What is education for American men?
So my friend & fellow pomocon Tom Harmon asked me the other day about what education could or should do for young men in America these days. We’re worried about the collapse of men in college. He’s a professor, so he deals with young men; I have the freedom of the student of political philosophy, but I will not speak irresponsibly.
I have to leave aside the sciences & the professions; for the core of the university, however, I think I can speak without being ignorant or crossing discipline boundaries. I guess that insistence on the importance of manliness to justice is the beginning of education for young men. Study of history is necessary, war especially, & similarly from poetic presentations in literature, ancient & modern, an understanding of heroism. That seems to me the only way to instill seriousness; it requires instilling respect for poetry & a liberation from pop culture. Happily, manliness is forbidden in our time, so authority & daring can be married. The reasonable man today must have guts, or he is nothing.
I don't think Americans want their boys to be gentlemen; I don't think the boys want it either; but a modicum of gentleness can & should be instilled through the conversational side of higher education. I cannot recommend softness, because it only encourages the silly & sometimes not trivial wickedness typical of out-of-control young men. To make for gentleness, authority is first necessary, which is largely a matter of competence & confidence. Boys are unlikely to learn from professors they cannot respect, but to learn they also must be encouraged to think before they speak & to look forward to speaking with their professors. To be a college professor to American boys is to be a hunter with his dogs.
The teaching of history can prepare the teaching of poetry which can prepare teaching some things about politics & philosophy which Americans cannot avoid, given our Enlightenment forebears, like Jefferson. But it is a long road to getting boys to take a thought seriously, to understand or at least dimly sense its importance. To free clever young Americans from parroting utterly mediocre pieties from the press is difficult; it takes a long time, too… Nobility they will learn sooner; young men in America are not unable to weep in face of sacrifice.
I hew to the unpopular opinion that boys should be taught to notice things about American society, its freedom, variety, & the many troubles, & think of them in light of their education, as much as possible free of jargon. They should admire & also judge the enterprises America is full of. Of course, the academic style of writing would have to be thrown out, & boys encouraged to write more or less in the style of their professors & of the men they read.
So with the education. Now, as to how things are with us, we who seek an education: Men in America must marry, work jobs for a living, mostly as employees, & deal with computers every day; but these sorts of things come after character is formed & even after taste & the habits of thought are formed; the education I have in mind is much likelier to make college memorable, to make friendships, & to encourage young men to feel that freedom is pregnant with greatness. They could experience the greatness of America without being crushed morally, if they grasp political history. They could learn to make choices without feeling overwhelmed & abandoned at the same time. They might even be public spirited. It goes without saying, this wouldn't apply to non-Americans without significant changes...
Now, my friends will mock me & say this is secretly a Straussian guide as to how to begin to educate educators instead, who are for the most part soft & cautious, never really professors, always employees without much trust in their institution. What is authority to them when they have no property to speak of? The limits of their partnership must be the limits of the education they offer, since who’d be fool enough to believe them? Well, there is something to this criticism, but I think it is not decisive. I’ve taught young men about politics or literature & I’m not only not overcome by shame, but am in fact of good cheer; I know other men who have done it for a living; I cannot point to any institution that takes this problem with young men seriously, but I’ve not made it my job to find them nor they to find me, so it may merely be an accident that I don’t give examples of places fit for young men…
I’ve not said anything about faith, since I’m not a priest. But Tocqueville says Christianity is an aristocracy in America—it makes man great, his destiny of great concern to God, it makes him hopeful, able to act. This I have seen for myself & I believe it to be true, though it’s rather rare. Churches seem even more emasculated than colleges, if that’s possible. Maybe there’s some need for manliness in the faith & for young men; I think they could be reminded they have souls.
I’ve also said nothing about the wokies. If an institution dares not face them, it’s no use talking education. If an institution has leaders & men on staff, wokies will not be a problem, but a blessing in disguise.
Finally, it’s more obvious to me that colleges share in the weaknesses of other institutions today—abandonment by people who don’t want to associate anymore, an absence of serious men, a failure of confidence in the future—than it is that they benefit from the strengths of America. Americans are an enterprising bunch, though none too righteous. Much should be made of that, so that temporary work & excitement serve the permanent things. To speak like our amusing businessmen, young men of ambition are a vastly underpriced asset.