"It was a highly structured learning environment with small classes, low teacher-to-student ratios and lots of confidence-building, which I needed at the time," says Merrick, who attended the non-profit military boarding school from 1980 to 1984. Merrick started at the school in Grade 6 with a learning disability in reading and spelling, and he says its rigorous approach to academics helped him overcome this hurdle by the time he left after Grade 9. Today, Merrick is a published author of three finance textbooks and more than 300 magazine and journal articles on his industry.
Merrick also benefited from the academy's strong focus on varsity athletics, participating on the hockey, wrestling and cross-country running teams, and from intensive physical group activities, such as rock climbing, martial arts, and the school's annual 90 km march.
"Boys have a lot of energy, and you need to get that out of your system before you can focus," Merrick says.
Boys' schools prepare for life, argue proponents
The academy's tailored and highly structured programming and extra emphasis on athletics and confidence-building are qualities that are found, to varying degrees, at boys' schools across Canada - and to positive effect, says Michael Zwaagstra, a proponent of all-boys education.
"Boys tend to thrive in a more competitive environment with more physical activity, and an all-boys school can tailor its format to these specific learning needs," says Zwaagstra, a high school social studies teacher in Manitoba, research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and author of What's Wrong With Our Schools: and How We Can Fix Them.
Indeed, a 2005 Cambridge University study on gender differences in education found that separating children for some subjects helped boys concentrate and improved their exam scores.
Greg Hewitt, admissions officer at the Robert Land Academy, is proud to witness students evolve from unconfident, immature boys into self-assured, self-disciplined young men, prepared for life in the adult world.
"We take away the typical adolescent distractions of girls and gossip and focus on their interests," Hewitt says. "They graduate with boatloads of self-esteem, good grades, in great physical shape, and with all the tools they need to succeed."
