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The literature on honour makes interesting reading for anyone thinking about confidence. There are lots of similarities between the two concepts, I would argue, not least because both of them are based in part on other people’s opinion of you.

The Guardian’s front page story yesterday raised this issue. It featured a report showing that girls do better in single-sex schools, especially if they’ve been struggling before. Despite this, the number of girl’s schools in the state sector has declined significantly in recent years.

In his bookThe Duel in Early Modern England, Markku Peltonen defines two different sorts of honour:

a) Vertical honour. The right to special respect due to one’s superiority. This sort of honour could be increased - by getting better at whatever it is you’re doing, or by some particularly impressive achievement - which is why it is sometimes called “positive honour”.

b) Horizontal honour. The right to respect due to an equal. In other words, the basic respect we give to people because we recognise them as being the same as us. While this sort of honour can be lost or diminished, it could never be increased. This is why it is sometimes referred to as “negative honour”.

Which ones does confidence most resemble? Perhaps you’ll think that it is not actually like either of them, but is instead more like reflexive honour, the respect you give yourself. This is James Bowman’s idea, and when it comes to the history I find it anachronistic. But maybe Bowman’s thought can help us look at confidence. As one analysis of Bowman says:

In its most admirable form, honour is about striving to be better than you are. Poet Robert Browning said, “When the fight begins within himself, a man’s worth something.”

I wonder. Is it really possible to divorce your achievements from the way people see them? That’s not what seemed to come across in the Guardian. Sue Dunford, headteacher of Southfield School for Girls, was interviewed on the subject of single-sex schooling:

It’s a question of confidence in the way girls develop. It’s cool to be very good at anything in a girls school - maths, sciences or physics. No one will ask why you’re doing a boys’ subject. Girls who lack confidence can thrive more in girls-only schools. We don’t have boys competing and distracting, so girls can really go for it.

The implication, it seems to me, is that horizontal is better than vertical - boys, it’s implied, create an overly-competitive atmosphere. Dunford also seems to be saying that girls can only really achieve horizontal confidence in a single-sex environment, because here they can truly be “equals”.

“Reflexivity” simply means that you think about yourself. But no-one thinks about themselves in a vacuum. Remeber your school days? Remember how important everyone’s opinion was to you? When it comes to education, we’re choosing between horizontal and vertical. Personally, I’m all for single-sex schools.

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