Wise and benevolent deity Echidne picks up on one of the most bizarre confessionals I've ever encountered: A young, Christian woman's remembrance of the hell that was college, and her warning that most women should stay far from the Ivory Tower's heretical threshold.
I spent my years at college struggling to maintain a Biblical outlook on life. I was constantly attacked with every liberal "ism" known to modern man: feminism, humanism, relativism, evolutionism, etc. In my semester of student teaching alone, I felt that much of my purity was robbed from me as I was subject to horrifying discussions on unmentionable topics - often instigated by my mentor teacher! I survived 4 years in a secular university, but only by the grace of God. It was not an experience I would wish to repeat, though God certainly used that experience to teach me many, many lessons.[...]
In general I would not recommend college to other women. I think, in general, that young women would make better use of their time and spiritual development by pursuing studies on their own and serving their family and their church during their years of singleness. There are many opportunities for home-based businesses that do not require a college degree or much initial capital. A typical college education is not good training for being a wife and mother, since it is normally coupled with feministic ideology and a focus away from home responsibilities. Women today are leaving college disillusioned as to their Biblical roles. In college they are masculinized by feminist teachings, and after 4 years spent focusing on training for a career, few women exit college still focused on being content and submissive keepers at home.
This is, of course, a Bad Thing. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and what was so wrong with the cave anyhow?
It's easy, living in an urban center and interacting with few fundamentalists, to forget that this sort of perspective still exists in the United States, that the culture wars aren't just conflicts sparked by political opportunists but genuine expressions of a worldview distinctly hostile to modernity. If you believe, a priori, that a literal read of the Bible's roles for women offers the truest path from young women, college and education will prove threats, as their relentless insistence on critical thought and expanded horizons force the recognition and evaluation of competing life choices. As a submissive, docile existence is most easily accepted when no alternatives are considered, it's hardly an overstatement to say that universities pose an existential challenge to certain religious worldviews. But Echidne, after all, is a Goddess. Can't she just manufacture some further revelations and spiritual epiphanies that point these folks in a more positive direction?
