Herding the Masses
Begun with high ideals, the secular education movement sought to help the common person by extending its social program through high school. Everyone was urged to finish high school. The "business" of education grew as other business grew with it. Agribusiness pushed people off of the small farm, while the attractions of the city and the sophistication of higher culture drew people into the cities. Then the pressure was on to attend college. Courses were gradually "dumbed down" in order to accommodate the droves of young people who are culturally trained in them and for them. Education was billed as the path to success, and it was true, if over stated. Competition in the work force led many to seek higher degrees still, postponing marriage in many cases well past their sexual prime or desirability.
The growth of mass education in this century led to the herding of our young people together with others the same age. More and more, coeducation became the norm at higher and higher age levels. Young people found themselves away from their parents more, and developed romantic relationships, apart from their parents supervision, with friends in high school. Later this was also the case in colleges which were taking in more and more students and were becoming coed. This tended to effect cultural feelings about a the relative difference in age in a young couple.
The "extended adolescence" of our young has proved profitable for these institutions and for other big businesses as well, but it effectively competed with many of the "regular people" it claimed to help, financially and culturally defrauding them to some extent, if unintentionally.
Is it possible that these developments have weakened marriage? Has our marriage culture been vulnerable to commercial forces? Have we been sold a bill of goods? Have we lost our culture to supra-culture?
