A College, of All Things

     A few days ago I gave a talk at Hampden-Sydney College, in the piedmont of central Virginia.  Sydney, as the students call it, is one of the two remaining all-male colleges in the United States; the other is Wabash College in Indiana.  From what I have heard (and here I'd like somebody with information to advise me more precisely), Wabash might well fall, as many of the faculty and administrators do not like the college as it is.

     What I saw at Hampden-Sydney, though, reflects what I've seen at all-male high schools, and what I've seen from students who graduate from them.  For some reason, here in leftist New England there are still quite a few such schools, almost all of them run by the Catholic Church (it's interesting to note that not so long ago there were about 80 all-male colleges and about 130 all-female colleges in the country, more than half of each sort Catholic schools; now there are probably a few dozen Catholic women's colleges still, and no Catholic men's colleges).  Some of these schools are among the very best in the region.  Bishop Hendricken is unquestionably the best high school in Rhode Island; Saint John's Prep, Xaverian, and Boston College High annually seem to send students to Providence College who end up high on the Dean's List.

     Here's what I saw at Sydney, and what I see from students who graduate from all-male schools.  They're young men, not boys, though they're often boyish enough in their enthusiasms.  They don't duck and slouch and mumble.  They shake your hand, call you "Doctor" or "Professor" or "Sir" as an honorific, and look you in the eye.  They are eager to engage in intellectual dueling.  They're like teenage boys in ages past who gave themselves to a hobby -- una passione, as they say more expressively in Italian; so they'll learn everything they can about old steamer cars, or chess, or German techno-rock.  They're clean cut and comfortable with themselves.

     What do you get when you leave them to their own devices?  I don't know why it should be a surprise, but they develop polities of various sorts: teams and clubs, certainly, but also timocracies, societies defined by a code of honor.  The fledgling organization that invited me to campus is run by a young man of keen intellect and great energy, who scrambled together the money for a splendid dinner, and who called people personally to attend the dinner and the lecture.  No professor was in on the organization of the event; it was all handled by the students themselves, professionally you might say, but more properly with a sense of honor; and my nine or ten dinner companions were impeccably dressed fellows who were sharp enough to ask all kinds of questions about culture and the intellect, and yet young enough to tease one another before the visitor.

     Sydney enjoys a lovely campus in the hills, almost sprawling for a relatively small student body (1200 men), yet quite immaculate.  The men told me that it was considered dishonorable to litter or to trash the grounds.  Same thing goes for cheating; the students themselves try the accused and pronounce sentence.  A timocracy is the natural polity for men in a brotherhood -- and "brotherhood" is a word I heard a great deal of, both before my visit and during it.  The men do not consider themselves classmates merely, but brothers, bound together by a common experience and, what is more important for a true polity and yet these days almost always forgotten, by a common ideal, or common objects of honor and devotion.  "I'd do anything to help out my brother," said my host, not boastingly but with a shrug, as if it were a matter of course.  That is not a matter of course elsewhere, as I well know by experience; one chooses a school for one's own purposes, and classmates at best will help you attain the education you want, or will entertain you while you are getting that education.  At worst they are rivals and irritants.  At Sydney, though, something remains of the old meaning of the word "college" -- a group of people, in this case all of them men, who may have come together in the first place for all kinds of reasons, but who are made one, made brothers, by the common course of study, the venerable traditions of the school, and the polities of honor into which they are brought and in which they thrive, personally and intellectually.

     It's a far cry from "college" as commodity.  It also gives the lie to what some Biblical complementarians say, I think incautiously and without any real historical awareness.  They say that women civilize men.  If that's the case, I don't understand why the college where I teach -- a very fine college, I'll affirm -- is a walk down Skid Row by comparison with the civility and order at Hampden-Sydney.  I don't understand why the all-male high schools up here produce gentlemen, and the other schools, public and private -- well, it's a real crapshoot.  Now I know perfectly well that boys will sometimes form timocracies of wickedness: gangs, for instance.  But even in that case you have a polity; gangs wouldn't be near the problem they are if they did not operate by pretty clear rules and lines of authority.  Women do not in fact civilize men; they domesticate men, as I've said before.  Men civilize men.  There's a difference.

     What is that difference?  A soldier in a cavalry unit who spends most of his time in barracks or under the skies,may well be more civilized, more trained to think of and to act for the common good, to command other men or to obey, than many a high-priced lawyer or even college professor.  He's not domesticated, though, and his new bride at first might find him pretty hard to live with.  On the other hand, men who live comfortable lives apart from other men, taking no initiative for the common good, considering only their wives and children and not the welfare of anybody else's children, never to be relied upon in time of public need, may be domesticated but not civilized.  You might find plenty of men of the former sort at the inception of a great nation.  You will find plenty of men of the latter sort at its decline.

Comments

[JB]

Great stuff, Dr. Esolen. Have you considered writing a book on this subject?

[Ethan Cordray]

Good post. I think the sort of "timocracies" Dr. Esolen talks about do need top-down fostering of the sort an all-male college provides. At Wheaton, about the only explicitly all-male institution on campus (besides sports teams) was the Men's Glee Club. "Men of Club" were definitely of a different cut than the average bloke. The Glee Club had the benefit of long traditional roots. I can barely imagine anything similar forming spontaneously nowadays among the men. The women, on the other hand, seemed to have plenty of "exclusive space."

[Judy Warner]

Women have exclusive space because men rarely want to join a women's group and don't feel excluded if they can't. But some women feel excluded from men's groups and there is almost always someone who pushes to get in. Under the modern secular belief that there is no difference between men and women, people do not have the concepts or the vocabulary to say why a group should remain exclusively male. Then, too, many men have a protective feeling towards women (despite everything the feminists could do to wipe it out) and are more inclined to give in than to be seen as hardhearted towards women.

Tony, your great post goes a long way towards developing such a good way to say it, and I wish it could be more widely distributed to help those men who know they need exclusively male groups, but don't know how to put it in the face of feminist opposition. Developmental psychology helps here, too, as there is increasing recognition that girls and boys are vastly different and have different needs.

[Andrew]

Shouldn't Morehouse make it three all-male colleges in the US?

[Mairnéalach]

Very interesting. Thank you. I think this is why I enjoy working at sea, with 99% men colleagues. It's not for dislike of women; rather, it's for love of brotherhood. Because I get to enjoy that particular brand of civilization half my life, I find it easier to enjoy genuine domestication when I am home.

[Joe Long]

A young man from our church who dyed his hair green last month...announced his acceptance into The Citadel this week. And it is my fond hope that they may civilize him there.

It is always good to hear about these bastions of culture, particularly (for once) not in the context of "another one about to fall". Thank you for this post.

[ron chandonia]

Only two remaining all-male colleges in the United States? While mentioning two relatively obscure schools, you omitted Atlanta's Morehouse College, a better-known institution which is the alma mater of Martin Luther King. I don't want to make too much of it, but it is indicative of how racially divided we still are--and how readily black people and institutions are swept to the sidelines.

[Labrialumn]

Don't forget C. S. Lewis' experience with all-male schools, and _Tom Brown's School Days_ when you write your book.

Don't forget the concept of 'Potemkin Village', either. Colleges and universities excel in that department.

What you observe as a difference between co-ed and all male colleges, I observe as the difference between urban and rural people, in particular, males.

That being the case, I wonder if this is a clue as to what the real factor is, or if there is more than one factor to produce the same result?

[scoffer]

>>>A young man from our church who dyed his hair green last month...announced his acceptance into The Citadel this week. And it is my fond hope that they may civilize him there.<<<

Because having green hair is just plain morally atrocious.

All this talk about "clean cut" is making me want to puke.

[Mairnéalach]

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. -Quentin Crisp

[Ethan Cordray]

>>Because having green hair is just plain morally atrocious.<<

Not morally. Just aestheticaly. But when it is done as a statement of rebellious individualism or intentional "edginess," then yes, morally.

"Clean cut" represents an ethos, one largely abandoned in youth culture since at least the '60's (though the '50's saw the beginning of the major decline). The desire to appear older rather than younger, and more mature rather than more puerile, is noble.

Certainly this can descend into conformity, and there is plenty worth rebelling against in today's culture. But "green hair," or facial piercing, or prominent tattoos, or those tedious "attitude slogan" t-shirts, are not really signs of rebellion anymore. They are signs of buying into the countercultural mainstream, the market-endorsed, media-approved, secularly acceptable channel of "rebellion" co-opted by the individualistic cultural establishment.

Few fashions have become as rigorously exclusive and conformist as "punk" and "goth" style.

[James A. Altena]

"All this talk about 'clean cut' is making me want to puke." -- "Scoffer"

Well then, just do it on yourself. The rest of us find "clean cut" quite admirable.

[peterspence]

As a teacher of the young, I have only this to say about their striving for selfhood:

"Just like everyone else, they want to be different."

[Juli]

The desire to appear older rather than younger, and more mature rather than more puerile, is noble.

Very short hair tends to make boys (and young men) look younger and more boyish, imo - it's sort of endearing, from a maternal perspective. For that matter, nothing makes a young man look younger than premature attempts at growing beards or mustaches; when I was 20, I found such attempts silly, now they seem sort of touching.

[scoffer]

>>>But when it is done as a statement of rebellious individualism or intentional "edginess," then yes, morally.<<<

Pray tell me where an anti-cultural, "edgy" attitude is condemned in Scripture. Indeed a case could be made for Scripture CONDONING such an attitude.

I will put forth no defense of the goth or punk lifestyle, because I think most of you have accurately lampooned it. You may perhaps say that it is "usually" or "normally" those goths or punks who are doing the green hair dying, and you might be correct, but in every instance such is not the case and therefore it cannot be categorically condemned.

[Susan Peterson]

I don't have any onus against single sex schools, but the fact that these are upper class elite institutions is a confounding factor as far as drawing conclusions about the results of sex segregation per se.

Some women have looked into elite all women's schools and found they were better at bringing out leadership potential in women, and encouraged women to be willing to try the science and math which are sometimes seen as "male" subjects. They stepped forward in situations in which they would have stepped back if men were around.

So I am telling myself that Mr. Esolen's remarks here do not necessarily reflect negative feelings about women. But when I think about all the articles by Mr. Esolen I have read here and in Touchstone, cumulatively,I can't help feeling that he has some kind of problem with or about women.

Generally the female readers of Touchstone are bright educated women who nevertheless have a lot of respect for the traditional roles of women, many of whom accept some idea of the headship of men in the church and in the family, although usually not in the wider society. We aren't fighting the gender wars here, are not proclaiming that we are an oppressed class etc. But I think I would rather not hear either that men and boys are an oppressed class! Mr. Esolen, get another subject, please, for a while.

Susan Peterson

[Judy Warner]

It doesn't strike me that Tony Esolen is looking at this in terms of oppressed classes, and I wonder why you think he is. I think he's writing about the positive influences of all-male groups on their members, and the need for such groups. As a woman I find this not at all negative towards women; in fact, I prefer men who have had this kind of positive male bonding in their lives, as in the military. I can't speak for Tony's feelings about women, but I can speak for my perception of them in his writings, and I cannot understand where you get your idea that he has a problem with women. I very much hope he does not get another subject, as this subject is so important that it deserves to be written about frequently and at length, and nobody does it better than he.

[William]

Dr. Esolen makes a fantastic point. I, myself, am a teenager, and I feel that I have just walked into a realm that truly understands me. I often forget that I do not fight the battle for authentic masculinity alone, and that there are people who care about the future of males in our society. Being reminded of that is very refreshing. As to the post itself, I had never before considered an all-male college. However, I will begin to do so now. Also, I have a request for Mr. Cordray: I am seriously considering Wheaton as the college I will attend and I wish to know, mostly in light of the present conversation, how you found it. If you would rather, you may e-mail me at [email protected]. Now, as to the squabble put up by SCOFFER. God repeats several times that he hates a rebel. As far as the green hair thing goes, you are "missing the forest for the trees". Mr. Long is not saying that, since he dyed his hair green, he must be a rebel and, therefore, be condemned to Hell. He is simply using that as a way of conveying that this teen is rebelling. I beg you to leave off this argument. The church has many problems and many fools that condemn others based on looks but, these people are not them. Furthermore, the commentators and Dr. Esolen are doing a good work (the furtherance of authentic masculinity) and should not be hindered. Once again, thank you Dr. Esolen for you post.

[franksta]

Susan, I would have expected better from you. Dr. Esolen is in no wise saying that the entire male species is oppressed. But when one finds a group of men, particularly young men, particularly young men of a certain social class whom one would expect to be spoiled...and instead those young men behave with discipline, politeness, enterprise, honor, and true camaraderie...it bears examining why, and why not other young men.

[RMC]

>>But I think I would rather not hear either that men and boys are an oppressed class!<<

Maybe not, but it's true and worth discussing.

I've been in favor of segregating the sexes for education since 7th grade phys. ed. The older I get, the more problems I see with the current co-ed system. Everyone suffers from it in one way or another, but boys seem to get the worst. It was something that had not occurred to me much until I talked to my husband about his experiences in school.

And there certainly is a lack of the kind of men Prof. Esolen praises in the world today. I think that a primary cause is that many young men have no idea that it is even possible to be a gentleman in the old fashioned sense. It's unfortunate that so little is done to encourage the virtue of manliness anymore. As women, we should try to encourage the men in our lives (young and not so young) on to real, godly manliness at every opportunity. It doesn't fix everything, but it's a start.

RMC

[Ethan Cordray]

Scoffer,

I don't condemn it categorically, only within our present cultural context. Let us ask ourselves:

What is green hair?

It is an artificial discoloration of the natural hair color, intended both to appear obviously unnatural and to draw attention to itself.

This is not bad in and of itself. But it does imply that green hair is by its nature a statement, meant to communicate something to the viewer.

So, the question is, what does it say? Well, a number of things; some are intrinsic to the act itself, while others are relatively defined by the act's relation to the larger culture.

Instrinsic statements:

1. I do not wish to present a natural hair appearance.

2. I am willing to alter my appearance by using artificial means.

3. I either consider my green-haired appearance aesthetically pleasing, or I do not care about presenting an aesthetically pleasing appearance.

4. I wish for others to view my altered appearance.

Relative Statements:

1. In a culture when most people either retain their natural hair color or present their hair as though it were its natural color, I wish to do otherwise.

2. Through my coloring's cultural uniqueness and vividness, I wish to confront others with my appearance. I wish for them to encounter it irresistibly, as something that cannot be unnoticed or easily ignored.

3. Becuase of the association of bright colored hair with youth culture, and especially intentionally countercultural youth culture, I wish people to perceive me as a countercultural youth.

These, it seems to me, are unavoidable messages sent by possessing green hair in our contemporary culture.

I don't think that these messages are intrinsically and always bad. That is why I qualified my original statement. However, given our present cuture's overweening emphasis on individualism, anti-conformity, disregard of the opinions of others, disdain for aesthetic standards, obsession with youth, and penchant for confrontation rather than dialogue, I think embracing such messages is morally dangerous. It usually represents buying into the pseudo-counter-cultural pillar of our contemporary cultural paradigm, the supposition that one must "express oneself" in order to be validated, and that "questioning authority" is intrinsically good. It is in actuality a way of entrenching the power of amoral cultural patterns. It is an opiate of the masses.

Now, embracing this stage of pseudo-rebellion might be a necessary step toward reaching actual counterculturalism, which requires articulating and living according to a system of absolute values derived from a source beyond the culture itself. A baby must learn to babble before it learns to talk. This, I imagine, is the course Joe Long's green-haired, Citadel-attending friend is taking.

And even beyond the immature stage or rebellion, within a community of the real counterculture, personal disfigurement may still be used. Good examples are the military haircut, and especially the monk's tonsure. But these have a whole separate set of cultural connections, and so they send a different message than green colored hair. In general, these communicate a holistic alternative social ethic, rather than just generic "punk" rebellion.

[Ethan Cordray]

Given William's gentle chastisement, I'd like to leave off the green-hair argument as well, if I may. I apologize if I've caused offense or wasted anyone's time. I get riled up about it because I went through a similar phase, though with long hippie hair rather than green punk hair. It's way less important than I've made it sound.

William, I'll drop you an email about Wheaton.

[Philip Terzian]

My son is a junior at Hampden-Sydney, and so I was interested to read Dr Esolen's comments. HSC is unquestionably a unique environment--not necessarily for everyone--having as much to do with its sense of being Southern (and Virginian, for that matter) as its all-male status. One of the virtues of higher education in America is that it offers a variety of choices in the character of colleges: Urban, Catholic, all-women, military, Quaker, artsy, engineeing, small, huge, private, public, etc. etc. It's a little disconcerting to observe, however, that there are only two all-male institutions left in the country. Just a generation ago most prestigious private colleges (Harvard, Princeton, Vassar, Williams, Pembroke, Washington & Lee) were single-sex; now it is regarded as a dangerous eccentricity! (One person asked why Morehouse is not included with Wabash and HSC: The answer is something of a technicality, in that Morehouse has a coordinate woman's college [Spelman] while WC and HSC do not.)

[James Kabala]

Up-and-coming Orthodox-convert blogger Daniel Larison is an alumnus of Hampden-Sydney and found that it was little different from the average modern-day college.
http://larison.org/2006/03/14/guroian-on-libertinism-and-the-colleges-that-promote-it/
I wonder how Dr. Esolen would have found this place if he had visited on Saturday night? I think at any college people will put their best face forward for a distinguished guest (except maybe Williams, where my tour of the campus a decade ago was led by a girl with a nose ring).
In my hometown the guys who went off the local all-male Catholic high school seemed on average to become heavy drinkers and sexually experienced even sooner than those who remained in public school, or at least were more boastful about it and more willing to say it to the face of their confirmation teacher (something I had the misfortune to witness in my confirmation class). There were exceptions, of course. People at PC who were graduates of all-male high schools included some fine people (including the guy who became and still is my closest friend), but on average I don't think Dr. Esolen's description applied to them in any greater degree than to graduates of co-ed schools, private or public.

[James Kabala]

My greetings to Philip Terzian. I wish he had stayed at the ProJo and M. Charles Bakst had left.

[William]

Mr. Kabala's comment is rather disheartening. I read some similar information on Princeton Review's website. I hope, however, that this is the appearance, and that Dr. Esolen's discription is the more accurate. Mr. Cordray, thank you for the promised email.

[Gina]

I for one hope Mr. Esolen doesn't "get another subject."

[Susan Peterson]

Sorry, but this is the feeling I get from many things that Dr. Esolen writes. I agree that I haven't supported my statement. To do so would require collecting all of my back copies of Touchstone and combing the articles for statements which back up my impression. I am not sure I can find them all and I am afraid I don't have time to do this. So perhaps it was wrong of me to make the comment. I did so because I have had this feeling repeatedly while reading what he writes when gender (some prefer to say sex) is the issue. If no one else has this impression than I will drop the issue unless and until I can support it. However with respect to the specific issue of this one article:

I suppose my feeling comes from having been in so many situations in which being the only woman in a group of males I was unable to get what I had to say heard, or it could only be heard if one of the males forwarded it into the conversation. Or when I started college in a seminar group with something like 19 young men and 6 young women, and the men acted like high school boys and put down the women who spoke with casual contempt or disregard, so that most of the women gave up, just as it was in high school, where I spoke despite the social disadvantages involved. A female tutor, the senior seminar leader, and incidentally, the one who began teaching when women first came to the college, took me aside and told me not to give up, the men were young and hadn't been socialized to the standards of the college yet, women could speak in class as equals here, and I should just go right on talking. So having felt the disadvantages to women of being educated with men, my response to this article is "So WE are the problem?" And this article hardly proves its main point; it doesn't really address the many possible confounding factors or the distortion caused by observation which someone mentioned above. It doesn't explain how the observed phenomena comes about. What about having women around makes them less "civilized." The need to brag and boast? You mean the minute we are not listening, they stop doing that? My impression has always been much more like Mr. Kabala's.

Why, confronted with a single school whose students knew how to behave politely to him, is his first thought that the reason is that there are no women there? How about considering that the school has high standards and traditions which are successfully conveyed to successive groups of students, as one's first hypothesis, and trying to find out how this is done?

Susan F. Peterson

[J.]

William:

You are a good writer, especially if you are a teenager as you say. Please keep writing, and you will become an even better writer!

J.

[ellen]

I used to teach high school in southern Virginia and yes, Hampden-Sydney had a reputation as a party school that was not very hard to get into.

My used to teach in an all-male high school and he felt, at least on that level, that boys tended to be less mature without a female influence around and that, for whatever it's worth, a group of males tended to take on the female roles in school life and activities.

[William]

Thank you for the compliment.

[MD]

"And there certainly is a lack of the kind of men Prof. Esolen praises in the world today. I think that a primary cause is that many young men have no idea that it is even possible to be a gentleman in the old fashioned sense. It's unfortunate that so little is done to encourage the virtue of manliness anymore. As women, we should try to encourage the men in our lives (young and not so young) on to real, godly manliness at every opportunity. It doesn't fix everything, but it's a start."

I think one of the Doctor's points is that the development of masculinity (or "manliness") has nothing to do with women, or with their "encouragement." Masculinity is developed by men, among men. It is not taught, but it is learned.

[Tony Esolen]

Ron,

I could have mentioned Morehouse College -- that was a close call. About 30 years ago Tulane was still a nominally all-male college, with all the women there attending Sophie Newcomb college; the classes were all the same, though. If you're telling me that Morehouse is, for all intents and purposes, an all-male college, with men alone in most classes, then I apologize for the oversight; I'd been told by a friend that its arrangement was on the order of the old Tulane's. Not only do I apologize: I am heartened by the news. Say it is so. And please, don't be so quick to accuse your Christian brother of racism.

James K,

Nobody knew that I was coming to campus -- the event was hosted and "advertised" by the sponsors for the benefit of several dozen students who would be interested. It was a Thursday night, not a weekend, that's true. My impressions of the graduates of all-male high schools remain, though; and at many such schools, especially the newer ones run by Opus Dei and other traditionalist Catholic organizations, it is the express intent to turn boys into gentlemen.

Susan P,

We really should not squabble, you and I. I daresay there's not a dime's worth of difference between us on these issues. Maybe a nickel's worth, but not a dime! Yes, I know how atrociously ill-behaved young men can be in the situations you describe. But that's why some of them, perhaps more than half of them (I don't know), need something other than the typical co-ed environment where they will not and in fact do not thrive. Either they descend into crass bullying of the girls (though I see very little of that at Providence College, where the boys are outnumbered 5 to 4), or they clam up (far more likely; they themselves tell me that they are afraid to appear like imbeciles in front of the girls); they don't form the male groups that for some of them are essential to their intellectual development, and they don't gravitate towards the co-ed groups, either. I should be as clear as I can about the end I have in mind: I believe that men are FOR women, and women are FOR men. But males who are not civilized (in the sense of feeling that they owe a duty to civic life) are not much good for anybody. I recall the response of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (and God bless her, and let perpetual light shine upon her) when the freshmen at The Citadel thought they had won the war to keep their school all-male. They cheered, threw their hats in the air -- basically acted like a bunch of guys after the winning touchdown. They caught a lot of criticism for that, but Fox-Genovese tried to remind people that they were, after all, boys, and that it was the object of the college to turn them into men.

Nor do I think it is at all absurd to consider boys as victims. Good gracious, what do you think it's like these days, to spend 12 years in school basically considered a pest or a problem? Please try to consider the matter from the boy's side. Christine Sommers' book, The War on Boys, was sadly accurate.

Mr. Terzian,

I second James K's welcome -- I too remember fondly your editorials in the ProJo!

[Tony Esolen]

Susan P,

I should have said, too, that I was invited to speak precisely about male groups -- so that the all-male character of the place was the reason why I was there in the first place; that's why it was on my mind. I'm sure there's partying at H-S; there's partying at my school, too. But ten young men in coats and ties, organizing a dinner and a lecture, getting together the venue, the audio system, the advertising, the accommodations, the transportation -- basically everything, without a faculty sponsor, without assistance from the college or from student activity fees? It really was rather impressive. So were the students.

[Karen]

I would be extremely disappointed if the young man Dr. Eselon met last Thursday proved to be any different if he had met him on Saturday instead. I happen to know the young man. My husband and I are proud to call him our son.

Thank you Dr. Eselon for the kind words that have warmed this mother's heart. I know how hard my son worked to arrange your lecture and how pleased he was with the event.

[truepeers]

I'm all for men (and women) acting on a well-developed sense of honor. I wonder, though, what is gained by calling this brotherhood (as opposed to respect or friendship). For the analogy to the biological family can become readily strained in public life, as the evil history of "fraternity" that emerged from the French, Russian revolutions, etc. showed.

Why should I aspire to think of my fellow citizens as brothers or sisters? Doesn't reality and honor require us to admit that we are as readily rivals as friends or allies and that conflict is as much a necessity or inevitability as are moments of harmony? When we admit this, then we can further our allegiance to the transcendent and hierarchical values that command our respect. Isn't honor simply the ideal means for dealing with conflict? And honor among biological brothers is not generally the same as honor among unrelated men because among brothers something more is shared. And that something more cannot simply be invoked among schoolmates, however much they think they want to share it.

[Jenny Islander]

Don't forget Deep Springs College! It has had its share of troubles--a student running off with a professor's wife comes to mind--but its underlying principles are sound, IMO. The students, by and large, value the single-sex atmosphere highly. The last I heard, the prevailing opinion was that women should have access to a Deep Springs education but that simply going co-ed was not the answer. One possibility being discussed was finding another desert valley with a ranch in it to build a separate Deep Springs for women.

It would be interesting to see how a separate Deep Springs College for women would pan out. Deep Springs students value the single-sex atmosphere partly because it forces them to think outside traditional gender roles: you can't leave lunch to the lunch lady when there is no lunch lady. Having a working ranch on which the students depend for most of their daily needs also provides something important. Very few of the students arrive knowing how to brand cattle, run tractors, or harvest wheat, but if they want to get by, they have to learn quickly.

[Joe Long]

Truepeers -

"Schoolmates" can be more than just rivals (and brothers ARE rivals, very often!); Solomon acknowledge the "friend that sticks closer than a brother", and those are often the friends we face crisis and challenge with; particularly those we face the male initiation rituals in company with...my "plebe year" friends, my Infantry Basic friends, were comrades of a higher order even when rivals. I don't think that the implication is that you're striving for that brotherhood to be universal - after all, as the wag said, "If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?"

All: "clean-cut" certainly doesn't make me sick, but it hasn't described me in some time! Yes, I made a slighting comment about a young man dying his hair a ludicrous color, and yes, I think that a side-effect of civilization will be the loss of that particular urge. And maybe, the day after people quit enforcing the clean-cut look on him, he'll quit shaving as I did the day I completed my part-time soldiering obligations.

Why ARE single-sex higher ed institutions typically "elite"? Is this another case of the lower classes being denied, "for their own good", what sensible, sober, progressive parents often seem to choose for their OWN children...? Or is it just that it takes dedication and plenty of resources to spare, to fight the modernizing tide?

I recall the gal who singlehandedly sex-desegregated the Citadel...she lost all of my sympathy because she did not spend any of the long months of her court battle, getting into some form of physical shape; nor did she aspire to a military career or any of the martial virtues, according to her assorted interviews; no, it was all about spitting in someone else's cookie batter, and the first taste of physical hardship shrivelled her up and sent her packing.

[kate]

I want to thank Tony Esolen for his clarifying remarks to Susan Peterson. If I had had the time and abilty I would have tried to write what she advanced in her posts.

I, too, think that my and Tony Esolen's ideas about the differing roles and needs of men and women are similar, but, like Peterson, I have regularly come away from reading his articles and comments in this area with a niggling feeling that perhaps he is trying so hard to right the misguided disasters brought on by feminism and its fellow-travelling cultural ideas that he doesn't remember that for some of us women who grew up before feminism emerged fully, it was awfully difficult to be a woman who was not interested in sewing and other domestic pursuits.

I chose to be a stay-at-home mother but not because I learned how in home economics in school; I would have much preferred taking shop, but that wasn’t permitted. That prohibition was a tiny cultural ‘injustice’, but an indication that some wrongs have been 'corrected' by feminism, not perhaps in the right way, but at least my children can pursue the interests that arise from their God-given inclinations. And I would submit myself again to such ‘injustices’ if the wrongs of feminism could be righted, but in working to right them, it would be a shame to discard whatever was good that came with the wrongs, which I trust is not the intention of Dr. Esolen.

And by all means, encourage male-only groups and schools and colleges, and female-only ones as well. But let’s not give the impression that all that is right about them will correct what is wrong about co-ed groups. One of my dearest friends attended an exclusive all-male high school in Montreal in the early 60s. He was intellectually inclined and hated every minute of it, because his not being a jock, and a jerkish one at that, meant that his life was made a misery for him.

Perhaps what makes the males at H-S college so upstanding is not just that they are attending a male-only college.

[ceemac]

I can't help but wonder how many of you writing about the greatness of the all male envonment ever spent time as a teenager in an all male boarding environment.

I did.

We may have acted as gentlemen in class and at table.

But on the hall. Can you say "Lord of the Flies?"

Plus much of our male bonding was directed at figuring out ways to break the rules. Especially those concering drugs and alcohol.

[Joe Long]

Hampton-Sydney is not a high school, and the all-male environment is certainly not magical on its own - absent wise guidance, and actual values, around which real cohesion can develop. A desert-island exile, or a freshman year at a typical state college, with my Fort Benning company-mates would not have been the same experience. The drill sergeants, and the voluntary mutual desire to "soldier" on our parts, made all the difference.

And I've seen the Fort Jackson boots in the co-ed environment, and those youngsters are being shortchanged; sometimes the young men, in particular, express disappointment at what they know should have been a gut- and spirit-wrenching trial, being eased off to coed-comfortable levels. (And unlike me those youngsters are often headed to combat - they deserved better.)

It is sometimes the civilization of men during their education, which can help them approach their "real world" post-collegiate life as something OTHER than "Lord of the Flies".

[Judy Warner]

I grew up in Philadelphia, where Girls' High and Central High were the elite single-sex public schools that all bright kids aspired to, if they didn't attend private schools. I knew a lot of people who went to both schools. Although this was at the same time as Kate's Montreal friend's bad high school experience, I am certain that Central High was anything but a hotbed of jockism. The boys I knew who attended were happy to escape the jockism of the regular high schools and instead be in an atmosphere where their brains were respected rather than laughed at.

However, feminism took its toll. From Wikipedia:

In August 1983, Judge William M. Marutani, of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, ruled that the single-sex admission policy was unconstitutional. The Board of Education voted not to appeal the legal decision, thereby admitting girls to Central High School. In September 1985, the first six girls, all seniors, were admitted.

(Despite the Board’s vote to abandon Central’s 147-year old tradition of being a boys-only institution, it did not simultaneously require its sister school, Philadelphia High School for Girls, to open its admissions to boys and that school today is still a publicly funded girls-only school. Therefore, in Philadelphia it is “unconstitutional” according to a local lower court, despite the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in its favor, for Central to be boys only, but perfectly legal for the city’s taxpayers to fund a girls-only high school one block away.)

[end Wikipedia quote]

[Judy Warner]

Joe Long wrote:

Why ARE single-sex higher ed institutions typically "elite"? Is this another case of the lower classes being denied, "for their own good", what sensible, sober, progressive parents often seem to choose for their OWN children...?

I think you are exactly right, Joe. Some education reformers have tried to establish all-boy schools for poor children, especially for black boys, who lack fathers and other male role models even more than other boys do. These attempts have usually run into the objections of sexism you'd expect.

I don't think there have been as many attempts to set up girls-only schools. Yet Elayne Bennett's organization, Best Friends, has been very successful at helping teenage black girls to respect themselves, complete high school, and not have babies. Of course, she doesn't have to worry about boys suing to get in, as girls would surely sue to get into a comparable boys' group. I mean, have sued -- I recall some girls trying to become Boy Scouts a few years back, but I don't know what became of the case.

[Susan Peterson]

Thank you, Mr. Esolen, for your conciliatory words. I do have five sons as well as four daughters and at least one wasn't well served by the public school. I think I would rather see high schools be sex segregated and colleges be coeducational, although with single sex dorms and strict parietal rules. I would like to see colleges co-ed because I want young men to know young women as intelligent people as well as beautiful and desirable dates. I know young men will always see women in terms of their desirability, but being in class with them forces them to see them also as learners, as people with thoughts, accomplishments, and goals. I remember seeing one of my female classmates (actually it was an old girlfriend of Touchstone contributor Wilfred McClay) competently demonstrating an elaborate proof from Appollonius' Conic Sections on the board, and thinking, when this book was written, women couldn't do this, and probably for years no women did, but now that we have been admitted to this world, we can do so beautifully. I think that a man who throughout four years of college heard women discuss Plato and Kant, heard them translating Aristotle and Sophocles, and saw them demonstrating mathematical proofs or astronomical diagrams, would always know that a woman can never be just a domestic convenience, perhaps loved, but relegated to a separate realm outside of the important affairs of science, business, or politics, which men inhabit. I once told a man that he ought to realize that his wife had sacrificed many talents to mother their 8 children, and he dogmatically asserted that a woman finds complete fufillment in her domestic role, it has to be so. He wanted it to be true that since women have children and nurse them and children need mothers, and since a generous sized family needs a mother for a long time, that therefore any women would be completely fufilled by this natural and divinely ordained role. His wife was a dancer and a painter. She would have been happier in her domestic role if he had admired and praised her for it, but there was more to her than that. I would like our world to encourage men to know this. I suppose all of this means that I am a partisan of women, which means that I can hardly blame you for being a partisan of men. Not that it should be a battle; it ought to be better for both if each are healthy.

Thank you Kate, for your support.
One girl in my high school wanted to take shop and her parents were called in and advised to take her daughter to a psychiatrist!

I can think of more to say on this subject but am at work and must return to working.
SFP

[Labrialumn]

I see that several others confirm the reality of the Potemkin Village approach to visitors that is standard at colleges and universities, and the Lord of the Flies reality of male-only social situations (apart from Christ)

Reading these comments, and ponding on my own life experiences and observations, it is -the family- which civilizes. Not co-ed alone, not men segregated, but growing up in a family, with connections beyond merely the nuclear family, with reciprocal responsibilities to ones' family and neighbors, and responsibilities to the other creatures in creation. This is what civilizes. The unnatural (literally) age-based segregation of the schools produces unnatural, uncivilized social relationships.

[David Gray]

>for some of us women who grew up before feminism emerged fully, it was awfully difficult to be a woman who was not interested in sewing and other domestic pursuits

Well if society is going to make it more difficult for one rather than the other I know which I'd prefer to see favoured. Right now it is the reverse.

[David Gray]

>He wanted it to be true that since women have children and nurse them and children need mothers, and since a generous sized family needs a mother for a long time, that therefore any women would be completely fufilled by this natural and divinely ordained role.

How many men are completely fulfilled by their natural and divinely ordained role?

[William]

There seems to be a general consent to overlook the most important aspect of Mrs. Peterson's post: "Not that it should be a battle; it ought to be better for both if each are healthy." Men are not fighting a battle against women, and women are not fighting a battle against men. When one side is abused it is due to a fault in the other. No one wins in this kind of "sex war". Men have, and still do, harm women horribly. No women should be told she has no place in a shop class. However, the opposite is true as well. The male sex has suffered an attempt at annihilation by women in the feminist movement. However, all of this is not to say that there is no war being fought. We are in a war. A war for authentic sexuality on both sides. This war will not be won if we continue to attack each other and beg attention paid to past scars. We must recapture both sexes for, as was declared at the beginning of creation, "It is not good for man to be alone." I might add that the same can be said for women.

[RMC]

MD,

Apologies for not making myself more clear. Typing with a crying baby in arms (she's teething) mean I frequently forget what I was going to say before I get halfway through.

I know that manliness is developed by men among men; I also know that women frequently hinder this process. As an example, my husband was in the military, and stayed in the reserves until a few months ago. He loved the time he got to spend in the company of other men, doing "manly" things. I can't tell you many times the men in his unit complained about the attitudes of their wives toward their military service. Some felt they had to quit because of their wives' hatred of all things military, or else extend their enlistments secretly without the support of their wives.

At the last get together we went to, jst before my husband's enlistment ended, the conversation revolved around whether or not her would be extending or getting out. "I suppose you don't want him staying in," someone commented. I hadn't thought to feel that way. I pointed out that if it was imortant to him (and it was), I would rather that he stay in rather than get out for my sake-that is, for fear that I would be upset and unsupportive.

All that as a roundabout explanation of the bad attitudes women have that undermine the very important brotherhood of their men. We can't really directly help, but how many men are going to keep going out with the guys if it means listening to the wife nag and complain all the time? I see it as a duty of women to encourage men to engage in the activities that will build them up (going and spending time with other men).

Hope I make more sense.

RMC

[James A. Altena]

"How many men are completely fulfilled by their natural and divinely ordained role?"

Spot on, David. It is the world that tells us to make personal "fulfillment" a goal. The Biblical goal is to strive for obedience to God regardless of self. As my pastor Fr. David Ousley often says, "The Christian life is about faithfulness, not accomplishment." (Though I like to tease him by saying in resposne, "But there is one thing we must accomplish, and that is being faithful.")

[Tony Esolen]

Beautiful comments, RMC. You wouldn't by any chance have a marriageable daughter yet, would you? I have a couple of students who are a-looking --

I am grateful to everybody here for a spirited and cordial discussion. A couple of notes:

The title of this post, "A College, of All Things," was probably too elliptical. The first time I ever had an experience of a college -- after freshman year at Princeton, which was sui generis -- happened when I visited Christendom College about five years ago. Now I've taught at "colleges" in one fashion or another since 1985, and as a professor since 1988. But a community of people who have gathered together to explore goodness, truth, and beauty? Not really. I was stunned by how collegial Christendom was -- simple things struck me, as for instance that the faculty and the students all ate together, and all ate pretty much the single lunch that the cafeteria was cooking that day; or that faculty and students worshiped together every day at 11:30 (no office hours, no classes for that hour, set aside for Mass, which was very well attended though not compulsory; lunch was at 12:30); or that the students knew ALL the faculty and even their families, and vice versa. That was partly a result of the small size -- or rather size did not prevent Christendom from enjoying the benefits of a college.

It seems to me that you can have a "college" in this sense, if you are not too big, and if there is something about you that unites the students, something distinctive, something "counter, original, spare, strange," to quote Hopkins. And one of the most powerful and distinctive college-makers (though by no means the only one!)is an all-male environment.

I don't mean to end with a grumble ... but here's a half a grumble anyway. I saw good things at Hampden-Sydney College. Had I visited Agnes Scott College (all-female) or Grambling (historically black), and had I had similarly cheerful and challenging things to say, as I might well have (my sister, who may be the best infectious disease doctor in Pennsylvania, is a graduate of Immaculata College, all-female, near Philadelphia), would folks have been quick to say that I did not see them, or that it was a neat facade? Isn't it a better thing to err in the direction of believing good reports?

[JB]

The Hampden-Sydney College web site has a rather entertaining FAQ page (at least by college web site FAQ page standards):

http://www2.hsc.edu/admissions/faq.html

An excerpt:

Q: So I understand that I'll only have guys in my classes, but will I see any women on the weekends?

A: Hampden-Sydney is located in the middle of an area containing over 15 Colleges and Universities - including four women's colleges. Over the years students have come to realize that an education at Hampden-Sydney comes with the best of both worlds where the advantages of the single sex classroom environment are well balanced by the very co-ed nature of the weekend social life. A popular tee-shirt at Hampden-Sydney over the years has stated the case quite simply, "Hampden-Sydney: We don't need our own women. We're doing just fine with yours!"

[James A. Altena]

". . . my sister, who may be the best infectious disease doctor in Pennsylvania, is a graduate of Immaculata College, all-female, near Philadelphia. . . ."

Dear Tony,

Where is she now located and practicing? (My in-laws live but a few miles from Immaculata, and my wife and I know faculty members there.)

And with how many different infectious diseases can she inoculate me? Since you're a specialist in 14th c. literature, how about bubonic plague? :-) :-)

[RMC]

No luck, Prof. Esolen, she's just turned 4 months old this week. If your students don't mind a long wait...

RMC

[Judy Warner]

Hmm, Tony, can I send my daughter up there? She is very unimpressed with the marriageability of the young men she has met.

[Tony Esolen]

James,

Sis lives in Stroudsburg, near the Water Gap. My favorite Sis-saves-somebody's-life story:

A young couple bring their infant to the hospital. The boy is running a high fever, but without the signs of flu; tests come back negative. The hospital staff treat him with antibiotics, and the fever subsides, but does not go away. They send the parents home with the baby. Sis (in her first year of practice at the hospital) is not satisfied. She suddenly asks the parents whether the infant has had diaper rash. Yes, sure, the worst anybody's ever seen. Sis investigates. The next day, as the happy parents are about to take the child home, Sis, against the advice of the attending physician, calls the parents and urges them to hire an ambulance to take the child immediately to Children's Hospital in Philly, 2-3 hours away. Diagnosis: Kawasaki's Syndrome, extremely rare, leading to heart failure if untreated. Attending physician ridicules the diagnosis and sends parents home. On the way home parents panic and call the ambulance anyway. The boy goes into cardiac arrest on the Schuylkill Expressway, a few miles from the hospital. EMT's resuscitate, bring the child to the hospital, where he undergoes immediate heart surgery. Successful. Genuine apologies to Sis from the attending physician ...

Judy,

I got one in Chicago, one in Dallas, one in DC ...

[Judy Warner]

Tony,

If only she could meet them without being set up. She's at an age where she wouldn't like that. But maybe I'm more anxious than she is at this point. She's only 21. (Luthien, are you reading this?)

[James A. Altena]

Great story, Tony. Blessings on your sister (and you as well, of course).

[RMC]

I don't know, Judy, I don't think I would have minded at 21 (then again, I was already married at 21, so maybe I'm not a normal person to ask).

[T. Chan]

One could always throw a nice English Country Dance ball and have a bunch of single people meet, instead of making it one-on-one... hahaha.

[Ethan Cordray]

I'd go to that dance! Though I might end up a bit like Mr. Darcy...not the way to make a good first impression.

I can't speak for your daughter, Judy, but I wouldn't mind my parents setting me up. They know me better than just about anybody. If only they knew more lassies of my type and age.

[Judy Warner]

I might be wrong; she might like being set up, actually, Ethan. She once told me that she thought arranged marriages weren't a bad idea, since parents know what is best for their children. And she would REALLY like an English Country Dance ball, especially if Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley were there.

[Damian Bore]

"..dyed his hair green." There has always been an element of "separation" or finding oneself, but never before in human history has it been elevated to an art form and a "right". The so called permissive environment of the upbringing of the child, is really becoming more of a laissez faire environment, latch key kids, computers as babysitters, and teens in the peer group becoming teens in the 'hood.
The monstrous huge rolling sloped shoulders of those overweight "rappers" in their baggy clothes, and their alien hand movements, is indicative of a sub culture that is throwing itself right in the face of the polite , the civilized and the non-profane. Gangs and drugs, sex and perversion.
There is however a bright light . The "best" will lead. THose whose families have nurtured them, and guided them, with a firm set of right and wrong values, to instill in them a philosophy and lifelong learning , a strong mind in a strong body , Legi Regi Gregi Deo as we say in Latin. (The motto of one of the finest boy's schools on the planet).
Remember, civilizations come and go, and those which have the longest run are those civilizations who deserve a long and fruitful history- societies which generally do "the right thing" as they go forward, based on what they learned in the past. But as we can see in great Britain , it eventually becomes a state where the bad choices erode all that was, and the entity morphs into something different... which is usually quite foreign to what the originators might have had in mind.
There really is right and wrong, it just sometimes takes a lot of years to get it correctly nailed as to which is which .
green hair is the least of our problems, a symptom on a gnat. The slope-shoulders rolling walk hats-on-sideways gorgons are what concern me.

[ME]

If you want to add schools such as Morehouse College (and Spelman College), don't forget Saint John's University (and the College of Saint Benedict). They have a similar arrangement with an all-female sister school. Deep Springs is good, but two years, not four. Of all four-year liberal arts colleges in the United States, only Wabash College and Hampden-Sydney College are truly all-male with no women students in the class room. (The closest college of any kind is about 25 miles from Wabash.) As the article mentions, some at Wabash--faculty at least, not so much administrators that I can tell--want it to go co-ed, but those discussions have been ongoing for over a century. Don't expect anything to change any time soon.

[david pancost]

As a Wabash College grad, I find this interesting, if a bit childish, until the last paragraph. No one who's ever lived in a barracks would ever say anything so silly about how civilized soldiers are.

[Tony Esolen]

Mr. Pancost,

I mean by "civilized" trained to think and act for the common good, to lead and to obey; that is a virtue that has to do with the founding of cities. Please consider what kind of men, with what kind of training, founded and perpetuated such cities as Athens, Sparta, and Rome. I'm sticking by the definition. I don't mean "domesticated" or "presentable in decent society," I don't mean "always orderly" or "possessed of a high degree of culture." There is a real civic order in a cavalry unit or on a ship; if there were not, the cavalry unit would be destroyed in battle and the ship would fall to mutiny or would sink. See, for a dramatic illustration, the opening of Shakespeare's Tempest. There is not anywhere close to as strong a civic order in a typical faculty senate.

From what I see of history, I cannot find an example of the building up of complex civic orders wherein the women have encouraged the men to build them, and the men have built them at the women's insistence. I see instead that often enough concerns for one's own family, as opposed to everybody else's family, rather get in the way of a man's devoting himself to the building of a village or the clearing of a large tract of land.

[David Kubiak]

As a traditionalist Catholic (FSSP style) teaching at Wabash College, where the great majority of my colleagues are typical secular-liberal academics, I can say that because of the strength of the alumni it is unlikely that Wabash will become co-educational anytime soon. What is distinctly likely, however, is that the faculty will vote for some kind of feminist "gender studies" requirement which will have students reading preposterous pseudo-academics like Michael Kimmel and memorizing his commandments of "gender justice." Our fellows are so overly respectful of authority they would, alas, probably put up with their own castration.

[Tony Esolen]

Mr. Kubiak,

Ah -- for their "intellectual" development? Or to "teach them a lesson," in the old bullying schoolyard sense of the phrase? I detect a certain hardheartedness here, a disdain for the young men as young men, an unwillingness to love them for what they are.