Statement of the Issue
In the burgeoning reaction to egalitarian feminism, a reactionary subculture has started to take shape in the conservative evangelical world, one that is willing to disparage the idea of providing daughters with a rigorous education, particularly at the college level. Below I post seven theses that indicate why I believe this is a really bad idea.
It is important to state, however, that I am talking about actual education, and not what passes for it, in these our dissolute and undisciplined times.
#1 Femina Adorans
This view that disparages education for girls is built on a fatal compromise regarding the purpose of education, categorizing it as a pragmatic vo-tech venture. This is the disease that has almost totally corrupted the world of higher education today. The thought is that college is there to prepare you for “a job.” And because believing Christians know that a woman’s focus and priority is supposed to be domestic and home-centered, the idea is that college prep for that job is totally unnecessary.
The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, as the catechism has it. The chief end of man is not to get a cushy job with corporate right out of college, with a really good benefits package. Now a lot of Christian reactionaries have reacted against this mentality, and have done well as far as that goes, but they have still retained the idea that education is for a job. And because they think a woman’s “job” requires little more than possession of a womb, and enough literacy to read the instructions on the side of a biscuit mix box, they consequently disparage the place of education in a woman’s life.
But the chief end of education should be the same as the chief end of man. Preparation for life should have the same end that life does, which is to glorify God. So the most important thing that any of us do is worship God on the Lord’s Day. That should be the center of our lives. And a healthy worship service ought to be one that summons forth all our faculties—we are to love God, after all, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Dt. 6:5).
If the chief end of man is to glorify God, and the center of our attempts to glorify Him is the worship of God on the Lord’s Day, and “man” is understood as being made up of male and female (Gen. 1:27), this means that the education that prepares us to worship God intelligently is as much for the girls as it is for the boys.
Our goal for our girls should be to have them as educated as the Lord’s mother was when. the archangel Gabriel appeared to her. A careful review of her Magnificat, likely the work of a girl still in her teens, reveals that she, at any rate, was no silly juggins. She knew how to glorify God, as we all should know.
#2 Wisdom Is a Woman
The book of Proverbs personifies Wisdom as a woman, and does the same thing with Folly. We have Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly set before us. A concrete example of this personification is found in Proverbs 31, but the range of her practical activities should be understood against the backdrop description of Lady Wisdom found earlier.
And Lady Wisdom is the patroness of a great salon. Her house has seven pillars (Prov. 9:1), and she has mixed her wine beforehand (Prov. 9:2). She has prepared the banquet (Prov. 9:3), and has sent out her maidens to bring in all the guests to the grand reception. Anyone who believes that this does not involve the life of the mind is out of their mind.
We return to the inescapable concept of “not whether but which.” If men deliberately discourage their daughters from emulating Lady Wisdom, then the end result of that fatherly folly is going to be their daughters emulating Dame Folly.
#3 Resisting the Serpent
The long war between God and Satan began in the Garden, and resulted in the overthrow of the woman. Through her, the man was tempted and also fell, thus plunging our race into the chaos and darkness of sin. When God expelled them both from the Garden, He did not leave them without hope, in that He promised that the seed of the woman would eventually have the woman’s revenge, and the head of the serpent’s seed would be crushed (Gen. 3:15).
The serpent therefore has a particular malevolence against women. Woman is the glory of man, and the serpent loves nothing more than to defile and deface that glory. He has a low view of women, and when Christian men begin to reinforce the assumptions that contribute to such a low view, they are working contrary to God’s purpose and plan.
Some men talk as though they want their daughters to be nothing more than a drudge, capable of following simple instructions. But we should be wanting our daughters to grow up into mature women capable of giving the instructions (Prov. 31: 27). We should want them to become caryatids, sculpted in palace style (Ps. 144:12). We should be eager for our daughters to be able to conquer with a glance (Song 6:10). We should want them to be ingenious and cunning with their hands (Jer. 10:9; Ex. 35:25). We should want them as some point to be numbered among the wise women (2 Sam. 20:16). We should want them to enter into their domestic calling as a high vocation, as mistress of the domain (Tit. 2:5). We should want them to resemble the Shekinah glory, for a glory and a covering (Is. 4:5; 1 Cor. 11:15).
That is how we answer the serpent.
#4 Companionate Marriage
Christians have traditionally held that the purposes of marriage are three-fold—the propagation of godly seed (Mal. 2:15), the prevention of uncleanness (1 Cor. 7:2), and the companionship of a true helper (Gen. 2:18).
This third purpose should take up at least some of our attention. A man and a woman should be able to talk about more than the weather, or Johnny’s report card, or what’s for dinner, or if dinner is occurring, whether or not the mashed potatoes should be passed.
This does not mean that husband and wife need to have specialized knowledge in identical areas (although that can be nice). But it does mean that a general liberal arts education that enables you to ask intelligent questions about a subject outside your expertise is going to be a true aid and comfort.
The word companion comes from two Latin words, one meaning “with,” and the other, panis, meaning bread. A companion is one who shares your bread. There will be more than a few times when you want to talk about more subjects than just the bread.
#5 Lowering the Bar
Reducing educational expectations for daughters is a surreptitious way of lowering expectations for your future sons-in-law. “Men of sense do not want silly wives,” said Mr. Knightley, and he is a man to be heeded when it comes to this.
Silly women can be powerfully attractive, but it is worth asking exactly what kind of men they are likely to attract. There are two main categories. There are the clever but unscrupulous men who simply see an opportunity to get someone simple-minded to sleep with them. I saw a comedian once who said that it was really important to be able to recognize intelligent women because, as he put it, the dumb ones are “mine.” So that would be an obvious problem.
The other category likely to be attracted would be men who were not “men of sense.” Silly women attract silly men, and those silly men will frequently want to marry the silly women . . . because they think they have found their soul mate. And perhaps they have. So a father who deliberately handicaps his daughter is increasing the chances that men of sense are going to stay away.
#6 Leveling Downward
All of these issues are connected. This approach fails even when measured by the metric that it ostensibly sets up for itself—prioritizing the education of sons. But what about grandsons?
The level of education that your daughters receive will be roughly equivalent to the level of education that your grandsons will receive. If your daughter has a blinkered view of the world, and she attracts a like-minded husband, then that is what your grandsons are going to grow up with. You cannot take this kind of thing away from your daughters because they do not share your sex without also taking it away from your grandsons, who do share it. If your daughter lives in a world with a low ceiling, then her kids will also live there.
And if your poorly educated daughter manages to marry a man of educational distinction, then your grandsons are going to grow up in a divided home. If they go with their mother, then it will be the same result as above. If they go with their father, then you will have dodged the educational bullet, but at the expense of like-minded and harmony in that home.
Households where everyone respects and honors educational achievement will be households that will most likely produce children who will achieve in that way. Households where that is not valued will hit what they aim for.
I have seen this happen a number of times. I have sometimes joked that being a pastor means watching people make bad choices for a living. You can see trouble brewing, but when it is still early on, and you are simply going on the strength of pastoral vibes, the whole thing is a “debatable matter,” and the folks concerned think you should butt out. The people who have decided convictions about such things are frequently not willing to entertain the possibility that they are in the process of ruining the lives of people who are dear to them. But then, later, when the whole thing lands terribly, as anticipated, the concrete is now hard, and there would be no satisfaction in mentioning that “this is what I was concerned about fifteen years ago.”
#7 Answering Feminism
This view tends to reinforce the mistaken idea that the only thing necessary to develop a biblical worldview about life between the sexes is to hold a position that angers and annoys the feminists. “If it ticks the feminists off, it must be biblical.” This cannot be right because thinking biblically is a true and genuine challenge, an intellectual discipline, while angering feminists is really easy.