... A day spent at Jackson shows how it has flourished — by cultivating a culture where boys consider the feelings of their classmates, a sensitivity American culture has too often demanded only of girls.
A nonsectarian school, Jackson now has 116 low-income students, 51 percent of them black, 33 percent Latino and 16 percent Asian. The generosity of foundations and donors covers 92 percent of the school’s bills; though tuition is $12,500, parents pay only a small fraction, and classes are prep-school small.
A visitor is immediately struck by the fact that the boys, wearing ties as if they were corporate lawyers, greet visitors by looking them squarely in the eye and offering a handshake. There’s none of the roughhousing common to middle school hallways.
“You can be ticked at somebody, but nobody has a right to lay a hand on anybody,” is Brother Brian’s watchword.
An eighth-grade discussion of Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” led by a teacher, Kelly Moloney, was on a level that college professors might envy, laced with comparisons to earlier readings like “Macbeth” and “Native Son,” and with every student engaged. When students discussed the symbolism of the flight by the leading character, Milkman Dead, David Marino speculated that “flight is more of a metaphor for going to heaven.”
