So there’s this article going around the web written by a Catholic father that details the reasons why he does not think parents (presumably fathers) should send their daughters to college.
Well, as a college educated mother of three little girls, I should have known better than to read this article. Surely it would piss me off. Surely it would make me want to contact the gentleman directly and explain to him all of the errors of his ways. Surely it would cause me to fret and stew. But surely as well, I was suckered in and bought the bait. And…
It was worse than I thought.
You can read the article on the link above, but the basics are that college is for a career not an education and women are made to raise a family not cultivate a career. Therefore college is not necessary.
I’ve taught college English for thirteen years now although over the last five years, I’ve only taught one or two classes a year and that has been online from home. But over those thirteen years, I’ve taught at public and private, non for profit and for profit, state and community, in class and online. I’ve taught seventeen year olds and I’ve taught almost seventy year olds. I’ve taught men and women, rich and poor, prepared, underprepared, and severely underprepared. And the one thing that nearly every single one of these students had in common was the reason that they were going to college was to get a job.
As you can imagine, that makes the life of an English teacher a bit more difficult. While I tend to think it’s common sense that a professional needs solid writing skills, most of my students never saw any sense in that. They would constantly complain (even though they tended to enjoy the classes) that the only reason colleges required gen ed courses was to make extra money.
I remember when I started teaching, and I thought my idealistic views of education were shared by the masses, and I would be flabbergasted at these kids telling me that college was just for a career. Surely it was for more than that.
It’s such a sad view, to think that a person would spend four plus years of their life and untold sums of money and mental energy merely to get their foot in the door of the career of their choice.
What about critical thinking? What about writing and reading and analytical thinking? What about coming to a greater appreciation of the arts and the whole history of humanity in all its richness and glory and depravity? What about learning to speak in the tongues of another and learning to view the world from the mindset of another? What about stretching your minds to think in mathematical ways that your ordinary life just won’t allow? What about learning the ideas of the greatest minds of human history as they pondered questions of life and meaning and purpose, of morality and ethics, of social good and private good and living the good life?
The four years of college can be career prep. If that’s what you want them to be. Or they can be life prep. They can ground you in an understanding of things that are so much greater than you and your limited circumstances, and they can change the ways you view your world and yourself in it. They can make you a better person, not just one more prepared for a career.
And when Mr. Alleman then goes on to say that education isn’t necessary because we have internet connections and library cards… well it makes me wonder what type of educational experiences he had. Sure, we can gain knowledge from books and some web sources. And we can learn a lot in this method. But isn’t there something about a community centered around a pursuit of knowledge that is so much richer than reading text on a page? Surely there are some professors one could do without (I have a strong recollection of a mass communication professor come to mind from years back) but surely there are many more who can open doors to an understanding so much richer than we could get without them.
Without mentors and peers to assist us on our journeys, I can’t help but think that our learning would become one sided and stagnant. Who is there to stretch our minds? Who is there to challenge us to think in new ways? Who is there to inspire us and learn with us and learn from us and grow along side of us?
And then Mr. Alleman goes on to say that a proper Catholic woman doesn’t need an education because her greatest calling is in her home. I actually liked part of what he said. He talked about the dignity of raising children and the difficulty in raising children and the gift it is and the gift it provides. I’m largely a stay at home mom, so I liked this affirmation of my vocation. But just as he is glorifying motherhood out of one side of his mouth, he is dismissing it out of the other.
A stay at home mom not needing an education? I, along with quite a few of my friends and acquaintances, are well educated stay at home moms. And to say that my education hasn’t aided me in my pursuit is insulting. Being a mother is an experience that requires every single ounce of who we are. It’s not a job. It’s not a list of tasks to complete. It’s giving of yourself completely to a handful of little people, and I firmly believe that every ounce I have put into cultivating who I am is passed on to my girls.
My mind and my soul have been opened and informed and challenged and changed by my education, and it’s that soul that I put into raising my girls.
And please don’t misread me here. I do understand that college is not for everyone, and I am surely not saying that college educated people are better parents than non-college educated people. I know quite a few parents (a couple very close to me) who don’t or don’t yet have college degrees who are phenomenal parents and who quite frankly are better parents than I am. I’m just merely saying that college helped me become the person that I am and I believe it has benefitted me in immeasurable ways, and those ways most definitely aid me in my vocation as a stay at home mom.
He then goes on to talk about some other reasons which I feel are beneath a response from me or anyone else.
But my girls… I pray all the time that they go to college. I pray that they have a passion for education and that it sets their minds and their hearts on fire. I pray that it teaches them about their world and inspires them to dedicate their lives to others… to raising children, to using their strengths to help the less fortunate, to inspire and instigate change where it is needed, to dedicate their lives to something so much greater than the pursuit of wealth and riches.
An education isn’t necessary to live a good life. A formal education isn’t necessary to be an educated person. But an education is an incalculable investment in a life, and to say that a woman doesn’t need that investment because she might choose to stay home with her kids?
Well, let’s just say you won’t hear talk like that around my home.