Columbia Boy School (CBS) supporters are highly motivated to establish a school where boys will be celebrated for their boyhood and journey to honorable Christian Manhood. The nation’s boy crisis continues to worsen (see attached Boys in Crisis article and Chapter 1 of Michael Gurian’s Saving our Sons book), and we see this school as a small but important local step to begin reversing it.
There are 4 key reasons for an all-boys school in the Catholic tradition:
- Focus exclusively on boys and teach them the joy of becoming “lifelong learners”. Our school will have its share of good students – boys who are naturally gifted academically. But the school will be set up to teach all the boys the joys of learning without the distraction of girls, even when their class grade or parent/teacher approval has nothing to do with it. Becoming life-long learners for the joy it provides will set them apart and be one of the anchors they can count on their entire life.
- Cultivate and practice Catholic Christian Brotherhood. Board members Brian Burby & Deacon Harold visited Seattle’s O’Dea High School in April 2021 (O’Dea is the only all boys, Catholic school in the entire northwest). One student’s answer to the question “why did you choose this school over many good coeducational options?” Answer: The Brotherhood. I felt it when I walked in the front door for an open house in sixth grade. Another boy said: You can bond with anybody in this school; everybody has got your back. O’Dea has developed their acclaimed FOUR HOUSES, ONE BROTHERHOOD System to provide a tribe each boy belongs to for all four years that serves as a fun learning environment to further their Catholic faith, character, and service development.
- Catholic Christian Manhood Mentorship. The quality of our faculty and administration will set the stage for the school’s success or failure. In keeping with our school’s mission of growing boys into men who love God, our faculty and staff will be primarily male by design. These men will be carefully selected based on their character and daily commitment to being examples of high level Catholic Christian Gentlemen to our boys.
- Optimal teaching for boy brains and boy views of the world. Our school will have teachers who have been instructed in how to meet the boys where they are in terms of brain and bodily maturation. For example, as boys become adolescents, they will naturally become more aggressive and vocal due to increasing testosterone levels. To harness this increased energy and focus it in a positive direction requires teachers expert at knowing where the boys are developmentally and adapting their instruction to maximize optimal learning outcomes. We plan to provide Gurian Institute training for all our school’s teachers. Moreover, we plan to become a Gurian Model School and employ proven “boy brain” research and associated teaching methods in our classroom.