In a follow-up to my post The Parental Serf, I wrote:

“The enormous sums spent on higher education don’t represent adoration of youth so much as adoration of institutions and a superstitious belief in their magical properties. I don’t mind selling out to the future. I do mind selling out to colleges which offer little of value that cannot be obtained for much less.

James M. writes:

Surely, the “magic spell” can only be sustained within a healthy job market? Recent college graduates know or will come to know what little they received for their parents money, and many are having trouble finding employment. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on each so that they could be taught by unintelligible immigrant TAs while playing in a richly populated hook-up hunting ground. If the economy continues its downward slide, how will a matured reflection upon these memories affect decisions made regarding the schooling of these graduates’ own children?

As a supplement to this issue, we have the mass-dismantling of vocational technology programs in high schools across America. Tradesmen are retiring much faster than they are being replaced. Everyone is getting funneled into college, and the attitude is that kids who don’t go to college are failures; they got “left behind”. Working with your hands is for lower class people who “weren’t suited” for higher education. There are hordes of College Engineering students who can’t actually make anything. White-collar husbands can’t fix a leaky faucet, change their wife’s brake pads, or make a birdhouse.

So, if there is a depression in our future, I hope that positive side-effect will be a disenchantment with unnecessary higher education and a re-invigoration of the trades.

Laura writes:

I also hope for a re-invigoration of genuine learning. I did fairly well in college but I barely learned a thing. Virtually every scrap of higher learning I possess was obtained on my own.

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  Is the atmosphere of fear and anxiety that pervades high schools throughout America, fear that without admission to the right college an individual's life is doomed, one of the most effective crowd control devices ever invented? Such is the claim of John Taylor Gatto in his new book Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. I entirely agree with him on this point. The belief that learning depends on a college education, and that worldly success depends on it is, a myth. Many jobs today depend on the credentials acquired at colleges and universities, but the learning, especially in an age of advanced commuications, can be acquired for less. Less money, less time, less hassle and less damage to the ability to think. Gatto was once an award-winning teacher in Manhattan. He now believes schools deliberately inculcate stupidity and passivity. They do bring one good to society: they are a successful jobs program.  He tried to discover the reasons for our profound over-schooling and concluded, "Only a darkness at work, reachable not by common experience but through historical, sociological, psychological, theological, political and philosophical research, could reveal the causes, it seemed to me."

  Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, was the favorite beach town of America's intellectuals in the 50s ad 60s. Writers, artists, scientists, law professors, historians, psychoanalysts - many of the most prominent names took up residence in summer cottages on the dunes and held their evening cocktail parties overlooking the magnificent Atlantic. Devastating wit and incomparable learning were concentrated in one of the coast's most pristine settings. But, the ship of American culture was showing serious cracks. If you looked closely, it was already listing to one side. Alfred Kazin, the New York literary critic, spent his summers in Wellfleet. He wrote a moving essay about both the beauty and decadence of the place. He said of his wife of the time, who was consumed with her work as a novelist and with her love of highbrow parties, "I came to think of R. not as a wife but as a brilliant, wayward daughter, so dogged that I would never be able to help." Kazin's essay "Wellfleet and the Beach of the Intellectuals" is not available online, but here is its melancholy closing: End of summer. End of a marriage. How strange it was at the "violet" hour of the day, when the light was fading and the couples in odd corners were getting cozier by the minute - how strange it was to look out on the outermost Cape with nothing else in sight but a last fishing vessel. Somewere in that thrilling, frightening emptiness was Portugal, even Galicia in northwest Spain. How strange…

In a previous entry, Jeffrey W. laments the end of courtship and describes romance today as a form of “egalitarian play.” In response, I said:

The Victorians created what Linda Lichter called a “religion of love,” with its own sacred practices and totems, down to the ribbon-wrapped bundles of letters from a suitor that a young woman would keep in her drawer. This is not to say they worshipped love, but they knew that it was largely built from human artifice and that without this it was unsatisfying. With all our sexual libertinism, we are far more prudish than the Victorians. They truly knew how to be in love and to woo each other. Their famous “cult of domesticity” was not a cult, it was civilization in its highest form.

Ellie Hunter writes:

I tried to teach my children about this, and my daughter decided she did not want to date. One day a young man came to see my husband about some business and my husband literally snatched him. “You would be a good man for my daughter,” he told him.  The young man thought it was unusual but he was enchanted. He had been in the dating scene and could never figure out what the next step was. Here, in a family courtship, he would be guided to the final results and get where he was going.  We played parlour games, went on outings, trips, and all sorts of activities as we shared the courtship. Mostly, my husband and I did the work and set things up so that they could enjoy time together.
 
Ten years later, our younger son had a bad experience with a girl who acted like she liked him. She was plastered all over him at a Christmas party we had, and needless to say he was happy about it. But, when he proposed, she said she just wanted to be friends.  Later, he went to see her and she gave him the cold shoulder. If  she had known about courtship, and if her parents had been involved, perhaps she would not have played this game.  When people did that, they were “marked” and they learned a lesson.  Today we allow it to go on.  When someone saw my son with this girl they warned me that she was that “type” and that there was no way she was serious about marriage.  At least there are a few people who speak out and who have some sense of propriety in the matter.
 
This is an example of two ways of doing things. One is through the parents, which is mocked and ridiculed today, but it is lasting and happy. You know, the moderns spread the lie that parents and family were oppressive and that girls needed their freedom to choose. But in a courtship, a parent is more likely to get an end result. In dating, the choices are just so confusing and it rarely ends in marriage.

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  Jeffrey W. writes: I couldn’t help but react with some bemusement (and perplexity) to the response from the single-man in his mid-twenties you received to your letter. I am the same age as your correspondent and my experience searching for a spouse has been made difficult by the fact that very few of my peers seem to be interested in seriously pairing off at all and my efforts to get to know women with the sought after purpose of marriage is frequently met with derision (I am frequently told not to desire a wife so much). From my perspective courtship and flirtation are not so much hurried as non-existent. Egalitarian play is the essence that composes most social interactions among young adults with the result of there being a marked lack of wooing and encouragement to seek out marriage. Those among my peerage who are married usually describe themselves as having stumbled into it by accident or were overtaken by it like an impersonal force of nature. Laura writes: The amount of group activity that takes place among single people in their twenties amazes me. "Egalitarian play" is a great term for it. Conversation is the greatest of aphrodisiacs. It seems hard to engage in this art at its highest when one is always traveling in a herd. This is the ultimate triumph of the Marxist project: the destruction of the foundations of love.  When people feel awkward and constantly uncertain in the civilized…

Alexander writes:

This week, you’ve featured a letter from a women in her mid-twenties struggling to find a husband. It is also interesting to read from the perspective of a single man in his mid-twenties. I find it’s very difficult to know what a girl is really interested in, and whether she is interesting to me. I fear that given the standards of the society we’re in, those of us who are interested in more than the normal contemporary relationship come off to most people as not interested in a relationship at all.

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  When summer's heat reaches its climax, there is a renewed awareness of the benevolence of shade. The outstretched limbs tower above, waving their green fans with indolence and occasional vigor. The motion of a million scraps of parchment creates white noise. A 120-foot oak can send several tons of moisture into the atmosphere in a single year and produce 100,000 leaves. It may lower the temperature in its vicinity by as much as 20 degrees. The sheer busyness that lies behind this diminution of light is remarkable. We find more than physical relief in these recesses. The moist leaf, the wizened bark, and the statuary of limb contribute to a sense of longevity and inspiring paralysis, as if life were halted and summarized in these enclaves of composure and meditation. It is no surprise Buddha found his path in the shade of a large tree: "Therefore, with resolution as his only support and companion, he set his mind on Enlightenment and proceeded to the root of a Pipal Tree, where the ground was carpeted with green grass."  Cemeteries seem incomplete without living monuments that provide at least a modicum of the "thousand years of gloom" of the yew in Tennyson's In Memoriam, "who changes not in any gale,/Nor branding summer suns avail."  Shade shelters the dead and fosters memory. Trees possess personality and their beckoning shade draws us closer to their idiosyncrasies. The Japanese maple is feminine, almost erotic in a restrained way while an aged oak is paternal, commanding, and indifferent. Lying under shallow-rooted maples, you feel uneasy, as if someone is about to pull the carpet up from under you. No one would even think of…

Katy writes:

Thanks for your site — I read it daily through my Google RSS feed with much enjoyment. Like you, I think the correlation between the decline of domesticity and the decline of thought is no coincidence. Both children and ideas need time and nurture to grow to maturity. One of the side-effects of modernity seems to be that we push both out the door and into the world a bit too fast, or perhaps just in the wrong ways, before they are ready.

To get to our topic, though — without having read Bellatin, I must point out that there is a long and fine tradition of “literature of the wound,” better known as the grotesque, in the West. One of its exemplars would of course be Flannery O’Connor, in stories such as “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and “Good Country People.” The fault in contemporary authors in general seems to be not that they fixate on the deformed, disfigured, or diseased. All reflection on human nature must, to be complete, explore our inescapable flaws, either directly or through some metaphor. Rather, the fault is that contemporary writers of woundedness increasingly seem to indulge a tendency to exploit the macabre and prurient for its own sake — seeing it as attractive in itself rather than in what it can reveal about us. They show increasingly less of the gentleness and good humor O’Connor showed even as she left Hulga abandoned in the hayloft, and their characters show increasingly less of the peaceful yet profoundly disturbing self-acceptance of the sideshow hermaphrodite in “Temple” as it lifted its dress and said: “God made me this away, I don’t dispute hit.”

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  What could be more tedious than viewing domesticity purely in terms of who does which chores? Oxford University researchers, in a failed effort to keep from twiddling their thumbs, have created an "egalitarian index" to measure domestic harmony around the world, according to Science Daily.  All is seen through the prism of efficiently-divided chores, as if families were business franchises. The more men and women reportedly share household chores, the higher a country ranks on the index. The United States comes in fourth in the world even though mysteriously there are few men in the supermarket aisles. How many people honestly report they do nothing around the house? Yet, the study results have the imprimatur of certified data. Interestingly, the survey fails to look at how well men and women perform the chores or whether many chores important to comfort and daily sanity are even executed. It does not ponder one possible cause of the declining birth rate in top ranking countries, such as Norway, Sweden and Great Britian. Men look awful in aprons. It is important that men share in household chores. Women are not drudges. But, it is not fair to divide chores evenly if it keeps a woman from being a woman and a man from being a man.    .

  A reader writes:  Dear Thinking Housewife, I have been perusing your website and enjoy it, with some serious reservations. If I'm not mistaken I am younger than you (despite your obvious zest and vitality.) I am a single woman in my mid-twenties. Things are not going too well with me. I haven't found the right man and am beginning to give up. The truth is I haven't any idea how to go about this. Can you offer advice? Laura writes: Thank you for reading. I appreciate your interest. Only one woman in history never faced your predicament. In her legendary garden, Eve opened her eyes - eyes too clear and deep for deception - and there he was. Her self transcended.  A being familiar and yet strange. There he stood, delivered to specifications.  Eve's experience - both mythical and real -  has left its trace in us. It should  be easy. Love should just happen. Why does finding a mate seem the romantic equivalent of building the Suez Canal?  My first recommendation is that you realize what you seek is not natural. You are not a frog in a pool. Human love is herbs and chemicals, a blend of the natural and the synthetic. Let it sink in. You have a formidable task before you, something you probably face amid pressure to build a dazzling career. That's a bum deal. The whole world may tell you to relax. Take your time and it will happen. Even your own mother may seem indifferent, unlike mothers of the past who gazed at unmarried daughters with undisclosed panic. This nonchalance is a lie. Don't believe it for a second. I advise you to maintain a healthy state of panic until you…

Boudicca Haranguing the Britons by John Opie

History has known a few great women warriors, such as Boudicca, who led the Iceni tribe of Briton in battle against the Romans. But, the normalization of women in combat is a sign of the weakening of a nation’s will to defend itself.

On the subject of women leaders and warriors, Rose writes:

Your other commenter has caused me to ponder the topic of warlike females. I know that many conservatives are displeased by popularity of women-warriors in modern culture, but I believe that they are wrong when they say that the phenomenon is driven only by political correctness.

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  Melissa writes: In reflecting on women leaders such as Queen Victoria, I would like to add that there is more to the "Pharaoh-ess" Hatshepsut. She did not rule as Pharaoh but as Regent to Thutmose III, the legitimate ruler, after the death of their father, Thutmose II. Her memory was all but erased by her brother when he assumed absolute rule in the 23d year of his reign, presumably after her death. Whatever may be said about her, it is an important distinction that she was actually a regent for a pharaoh rather than a pharaoh herself. There have been rare female military leaders, notably Joan of Arc and the Hebrew Judge, Deborah. Each was more of an ideological leader and encouraged and rallied the troops without really fighting in battle. They were the personification of "a girl worth fighting for". They pointed to the truth and brought the men they led to see, understand, and appreciate it. This is not to belittle their critical roles, but rather an attempt to be intellectually honest about those roles. It is only logical that their roles were necessarily ideological because they could not be physical. While it may happen on occasion that there is a single women who can physically best a single man, it is not the standard. Warriors epitomize masculinity and all the elements of the manifold identity, and as such no woman could best them as a category. Honesty is necessary. But that does not mean…

  Philip M. from England sends a recent article about parents delaying potty training and schools that  must deal with children in diapers. This has been a big issue in nursery schools here for some time. Philip says: Margaret Morrissey, of family lobby group ParentsOutloud, said mothers shouldn't be blamed for the problem. She said, "If we insist that mothers go out to work when their children are still young - out of the house by 7.30am, dropping off a baby at nursery, then the two kids at school, working a full day and getting back at 6pm - things are going to give." Laura writes: How long before you have a prime minister who proudly declares he wears nappies at night? Philip responds: If anything, our PM should be wearing them over his head, for much the same purposes. But then again, would it be good for the economy, or is there a chance it may cause 'diaper-inflation'?   I apologize for the implied English crudity of the above remarks. Laura writes: In all seriousness, few topics are more political or controversial than diapers. Careless remarks about delayed potty-training can permanently destroy a person's reputation. It's a complicated subject. The invention of paper and plastic diapers has changed everything, making it far less uncomfortable for children to wear wet diapers. Furthermore, training a child takes a level of concentration that does not fit in with the pace of modern living or the anti-authoritarian style of parenting…

Some people dislike the insistent drone of cicadas. Cicada-song grows intense in this part of the world in August. I consider it one of the greatest of nature’s sounds, comparable in beauty to waves hitting the shore. It drowns out man-made noise and calls to mind times past.

Jean Henri Fabre, the 19th century French entomologist, investigated the widely-held belief that the cicadas’ song was purely a mating ritual. His investigations probably would not meet modern scientific standards, but they are fascinating. He wrote:

For fifteen years the Common Cicada has thrust his society upon me. Every summer for two months I have these insects before my eyes, and their song in my ears. I see them ranged in rows on the smooth bark of the plane trees, the maker of music and his mate sitting side-by-side …. Whether drinking or moving they never cease singing.

It seems unlikely therefore that they are calling their mates. You do not spend months on end calling to someone who is at your elbow. Indeed I am inclined to think that the Cicada himself cannot even hear the song he sings with so much apparent delight ….

On one occasion I borrowed the local artillery, that is to say the guns that are fired on feast days in the village. There were two of them, and they were crammed with powder as though for the most important rejoicings. They were placed at the foot of the plane trees in front of my door. We were careful to leave the windows open, to prevent the panes from breaking. The Cicadas in the branches overhead could not see what was happening.

Six of us waited below, eager to hear what would be the effect on the orchestra above.

Bang! The gun went off with a noise like a thunderclap.

Quite unconcerned, the Cicada continued to sing. Not one appeared in the least disturbed …

I think, after this experiment, we must admit that the Cicada is hard of hearing, and like a very deaf man, is quite unconscious that he is making a noise.

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TH:  Good evening, and welcome to The Thinking Housewife. My guest tonight is the eminently fictitious Ellie Forthnaught, founder and sole proprietor of an interesting new venture in education, the New Wave Academy for Women.

Welcome, Mrs. Forthnaught.

Mrs. F:  Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

TH:  Mrs. Forthnaught, –  may we call you Ellie?

Mrs. F:  No, no. Please call me Andy. That’s what all my friends call me.

TH:  Fine then, Andy. Tell us about this idea of yours. I understand you intend to revolutionize women’s higher education in America.

Mrs. F:  Oh well, I’m no revolutionary really, but I recently announced – at a virtually unattended press conference in the nation’s capital – my plan for a chain of prestigious academies for young women. The start-up date is uncertain, but the plan calls for two dozen academies eventually, with four hundred students each.

TH:  This is serious. Sugar?

Mrs F:  Thank you.

TH:  And?

Mrs. F:  There’s likely to be one in every region of America. That’s the goal.

TH:  The name of these academies?

Mrs. F:  The New Wave Academy for Women.  It’s simple and memorable.

TH:  Are you wealthy?

Mrs. F:   Funding is uncertain. I don’t have any start-up funds as a matter of fact and I don’t expect to find sponsors soon.  The plan is well-developed and that’s what counts. Tuition should be in the range of $5,000 per year. I tried to crunch this number to make it less, but that would entail feeding the women only bread and water.

TH:  That’s unconstitutional.
 
Mrs. F:  That’s what I thought.

TH:  Now, these are four-year institutions. And, what will women study?

Mrs. F:  The first year will involve intensive de-programming of students. Most will have been exposed to pernicious ideas. At times, it may seem like breaking wild horses, but I assure you wherever there is error, truth tastes sweet. By the second year, the women will be ready to learn.

TH:  And, then?

Mrs. F:  Our subjects will fall into two categories. One, there will be traditional higher education courses in the liberal arts: history, literature, mathematics, science, music, art history, and philosophy. In short, the whole Gordian knot of human affairs and ideas will be crammed into their pretty little heads in an entertaining and compelling fashion. New Wave students will be chosen for their avidity for learning so this shouldn’t be much of a problem.

TH:  And, the second category?

Mrs. F:   The second category will involve the womanly arts, including homemaking, psychology, child development, domestic crafts, etc. Not too much, not too little. Most women today emerge from college tens of thousands of dollars poorer and with no inkling how to live their real lives, not the slightest knowledge about men or children, about sickness or health, about rich or poor. They are untutored. To put it unkindly, they are idiots, and have spent a small fortune becoming so.

TH:  Were you an … idiot once?

Forthnaught:   Me? Oh, fortunately I was interested in archaeology in college and in my senior year I went on an expedition in Crete with the famous Professor James Hoovenhollen.

TH:  The Professor Hoovenhollen?

Forthnaught:  I fell in love. We married and had six children.

TH:  But, your name is Forthnaught, Andy.

Forthnaught:  James died ten years ago. I am now married to Allan Forthnaught.

TH:  Not every woman can have a Professor Hoovenhollen, or a Forthnaught. What will New Wave women do when they graduate?

Mrs. F:  One question will be strictly forbidden in the hallways, the classrooms and the dormitories of New Wave. That is this: What will you do? This question regarding the young womens’ futures after graduation will have already been implicitly answered by their way of life and by the curriculum at New Wave.  What will they do? They will wrest civilization from the clutches of certain doom. What will they do? They will raise the next generation and love men. What will they do? They will perpetuate what is highest in their culture and extend the delicate bonds of community and family. They will defend beauty, guard revelation, and cherish the old and the sick. “But, what will they really do?” some will still demand to know. These are people who insist on one answer and are satisfied with only one answer. Here it is: New Wave Women will do nothing!

TH:  I foresee protests.

Forthnaught:  Yes, protests and pickets. From both the left and the right.
 
TH:  Have you ever been publicly flogged?

Mrs. F:  I expect things to calm down so the girls and my teachers can get to work.

TH:  This type of education, isn’t it … aristocratic? I mean, aren’t you imposing your values on others?

Mrs. F:    Once they go out into the world and astound people with their beauty and grace, their well-behaved and intelligent children, their contented marriages and their orderly homes, many people will accuse New Wavers of elitism. “Not everyone can be like that,” people will say, “and therefore no one should be like that.” This is the great leveling argument of democracy run amuck. We should all strive to live for money and only for money because some people are poor. We should all live for our jobs and nothing but our jobs because people need jobs. We should all have ill-kept homes and children who watch television because not everyone has orderly homes and children who play outside.

It’s strange but this same leveling argument is not applied to Old Wave Women. No one makes the same cry of elitism against the woman senator or the woman corporate executive or the teacher. Somehow she is permitted to reach the pinnacles of her endeavors without being accused of elitism. Why can’t domestic women excel at what they do? Odd, isn’t it?

TH:  You make it sound as if New Wavers will be perfect. You make it sound as if the whole world will be imperfect, except New Wavers.

Mrs. F:  The aspirations of our students will be perfect, not their lives. 

TH:  Let’s talk about funding.
 
Mrs. F:  I fear for the possibility of corporate sponsorship. New Wave women will make poor spenders compared to their mainstream counterparts. Frugality is one of the most charming of feminine arts. It is a social discipline, best practiced with like-minded others. Every day will be a Stone Soup day for a New Wave Woman if necessary. As long as she has a stone, her family and friends will eat.

Here’s what I figure. If New Wave women have an average of five children –

TH: Five!

Mrs. F:  Okay, six. If they have six children each, in 50 years the results of their work will be visible in hundreds of communities. People will wander into some of these lucky towns and notice something different. Residents say hello and smile. The rough edges are worn away and the hideous strip malls are gone. The children speak in full sentences and actually play outside. The old spend their days amid family. The food is delicious. Divorce is rare.

TH:  It sounds as if you are imposing your values on others, Andy.

Mrs. F:  New Wave is a school, not a prison.

TH:  Isn’t this an attack on non-New Wave women?
 
Mrs. F:  An attack?

TH:  It’s fine for you to do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, Andy. Go ahead and be recklessly domestic if you want. If you’re into nouveau-patriarchy, that’s fine. But, you shouldn’t impose it on society or on other women. That’s not right.

Mrs. F:  The school is voluntary.

TH:  But, the idea might spread!

Mrs. F:  I don’t believe –
 
TH:  Do you think men will… like New Wave Women?

Mrs. F:  New Wavers will gently persuade.

TH:  This isn’t Sex and the City, I see.

Mrs. F:   I’m hoping for even more academies someday, perhaps six in every state and five or ten in each major city.
 
TH:  Andy.

Mrs. F:  Yes?

TH:  Have you ever heard of fascism?

Mrs. F:  I used to tell my children they could have no dessert unless they –
 
TH:  That’s fascism, pure and simple, Andy.  Listen, before you go, could you describe for our readers your necklace? I can’t take my eyes off it.

Mrs. F:  Oh, this?  This is a bronze cast of a little medallion I found in Crete. You see, there’s a woman holding an urn on her shoulder.

TH:  It’s lovely.

Mrs. F:  It brings back great memories, memories of days sifting through antiquity with James, chisels in our pockets and dust on our shoes.

TH:  Did you ever regret giving up archaeology and becoming a nobody?

Mrs. F:  Me?  Why no, not for a second. I moved forward in my life.

TH: Forward?

Mrs. F:  That’s the opposite of backward.

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