reaction

I have read Fr. Roy Cimagala's column, the December 3, 2004 article on the single-sex schools in Hints and Traces in The Freeman.

It reminded me of a professor who went to an exclusive school for boys. During one of his lectures, he talked about the importance of putting children in a natural environment, not some artificial situation wherein boys and girls are separated. He said something about the separation being not realistic, because it is not how we normally interact with people in real life. He mentioned that the artificial environment created for these children has stunted their social skills and ability to deal with those from the opposite sex. He exhorted us that if we ever have children in the future, we should enroll them in co-ed schools. And then he said something that blew our minds. He blurted, “Look what has become of me…”

My professor, a very well respected and competent practitioner in his field, he speaks different languages and has been schooled in excellent universities not just in the Philippines, but he also earned various scholarships in the USA and Spain to name the few that I know of. For the first time in the several semesters that I have been under him, he admitted his sexual preference that he is gay, which to his opinion, is largely affected by his exclusive school education.

While I do not have the statistics, we can make a random survey among exclusive schoolteachers on the lesbian and gay relationships in their institutions. But then again the students are probably discreet as it could be a ground for their expulsion.

I hope this is a factor that parents will consider when they think about their options on their children’s education.