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Oliver Haythorne's avatar

There is a very interesting post to be written from the boys-only school perspective - forgive me for not having contributed to your survey. I think there are some very distinct points to make there! This was a very fun read. If I respond, it will be in the form of my own post.

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Alice Clara's avatar

Enthused seal claps from the audience

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liam's avatar

great to see you back and to read more of your writing! brilliant article, and having spent my time as a boy in mixed schools it was really interesting to read this. the thing i found most fascinating was your description of the girls' tendency to share - not something we really experienced as lads haha

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Alice Clara's avatar

Wait that's fascinating. I'm imagining some sort of anthropological study on this where it charts from hunter-gatherer times these divergent tendencies of men vs. women on pooling their resources lol

Thank you so much as always Liam: your support means more than I can say. Take care :)

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Apr 10
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Alice Clara's avatar

Hah---well, it's actually quite a sweet image to think of a hoard of sixteen-year-old boys enjoying each others' company, all suited and booted, playing basketball together. Brotherhood.

The writing style was entirely intentional; I'm glad you noticed it. It's a goal of mine to write better academic prose---writing which has a clear argument without being obfuscated by overly affective or figurative language. There's a time and a place for that: creative writing or personal essays, mostly. But the point is that I often seem to confusedly think that I need to do everything at once: that if I'm arguing, I will lose some important sense of selfhood if I don't slap on loads of figurative language. I want to prove that I can think, ratiocinate, and argue clearly without the protective backstop of writing in a very flowery way. (I have been described as a flowery or fluffy writer ever since I was about 9. Old habits die hard.) I never want writing in a certain way to be a substitute for reasoning, analytical thought. I felt barricading the descriptive writing I also love doing away in a coda created a nice check-and-balance division of power; it still allowed for this kind of writing, but didn't muddy or mess up my arguments through its inclusion.

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