HT: The Autumn Rain

My dear friend at The Autumn Rain has a few articles posted that caught my attention:


Not Harvard Bound:
Some of America’s Most Promising Youth Are Seeking an Even Higher Education

May 2006 Touchstone Magazine.

"Those who wish to glimpse what the future holds or even to know present culture in its purest form very often look to the mental and moral health of the nation’s youth. And what they find is generally discouraging. The over-sexed, underdressed teenagers who seem to alternate between hanging out at the mall and spilling out the intimate details of their lives on myspace.com do not seem to be preparing themselves for positions of moral and political responsibility. Even at the other end of the spectrum, at the nation’s leading universities, young people seem to lack strong character."

"Flat-souled youth. Organization kids. Charlotte Simmons. As accurate as these portraits of America’s contemporary youth culture may be, I have become increasingly convinced that they are local accounts, based on observations of students at the University of Chicago or Princeton or Stanford or some other elite institution, that tell only one story—and perhaps not the story that gives the greatest insight into the future, or of one possible future, of America. There may, in fact, be another story with a far happier ending."

This article will have to join our continuing banter about college.

And, for a discussion of manners:

The American Conservative
April 10, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006
Minding Our Manners: Egalitarianism’s assault on class aims to make us all equally rude.
By Theodore Dalrymple

This excess of informality is very undignified and unattractive and results in a society constantly on edge, even in the smallest of interactions. I think it explains in part the worldwide success of a series of books by my friend Alexander McCall Smith about a lady private detective in Botswana called Mma Ramotswe. For the African society that McCall Smith portrays so eloquently in these books is one in which a certain formality and ceremoniousness of manners still exists, which come as a great and instant relief to people who live in societies that are altogether without them. Not only do the ceremoniousness and formality help to smooth the rough edges of social interaction, but they allow some grading of such interaction, according to degrees of desired or achieved intimacy. Formality, moreover, is the precondition of subtlety and even of irony; without formality, life becomes coarse-grained and crude. The distinction between friendliness and friendship becomes blurred so that it is no longer even perceived.

Discussions of manners need to occur regularly around here as well. In a society where one cannot learn manners by simply watching those around you, it is good to talk about the details. "But, why?" can lead to some very interesting and lively conversation.