Jeff Bender
OPC ’98, Teacher, Coach

I tend to scrap the idea that the presence of girls keeps the boys in line or that vice versa.  Maybe it's true.  The best effect of coeducation, though--the effect, say, of having females at PC--is one of diversity. Coeducation is anthropological. Males and females need to interact and learn about each other. Their ideas about one another need to be tested. Experimented with.  School is a great medium for this.  For example, can you start a food fight with a girl you like?  Try it.  Can you tease girls like you tease guys?  It is a subtle education.  We practice it, but we don't think about it.

I don't know better, of course.  My sister Jessica was the second female to graduate from Penn Charter, and I came in a package deal with her and my brother Justin in 1986. Coeducation allowed us to attend the same school.  One car trip with four, three, two, one of us. Without PC being coed at the right time, we may have gone to LaSalle or . . . well I don't like to think about the possibility of Germantown Friends.  I suppose it was there. Anyway, thank goodness.