WHY WOMEN GO TO COLLEGE

I met a 22 year-old college graduate on the subway who told me that she had majored in English. I asked if she had read Walt Whitman and she replied, “Who’s he?” I said that he is considered by many to be the greatest American poet and that much of his work can be found in Leaves of Grass. She never heard of that either. I asked if she had read Dante, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, or Balzac, and she replied, “Who are they?”

I decided to drop my inquiry of her knowledge of western literature and instead decided to pursue her reason for going to college. The normal response by women to that question is, to get an education so that they can get a job and make some money and be somebody. She short-circuited the process by stating that she got an education to make some money. When I explained the usual response I get to that question I asked her what part of speech education, job, money, and somebody are, and she did not know. She did not know a verb from a noun or adjective. I normally explain that these are nouns and if women speak in nouns, they cannot possibly make change, since to make change requires the use of verbs. I went to school to learn, and then I went to work, where I had the opportunity to build, to create, and to make things. Men are verb people.

This exchange with the English major caused me to reflect on letters I receive from the Association of American Scholars in which they indicate that a test given to high school graduates was given to college seniors 50 years later, and the college seniors did not do as well on it as the high school graduates a half century earlier. In practical terms that means women who graduate from college today don’t know as much as their grandmothers who graduated from high school 50 years earlier. I went to school with their grandmothers and great grandmothers and they could write better, express themselves better and reason better than their grandchildren who went to college. They could also darn a sock and dress a chicken and be of other use around the house.

One would think that if college doesn’t teach more than what high school used to, people would stop going to college, but this is not the case with young women; their enrollment in higher education continues to increase. The reason for this apparent anomaly is because women do not go to school to learn. They go to school to be. Men on the other hand go to school to learn and when they recognize that they are not learning they drop out of college. High school boys cannot drop out; instead they commit truancy. Grade school boys can neither drop out nor commit truancy, so they are given Ritalin to endure instruction for noun oriented people. There is a dual issue here. Aside from men realizing they are not learning, why does getting a diploma satisfy a woman’s need to be? Or does it?

The feminine principal is the receptive entity in gender relationships. Since she cannot aggressively pursue, she must attract. She in essence is saying look at ME. I am worthy of being your mate. This natural and healthy activity attracts the male. The purpose of gender is to mate, and the feminine principle attracts the male so that he will mate with her. However, family has been destroyed in the Western culture and males have willing surrendered their naturally assertive role. A woman now has no purpose in saying look at ME. Yet in is part of her psyche to be wanted. This desire to be noticed and wanted is replaced by a piece of paper, a certificate, degree, or license. She is continually propagandized and motivated “to get an education and be somebody.”

Some who read this article will say that such a viewpoint is chauvinistic and misogynist. To those who reach that conclusion I call their attention to the recruitment add run by New York University which displayed a caption in all the subways over the picture of a young woman that read, “Making more of me, that’s why I go to NYU.” Is there anything in that caption having to do with learning? If we erase NYU and substitute in is place Marva’s Beauty Salon, the caption will still be valid, perhaps more so. The NYU ad appealed to the ME, not any desire to learn.

The recruiting slogan of the US Army “Be All That You Can Be” is geared to women. Many have opted to do just that and some went to Abu Ghraib prison and made pornographic movies, got pregnant, and were sent back to the states for an all expenses paid delivery.

A piece of paper is a poor substitute for marriage and family, it is a tragedy that women go to school in order to compensate for the lack of demand for their natural function-being a wife and mother. Is it any wonder that the number one debilitating illness of the American woman is depression?

The only natural relationship between men and women is to mate and propagate the species. The fundamental unit of society is the family and it requires support. We need a change in our fundamental values. When that happens all the “big” problems that we address will disappear of their own accord; however, women are the receptive entity of society and they cannot initiate change. The challenge for men at this time in Western society is to rise to the occasion and bring about the needed change in values that will rebuild the family and tribal structure.