Sometimes, a major social issue gets defined in odd ways. Take the boys issue. In theory, this should be a discussion about what’s happening to boys in elementary and middle school that’s producing such awful results in high school.

 But that’s not the way the real world works. In the real world, the issue gets defined by the ways real people see it popping up their lives, such as the gender-imbalanced college campuses or the rush to sign up boys for single-sex schools. That’s what people notice, so those developments become the debatable issues.

Frankly, I’d like to shift the issue to how elementary schools prepare boys for the new, verbally intensive college prep curriculum that awaits them. But for now, I can’t ignore the real world, which is debating this, single-sex schools.

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