|
A WSJ editorial by a college professor relates how she had her class
read Joshua Harris' book on dating, and another book promoting modesty.
She was surprised to learn that her left-leaning students "ate up" this
stuff on morals and standards.
Here's the link to the article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120728447818789307.html?mod=taste_primary_hs
Sex Education
By
DONNA FREITAS
April 4, 2008; Page W11
(An excerpt.)
"After conducting a national college survey of over
2,500 students, I found that among those who reported "hooking up" -- a
range of sexually intimate acts, from kissing to intercourse, that
occur outside a committed relationship -- at Catholic and nonreligious
private and public colleges and universities, 41% are profoundly upset
about their behavior. The 22% of respondents who chose to describe a
hook-up experience (the question was optional) used words like "dirty,"
"used," "regretful," "empty," "miserable," "disgusted," "ashamed,"
"duped" and "abused" in their answers. An additional 23% expressed
ambivalence about hooking up, and the remaining 36% were more or less
"fine" with it. And 45% of students at Catholic and 36% at nonreligious
private and public schools say that their peers are too casual about
sex. Not a single person at these schools said that their peers valued
saving sex for marriage, and only 7% said that they felt that their
friends wanted to reserve sex for committed, loving relationships.
When last semester I taught Wendy Shalit's "A Return
to Modesty," in a class at Boston University called "Spirituality &
Sexuality in American Youth Culture," I assumed that my mostly
left-leaning students would reject her arguments about the terrible
effects that the hook-up culture has on young women and the positive
effects of traditional religion and morality on young women's
well-being. Instead, my students ate up her critique and were
fascinated by her descriptions of modesty as a virtue, especially
within the context of faith. One student said that she felt empowered
to stop tolerating vulgar remarks about sex made by peers in her
presence.
The class was equally attracted to some evangelical
dating manuals, like "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris and
"Real Sex" by Lauren Winner, that I asked them to read. They seemed
shocked that somewhere in America there are entire communities of
people their age who really do "save themselves" until marriage, who
engage in old-fashioned dating with flowers and dinner and maybe a kiss
goodnight. They reacted as if these authors describe a wonderful
fantasy land. "It would be easier just to have sex with someone than
ask them out on a real date," one student said, half-seriously.
Interestingly, most of the study respondents do
identify with religious traditions that have rules about sexuality.
But, with the exception of evangelicals, American college students see
almost no connection between their religious beliefs and their sexual
behavior. This radical separation of religion and sex tells us
important things not only about the power of the college hookup culture
but also about the weakness of religious traditions in the face of it.
Perhaps the various church leaders would be interested to know that
their young people are longing for the kinds of guidelines and rituals
for dating that religion can offer. It might make them more willing to
actually explain church teachings on sex and engage the students in
honest discussions about how to foster healthy, fulfilling romantic
relationships.
The overwhelming majority of students interviewed in
my study (78%) saw romance as virtually asexual. They listed "just
talking" and "talking for hours," often alongside some star-gazing,
watching the sunset, or maybe a long walk. It's no wonder, then, that
college students fantasize about the restraints that certain models of
religious identity place on sex and dating. These models tend to be
chaste to the extreme -- first kiss at the altar for some.
The question remains, though, why students who feel
bad about hooking up, who wish their peers would act less casual about
sex and who dream of living with at least some restrictions on their
sexual relationships then choose to act as they do. The answer lies in
community. Most campuses do not provide an environment where acting on
romantic desires, rather than sexual ones, is feasible. It takes a
village to set standards for dating.
So, parents, you may have done an excellent job
raising your kids with good morals, strong boundaries and high
expectations when it comes to romance and sex, but it would take an
18-year-old of superhuman strength to stand up to the pressures of most
college environments. In other words, find out about the dating lives
and party habits of students at your child's dream school, or whether
hooking up has replaced dating altogether. As students told me time and
time again, romantic relationships -- the good, the bad and the ugly --
can make or break the college experience. Before you mail that check,
do your research."
Ms. Freitas is the author of "Sex and the Soul:
Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance & Religion on America's
College Campuses," out from Oxford University Press this month. |
