“MARRIAGE EDUCATION” in the schools? Before you object that any self-respecting school ought to have its hands full teaching history and algebra, consider that most public school systems are already teaching kids about sex, family, and relationships in courses like sex ed, health, and that successor to home economics, consumer science. Then ask yourself: Should those subjects be treated in the classroom without reference to marriage? Should marriage be addressed, as it is at some schools, mainly through the budgeting exercise of planning a wedding and honeymoon for $ 20,000?
A growing number of schools are trying to offer meatier fare. In 1998, Florida became the first state to require “marriage and relationship skills” instruction in all high schools, public and private, as part of an existing required course in life management skills; and scattered schools and districts are doing more or less the same in all 50 states. To find out what such schools are teaching and to advance a discussion of what they should teach, the Institute for American Values convened some 120 social scientists, teachers, religious scholars, social workers, and miscellaneous others in New York last month to respond to an Institute report entitled “Hungry Hearts: Evaluating the New Curricula for Teens on Marriage and Relationships.” Sparks flew.
Institute affiliate-scholar Dana Mack, principal author of the report, examined ten curricula, whose content ranges from the sociological facts about marriage, cohabitation, and divorce, to the habits that nourish lasting relationships, to the moral and psychological issues raised by portrayals of romance and family in literature. Mack’s report assesses each program by five criteria, but the conversation in New York never got past the first: whether the curriculum has a “marriage focus.”
Does it, in other words, use the M-word, or does it speak neutrally of relationships, partners, couples, unions? Does it relate dating to the selection of a life mate and present the stable, marital family as the bedrock social unit? Or is self-fulfillment or psychological health presented as the chief justification for taking care over relationships?
Well! “Marriage focus” turned out to be fighting words. They quickly exposed a divergence of approach between two camps, which might be crudely labeled philosophers and pragmatists. Mack and other theoreticians of the “marriage movement” (the signers of its recent “Statement of Principles” include such thinkers as Robert Bellah, Midge Decter, Amitai Etzioni, Francis Fukuyama, William Galston, Mary Ann Glendon, Leon Kass, Richard John Neuhaus, and James Q. Wilson) write eloquently about the ravages of divorce and the long-term goal of rebuilding a “marriage culture.” They argue that marriage must be understood not just as an affair of the heart affecting two people but also as a communal institution that performs functions crucial to society. Marriage, they say, is our means of securing the benefits of two-parent child-rearing, along with all the other kinds of mutual love, aid, and support throughout the course of life that stable married couples voluntarily provide.
Many of the pragmatists say they share this long-term vision. But their immediate objective, at least in the context of curricula for schools, is different. They tend to be practitioners, teachers and therapists who have worked with teenagers, and they stress the urgency of training young people who are floundering. Too strong a focus on marriage, they insist, is counterproductive. If you want to get into the schools and teach kids relationship skills that many of them utterly lack — elementary know-how like listening, tact, courtesy, empathy, and conflict resolution — don’t confuse the issue by prematurely introducing marriage.
Diane Sollee, a passionate believer that people can be taught the behavior that sustains relationships (and herself a signer of the “Statement of Principles”), spoke of young people’s cynicism. “We tell kids that marriage is important and marriage is for life, but also that half of marriages fail. We need to convince them: Marriage is not a game of chance. You can learn how to do it differently from all the divorced people you know.” Sollee’s Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education (smartmarriages.com) steers troubled couples to appropriate courses. As for this first generation of curricula for schools, she called them primitive “contraptions,” like the Wright brothers’ plane, soon to be superseded by new improved models that will “show young people what love and commitment look like.”
Some of the pragmatists were emphatic: To get these curricula past school boards, principals, and parents, many of whom are divorced, and to enlist the efforts of teachers who don’t want to look judgmental, you simply must soft-pedal marriage. Others stressed that students themselves may not be ready to hear a pro-marriage message. Kids in their midteens to whom marriage seems remote, kids from single-parent homes, kids largely unsupervised, need to learn far more basic lessons first.
Wendy Wise, a veteran teacher with graduate degrees in psychology and education and the author of one of the programs Mack evaluated, said schools are already so burdened with requirements that courses in “marriage per se” are unlikely to be adopted. She designed her Wise Self-Esteem Project (WISEP For Teens) to meet California’s health curriculum guidelines; it is being used in some 40 California districts and has been sold in 34 states. (WISEP earned a “C” for “marriage focus.”)
Contacted later, Wise explained the priority she gives to relationship skills. A stint working as a family therapist convinced her of the need to reach more people and to reach them younger, with preventive education, before their relationships break down. Her program for high school students aims to ground teens “in problem solving, communication skills, time management, goal setting, and how to deal with the problem emotions like anger, jealousy, and guilt.” When she introduces marriage, near the end of senior year, she says, she likes to invite “a panel of clergy of different denominations to talk about why they feel pre-marital counseling is so important. The clergy love it, and the kids really respond. By that stage, kids are thinking about the future.”
To the philosophers, it all seemed, in the words of Mack’s report, “intellectually thin.” “The purpose of liberal education,” says David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, “is to expose children to their cultural heritage and stimulate them to be reflective about the big issues of life. Studying marriage is a richer experience than memorizing communications scripts.” Those participants strongly committed to a religious view of marriage seemed most doubtful of all about the wisdom of muting the central message in favor of interpersonal skills. After listening to the animated exchange between the theorists and the therapists, Wade Horn, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, wondered aloud: “If we can’t mention marriage, should we compromise?”
Horn had shown his hand earlier in the day. His work with divorced men has convinced him, he said, that neither statistics proving the benefits of marriage nor courses honing relationship skills will ever add up to a compelling argument for the self-sacrifice required by family life. “If a man is asking, Why should I be a good father?” said Horn, “the answer that will satisfy him is: To give your child a glimpse of God’s love for His children.”
If Horn is right, of course, the public schools can play at best a limited role in the recovery of the marital ideal. Instead, the job of reeducating a generation inured to divorce, cohabitation, and extra-marital childbearing belongs properly to another class of institutions: the churches.
Claudia Winkler is a managing editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
