; when we know the truth, we are strengthened in our love. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches the primacy of the intellect, that the will proceeds from the intellect, and it means that if we know the truth well, we grow in charity; conversely, if we grow in charity, we must grow in our commensurate knowledge of God.

We’re not looking to make our boys into theologians and academics (that is great if they want to become that!)—we’re looking to give them clarity and precision in their faith and understanding so that they can excel in their moral life and experience the joy, peace, patience, meekness, kindness, and love that Our Lord wants all of us to experience.

The founders of Crown of Thorns Academy are not random parents looking for an option to educate their children that is not available—we are educators by trade. We have experience teaching in all-boys classrooms. We’ve been Teachers, Principals, & Directors of Religious Education.

Our school will have three distinct phases of education, mapping onto the the different phases in the development of the human mind and how it learns.

From 1st-2nd grade students will be taught the basics of reading, writing, and counting. They will participate in Daily Mass with the rest of the school and be initiated, culturally first, into the environment of the school. The school-day focus for these boys will be on getting their energy out, having ample opportunities for play (structured, unstructured; phy. ed., the arts). Classroom time will see improved focus because their minds will be better disposed to learn having regular outlet for their desires to move and be active.

“At my previous school, I increased the amount of Phy. Ed time 3-fold and the amount of art & music time 2-fold. Our First and Second Graders saw a major benefit from this. Their classroom teachers reported that they moved quicker through their curriculum than in any previous year, though they had less time. They told an incoming teacher, ‘you just have to experience it to see how good it works. I had my doubts—but we’re ahead of where we were at this time last year.’” -A.J. Barker, Co-Founder, Crown of Thorns Academy

From 3rd-5th grade, students will now focus on the preliminary arts of logic. Naming, Stating, and Concluding, are the three subdivisions of the formal study of logic (“Definitions”, “Propositions”, and “Syllogisms”). Students will not be taught “logic”, per se, because it won’t connect with them—logic is a very abstract discipline. Students will be shown how their minds are working by emphasizing the three things the mind does: name things, state things, and conclude things. They’ll be shown how these three things the mind does relates to everything they do in a school. As they progress through the years and incorporate these skills of thinking, they will be exposed to the big-pictures of their different areas of study using visual learning aids—charts, timelines, sequential maps. The “why” is the first reason we do anything—at this time in a boys development, without them knowing that they’re learning the “why”, formally speaking, we want to expose them to the “why’s” so that as they learn everything naturally makes sense.

From 6th-8th grade, students will now begin to learn the fundamentals of philosophy (how the mind works; the nature of sin; the nature of happiness; the nature of vices & virtues; the nature of God). They will be tested daily in their classes to increase their sense-of-urgency, their attention to detail, and hone their abilities to focus & perform under pressure. They will not have formal homework, but that will be offset by the challenge of having to demonstrate their knowledge in their different classes on a regular basis. They will learn how to do Concept-Map (“Mind-Map”) tests, where they receive a blank page with a preselected question and have to conceptualize their understanding of the topic. They will have “project-tests”: projects that are constrained to individual class periods. They will learn how to probe, how to read with intentionality (by re-reading great works). They will be expected to demonstrate the ability to think critically and substantively. Where they fail to grasp a concept or a class, they will be held to account. They will be challenged mentally, spiritually, and physically.

Young boys love sports, and we will not shy away from that at Crown of Thorns Academy. Our Catholic faith teaches us that we are bodily-beings. Our bodies matter, and the right use of our bodies effects the right use of our minds.

Our goal is to have young boys be young boys and teen boys be teen boys. We want them to grow skilled in all that they do, but more than anything we want to cultivate courage in them. Courage is a willingness to do difficult, and potentially humiliating things. Many boys develop a strength in one area, and then avoid the areas they’re weak in—this is not courage. If a boy is good at sports, we want him to get better at chess, or debate, or prayer. If a boy is good at chess, we want him to get better at sports, at physical exertion, at performing when under-prepared. If a boy is good at multiple things, we want to help him venture into the areas he feels most uncomfortable in, and seek to strive for greatness in that. Courage comes through doing what is difficult, objectively, AND what is difficult for us personally, i.e. subjectively. We want our boys to be courageous—and we will make sure everything we do is structured around bringing this out in them. +