It started in the 1960s, the “Age of Aquarius” and Woodstock, a season of “free love” and “sex, drugs & rock ’n roll.” College campuses were beset by protests—against the Vietnam War and racial injustice—and demands—for women’s rights and greater campus freedom. There were strikes and sit-ins; there was violence. 

Into this maelstrom Shipley was sending its young women. Members of the class of ’68 advised that the School had not prepared them for the world they found at Cornell, Stanford, and the like. Isota Epes ’36 (Headmistress 1965–72) was seriously concerned. She explained her thinking in a speech in 1984: “…seniors from Shipley were going off to colleges, more and more of them coeducational, where rules and regulations had been pressured out of existence, where social patterns were in a state of flux…” There was, she said, “too much hyped-up social and sexual exposure, and too little living and working together as persons who deserve each other’s respect.” She concluded, “many of our social ills and, above all, our failed marriages and the pain they entail are the result of lack of friendship between men and women.” Coeducation for Shipley was the answer to better preparation for the world.

At the same time, there were pressures on single-sex independent schools. The big boys’ schools were beginning to admit girls, thus increasing competition. Episcopal considered a merger and ultimately went its own coeducational way. Despite the philosophical rationales for coeducation, there has always been a question as to how large a role finances played in Shipley’s decision to admit boys. Likely, the two supported each other; a response to the practical challenge of an increasing preference for coeducation could be credibly supported philosophically. 

Finally, Shipley, with its emphasis on the individual and strong relationships between students and teachers, offered a coeducational experience different from that of other schools. As former English teacher Elizabeth de Luca ’65 wrote in a report on the project, “the most profound and far-reaching coeducational concept advanced by the leadership of the school was the decision to try to attract the particular kind of boy to whom Shipley as it was would be appealing, and not to try to change Shipley into a school that would appeal to boys generally…[or] stereotypically.” The School’s philosophy would remain intact. With robust humanities and arts, Shipley would attract a “well-rounded boy.” 

Initially, there were experiments, exchanges with St. George’s and Episcopal that tested this philosophy. Shipley had a “greater sensitivity to the individual,” wrote an Episcopal exchange student, and students there were “more interested in learning.” “The real effect Shipley has had on us,” wrote another, “has been academic, not social. Students who are fulfilled and challenged by the consideration of the teacher respond by working harder.”

Achieving real coeducation—real parity—was not easy, especially for a girls’ school. Fathers who were happy to send their girls to a formerly all-boys’ school were not so keen to send boys to Shipley. Male admissions were aided by the arrival in the area of families unfamiliar with the traditional Main Line school images. Internally, it took time to modify curricula and arrange proper facilities for boys. Male teachers and coaches were hired. It was critical that Shipley boys make a good showing on the athletic field. 

In her report on coeducation, Elizabeth de Luca wrote that Shipley’s vision in going coeducational was “to provide for boys as well as girls a humanistic, compassionate environment surrounding a rigorous academic program.” As to achieving Isota Epes’ goal, “It is a community,” de Luca wrote, “in which boys and girls, men and women, operate and cooperate as more fully equal parts than in many ‘real world’ arenas.” Nevertheless, the evidence of the last 50 years shows that Shipley graduates, young people of all genders, are well prepared for the “real world.”