Making Men out of Boys
“As a busily growing animal, I am scatterbrained and entirely lacking in mental application. Having no desire at present to expend my precious energies upon the pursuit of knowledge, I shall not make the slightest attempt to assist you in your attempts to impart it. If you can capture my unwilling attention and goad me by stern measures into the requisite activity, I shall dislike you intensely, but I shall respect you. If you fail, I shall regard you with the contempt you deserve, and probably do my best, in a jolly, high-spirited way, to make your life a hell upon earth. And what could be fairer than that?”
—Ian Hay, Housemaster
Being a man is tough. Becoming a man is tougher.
In the last decade, numerous articles, books, and online commentaries have addressed the subject of the adolescent male adult. Physically and legally, he is a man; he can grow a beard, buy whiskey, join the Army, and make babies. He can lay pipe, wield a hammer, deal in stocks, sell real estate, and manage a restaurant. He can do all these things and more, yet in some key respects he remains a teenager. He still regards himself as the center of the world, primarily concerned with his own wants and desires. When not working, he dresses as he did in high school. His love of toys and amusements is little changed from the time he was 12. He defines commitment to marriage and children as obligations to be avoided. Duty is not a word in his dictionary.
Concurrent with this social trend are the dismal statistics regarding male education. Males now make up only 43 percent of our nation’s college students, with the balance in some universities having become so lopsided that admissions officers quietly recruit male applicants. With the exception of engineering and mathematics, females dominate graduate-school enrollment. The National Center for Education Statistics recently noted that for the last 27 years the number of female graduate students has exceeded the number of males. Nearly 50 percent of the students admitted to medical and law school are female.
That boys have fallen behind girls in elementary and secondary schools is common knowledge. In 2010 the Center on Education Policy released data showing boys reading at a level ten-percent below that of girls. In the same year the Department of Education concluded that, while all student reading scores are falling, for the last 30 years boys have scored worse on these tests than girls in every age group, every year.
That we are failing to educate boys is apparent to all but the most doctrinaire feminists. In May 2008, when the American Association of University Women disputed any “boys crisis” in education, parents and teachers alike reacted with caustic incredulity. Even at the AAUW’s own website, the report aroused a negative reaction. Typical was the response of Adrianne, a self-described “sad and mad professor and mom,” who summed up the report as “stunningly short-sighted, myopic, and irresponsible.” (U.S. prison administrators, directors of the world’s most populous penal system, would have choked with laughter at the AAUW’s claims, as 1 of every 73 American males is currently incarcerated.)
This decline in male learning and maturity is the result of a 50-year assault on the old virtues of manhood. Uncle Sam has been vanquished by Aunt Samantha and her “nanny state,” whereby government has infantilized both men and women. The widespread use of the Pill and other contraceptives have freed men from the obligations once associated with fatherhood. Forty years of high divorce rates have damaged marriage and created millions of matriarchal households, allowing fathers to evade their duties while simultaneously stripping young men of the example of masculinity and fatherhood. A heavy emphasis on female education, brought about by fears that girls were being denied opportunities available to boys, has made classrooms less friendly to boys, ended most all-male educational institutions, and brought about an attitude of reverse chauvinism. Television and movies—think Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory, Community, Dumb and Dumber, and the like—have made the bumbling father and adult teenagers models of manhood.
Some academics and writers contend that the alterations in the definition of manhood simply reflect the sea change in our culture. The code of manliness—how antiquated that word sounds, even to those who treasure it—is, these critics argue, superfluous. The manly virtues that once carried men across oceans in tiny ships, and soldiers into battle, no longer serve a purpose. Technology, social safety nets, sexual equality, a kinder and gentler society: These are replacing the masculine attributes of independence, hard work, courage, duty, and honor. These same critics make their prophecies self-fulfilling by brushing aside what they view as patriarchal alternatives in education: bringing back trade and vocational classes to high schools, teaching boys in all-male classes or schools, restoring discipline to the classroom.
On a grand scale, the outcome of this war on tradition and manhood looks bleak. The flags come down these days without a shot being fired. You want to open a public school in Detroit for young black males, a campus stressing discipline and hard work? No way. You’re discriminating against females. Want to fill the need of young boys for more physical activity? No can do. Insurance costs for playgrounds are prohibitive. Besides, recess takes away the opportunity to teach students that the environment is going to hell and that George Washington was an oppressor.
Having spent 50 years educating boys as if they were girls, we now gape in wonder at their failure, their frustration, and their anger.
Yet we must remember that ours is the age of little wars, guerilla wars, and it is by becoming guerilla fighters ourselves that we may find our hope. We can refuse the blandishments of certain educators and the government, the solecisms that pass for truth, the culture working to make males second-class learners and citizens. We—mothers and fathers, grandparents, teachers, mentors—can do battle against these enemies of manhood and give boys the tools they need to grow up.
We begin by teaching boys from an early age the romance and adventure of life. How did the adolescent who played a high-minded knight-errant evolve into a sullen, nihilistic teenager? How did that same adolescent become the 30-year-old who wears his baseball cap backward, plays more video games than the teenager, and lives with his parents? Boys who come of age watching sex and violence in movies, or the cynicism offered by most television comedies, who listen to loveless music drenched in ugliness and despair, who possess no sense of responsibility or consequence, will likely join Peter Pan’s tribe of Lost Boys. To buck this trend, we must keep a vigilant watch on the culture. To grow men, we must teach our boys heroism, taking our models from literature, movies, and living examples.
We must also raise our expectations of boys. Here in Asheville I offer seminars in Latin, literature, and history to homeschooled students. Faced with sons whose academic performances have fallen behind their sisters or their female peers, and taught by experts that boys develop more slowly than girls, some parents I know buy into the excuse that “boys will be boys,” and that they mustn’t be pushed too hard. The same mother who urges her daughters to excel and who delights in their accomplishments will excuse her sons’ lack of diligence because “they are boys.”
These lowered expectations cause enormous and unnecessary damage. The game is lost before it begins. Imagine a basketball coach saying to his team, “All right, guys. We’re playing Central today. They’re bigger, tougher, and better than we are. Just go out on the court, and I’ll be proud of you.” That coach should earn the contempt of every young man under his charge. They look to him to light a fire in their bellies, and he gives them a bucketful of water. It is one thing to recognize that most boys do indeed learn at a different pace than girls in some subjects. It is quite another to diminish our expectations to the point of guaranteeing failure.
Here we need to remember that boys often require a sharper discipline than girls. Because my son played basketball for the Trailblazers, our local homeschool team, I have spent a good amount of time watching various teams at practice and at play. This past year, the coaches of both the girls’ and boys’ varsity teams were male. The girls’ coach, whose chief problems on the team were bickering and personality conflicts, rarely raised his voice and spent much time soothing hurt feelings. The boys’ coach, confronted by a lack of discipline and a spirit of rebellion on the part of a few players, had no difficulty shouting at the players, yanking them from the floor if they wouldn’t listen, and running the entire team through suicide drills for infractions. The boys grumbled, but gave him their respect. And like the girls, they won games.
Boys require this same fire and sense of discipline from their parents and teachers in their academic work. They must be pushed to excel in their studies just as we push them to win games on the soccer field or basketball court. It is useful to understand, and to point out to them, that their competitors aren’t girls, of course, or even other boys, but themselves and their own ignorance.
Finally, boys must be brought to books. They must be lured, cajoled, pushed—if necessary, shoved—into becoming readers. Poorly developed reading skills torpedo a student’s chance for success in the classroom and in life. For two years I taught GED classes in a state prison. When asked, my prison students recalled losing interest in school in the third or fourth grade, those same years when reading and writing become vital to a student’s classroom success.
Our current abuse of technology, a plague that has killed off more readers than the Black Death killed souls in Europe, deserves special mention. It is no coincidence that the 30-year decline in boys’ reading scores begins in the 1980’s, when home video games first became popular among adolescent males. From their inception, these games appealed almost exclusively to boys—that’s why Nintendo marketed a Game Boy—and even during that digital stone-age teachers were complaining about the nefarious influence of such entertainments on reading skills. When I first offered my seminars in Asheville in 1998, not one of my students owned a cellphone. No one arrived in class plugged in to an iPod. Several lacked access to a computer. Facebook and texting had yet to enter either the language or the marketplace. Computer games existed, of course, but these were played almost exclusively by male students.
The last decade has radically changed this situation. Many of my students are now on Facebook, all have iPods, all text with their cellphones. Games for boys remain a high priority. My middle-school writing students keep a journal. With each passing year, more boys write about their gaming exploits while at the same time confessing to the page how far behind they are in their schoolwork. Never in these journals has a female student mentioned computer gaming except when at a party and in the company of males.
If nothing else, this conflict between electronics and print becomes a question of time management. The equation is simple: The hours spent watching television, texting, or blowing away bad guys with electronic weapons means fewer hours available for reading books. The remedy for such a situation is simple in concept and difficult in execution. To make better readers of boys, parents and guardians must bring under control the firestorm of electronic entertainment that surrounds all of us today.
Whenever possible, the books selected for adolescents and teenage males should provide models of manly behavior. In their attempt to attract male readers, some pragmatic educators and publishers have pushed books that do well in the marketplace but offer little to lift the hearts and minds of readers. The worst of these books focus on bodily functions—farts, burps, and so on. Sales are up for these “grossology” books, and even a distinguished publisher like Penguin offers such titles as Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger.
Advocates of Sir Fartsalot or the Captain Underpants series claim that it makes no difference what a boy reads, as long as he is reading. Yet what would we think of a parent who said of her son that “whatever he eats is good as long as he is eating”? And where is the payoff? At what point does the adolescent male magically segue from The Day My Butt Went Psycho to The Yearling or Sounder or Treasure Island? And what does it say about a boy in the 21st century that he must be lured to reading by such squalid stuff? In an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How to Raise Boys That Read,” Thomas Spence, president of Spence Publishing Company and a father of boys, wisely remarked that, “if you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.”
Parents can help their sons strive for this level of excellence by providing books worthy of them. For elementary-school readers, books like Calvin and Hobbes and the TinTin series contain extensive vocabularies and attract the interest of most boys. Authors such as Richard Scarry and Roald Dahl remain perpetually in vogue. Books from the Landmark Series and from the Childhood of Famous Americans series can lead boys into deeper reading of history and biography. Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, the Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes mysteries, the Westerns of Louis L’Amour, the fantasies of the Lightning Thief mythologies or the Harry Potter stories: These can pull readers to classics like The Red Badge of Courage, Johnny Tremain, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Certain magazines, too, can appeal to boys. The feature stories in Sports Illustrated, for example, contain some of the finest writing done in magazines today.
Reading does more than prepare students for academics. Great literature of all kinds as well as the best of movies—Master and Commander, Secondhand Lions, and others—teach lessons for real life. To learn to love, to learn to stand up for what is right, to learn to suffer—these are the lessons of manhood and require real-life experience, but boys can use literature and history as the training grounds for these battles.
You want to rear a boy properly? Limit his time with games and gadgets. Provide him with good books. Push him to excel. Guide him with a firm hand. Cast a vigilant eye on what he sees and does outside the home. These will require great effort and willpower on your part, but in the end you’ll have not only a reader, but a student. Maybe even a man.
Jeff Minick writes from Asheville, North Carolina.
This article first appeared in the September 2012 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Entries(RSS)
With my friend Clyde Wilson, I would agree that Mr. Berry was never a conservative and never, despite whatever illusions he may have about himself, a Christian. I don't think he can fairly be accused of courting popularity, though I can easily believe he is uncomfortable with the shrill rhetoric of many who profess to admire him. There is much to admire in him, both as a man and as a writer, but he never should have been set up as an agrarian Christian guru. He has a depth of the wisdom that comes from reflection and experience but he is rather short on book learning, and like many such people he tends to trust his own judgment far too much. Mutual friends have described evenings in which he holds forth on the Scriptures, very unwise in a man who has not made a serious study of such things. I do think that if someone is forced to choose between pleasant people who happen to be homosexual and the strident haters on the so-called Christian so-called right, it would be an easy choice to make. Berry is quite wrong on this subject, but whoever said he was a moral theologian?
The predominance of British writers in these lists is inevitable: There has been some kind of English literature for about 1300 years, while Americans have been seriously in the game for only about two centuries. Some did mention Mark Twain, and I cited Tarkington, Bret Harte, and Edward Eager. I do think, however, that Prof. Wilson is right to demand more American names. Depending on the age of the boy, I would recommend, also, some (not all) of Hemingway's fishing stories, Walter Farley's horse novels, Jack London, Faulkner's The Unvanquished, Poe's short stories, Ray Bradbury--especially Something Wicket and The Martian Chronicles, Madison Jones' Nashville 1864, Andrew Lytle's Bedford Forrest, Eugene Manlove Rhodes' Paso Por Aqui, Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country...
Rhodes is still relatively well-known but Lea is virtually forgotten. Chilton Williamson also likes (as do I) The Brave Bulls.
"but he never should have been set up as an agrarian Christian guru..."
Yes, this is true, but who is it that presented him as such? I find these folks who want to find utopia in the country or in the city, rather irritating. I do think Mr. Berry is quite American in his beliefs and should not be held to any higher standard of seriousness than we have come to expect from graduates of our most prestigious Universities, opinion journals, evening news broadcasts or elected leaders. Using this frame of reference who could deny that "Wendell Berry, (is) one of the great men of our day ?"
Someone should add these recommendations to the Autodidact's Reading List if they are not already included.
Wendell Berry... is the same as he has always been and transcends current political categories.
With all due respect, the notion of "transcending" current political categories strikes me as more than a little pretentious. Georges Bernanos, one of my favorite writers, has been said to have been, rather than a man of the right, a nostalgist for France as it was before there was left and right. But of course in the world that we live in, that can only mean that he is on the right of the political spectrum and disillusioned with the failure of so many men "on the right" to uphold the civilization that was their rightful inheritance.
I know, this question might be semantic. Still, no one is "above" his own time. It may sound romantic to say "I am not a man of this era" but of course that statement is always nonsense in the strictest sense. How are traditionalists supposed to uphold tradition if we concede to our enemies that the things we believe in have no relevance to the present day? Yes, in the present people hold to a thoroughly and deeply unwholesome outlook on everything. But we should not concede that this is a natural or positive "evolution." We traditionalists, conservatives, need to safeguard the treasures of the past, not resign ourselves to the status of biologically animate fossils.
I do think that if someone is forced to choose between pleasant people who happen to be homosexual and the strident haters on the so-called Christian so-called right, it would be an easy choice to make.
What crosses the lines when it comes to respectively "pleasant" and "haters," though? Homosexuals run the gamut between Barney Frank and a celibate lifelong closeted bachelor. The Christian Right runs the gamut between Fred Phelps and Chuck Colson.
And personally, I have never met a homosexual who supported the "gay agenda" and was a pleasant person to be around. Justin Raimondo (whom I have not met) himself is more level-headed than Berry on such matters.
Perhaps Raimondo is just better-learned. Still, I suppose Berry came of age much earlier than I did and is probably at least better-read than I am.
I do think Mr. Berry is quite American in his beliefs and should not be held to any higher standard of seriousness than we have come to expect from graduates of our most prestigious Universities, opinion journals, evening news broadcasts or elected leaders. Using this frame of reference who could deny that "Wendell Berry, (is) one of the great men of our day ?"
On the other hand, if we cannot hold Berry to any higher standard than we hold Bush, Cheney, Hanson, Gore, Obama, Clinton, et. al., does this not beg the question of why he should be taken any more seriously?
What about Fenimore Cooper and "The Last of the Mohicans"? I read it recently, and while I wouldn't say it was profound, it was a lot of fun, if a bit on the melodramatic side (it did take me a while to get past Cooper's style). It struck me as a very early example of the American Action Movie. Hawkeye and the Mohicans seem to be good, noble characters. Duncan's not too bad, either.
Still, I suppose Berry came of age much earlier than I did and is probably at least better-read than I am.
Boy, was it late when I wrote that. I should have said "undoubtedly better-read than I am."
With my posts I didn't mean to argue that the fact that Berry has come to some weird conclusions invalidates the notion that he has a good underlying outlook on day-to-day life. What I'm saying is that I find it hard to excuse those positions and that I do not share the surprise of some people about the kind of company (if that Oxford America story is any indication) he is choosing to keep.
He may not consciously be trying to impress such people with his positions, but we don't have to consciously try in order to be influenced...
I have subscribed to CHRONICLES since the mid-80s, and have consistently read most of every issue. I cannot recall, though I would not be surprised to learn otherwise, any mention of Cormac McCarthy and his role in American literature. I have come to believe that McCarthy is the greatest living American writer of fiction, and among a select group of Americans who are the best of the best.
Shifting gears, let me say that I was led by CHRONICLES, back in the 80s, to the "Southern Agrarians," and from there was led to Wendell Berry. For a time, I thought Berry fit in with those agrarians of yesteryear. His UNSETTLING OF AMERICA, THE GIFT OF GOOD LAND, and RECOLLECTED ESSAYS, among other works, seemed to contain chapters that could easily have been included in the original I'LL TAKE MY STAND. However, more recently I have come to believe that Mr. Berry, while brilliant and agrarian on the micro-scale of this own life, simply has it wrong in so many ways on the macro-scale outside of his fine Kentucky county. A farmer and local essayist at heart, he meets up with the Peter Principle when he delves into the big picture. At least that is the way I read him.
Once again, shifting gears, the original essay here--"Making Men out of Boys"--strikes me as a lament without the possibility of a redemption. The anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-Originalist world view has cosumed the body culture and body politic of American life. CHRONICLES for 30 years has described this spreading cancer, warned us about it, offered surgical cures, offered radical cures, and continues today, in spite of what clearly is losing cause, to fight it as it kills off the host. I am certain now that the cancer cannot be defeated in the whole of the body. But it can be fought, and even defeated, on the personal and local levels. This is where Berry's local-view successes are of such great value. God, Blood, and Soil--Faith, Family, and Community. Bush and Obama can send Americans to war with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in faraway lands, the Statist Left can continue to spread its evil across our culture and institutions, the Atheists can still keep pounding nails into Christ's hands, and they can even win apparent victories in the big picture. However, each of us can restore a proper quality of life locally, winning victories that matter right in our homes. Mr. Minick's essay is of enormous value in reminding us of the importance of the boy becoming a man under the firm and steady hand of a Christian, Western father rather than under the influence of our debased and death cult of a culture.
Mr Isaacvanwart,
You have spoken well. Wendell Berry was often invited to my college campus in the days of UNSETTLING OF AMERICA, THE GIFT OF GOOD LAND, and RECOLLECTED ESSAYS. I was an undergraduate with his good friend, Wes Jackson's, son. Mr. Berry is Cinna the poet and not Cinna the politician. It is a bit unjust to tear him to pieces over how a smart aleck kid writer like Miller may have portrayed him in a rag like Nationa Review. There are comparative goods as well as simple goods and Mr. Berry deserves high praise in both categories. His problem is not betrayal of his principles or selling out. Rather like most of us, it is the baggage we bought early in life and must carry everywhere we go. Some helps us, some does not.
Dear Mr. VanWart,
Excellently said. I rest from this stream.
P.S. Mr. Chan--thanks for the link.
A farmer and local essayist at heart, he meets up with the Peter Principle when he delves into the big picture.
This is pretty endemic of American life, though sometimes the reverse holds true as well:
On the one hand, many Americans value Church, family, traditional marriage and military ritual, yet go up in arms at the thought of a non-egalitarian society or the granting of courtesy titles. They have little idea that the formalized hierarchy in a feudal society expressed through estates and letters of ennoblement is a natural and logical macro-scale expression of these same rituals.
On the other hand, many "conservative" Americans appear to fight against moral decadence on a grand scale (against abortion, against gay marriage, against suppression of civic expressions of religious faith, etc.) while their own houses are a royal mess (divorce, remarriage, teen pregnancy...).
My fear is which side ends up prevailing, in the end, in the event of such disparity...
Nick,
You raise good questions. "which side ends up prevailing, in the end, in the event of such disparity..."
The side that gets the good done will prevail. And I supect it is more local than we suspect too. I always enjoy your comments and neglected to say you are correct about Wendell Berry's views on some specific issues that cannot prevail, will not last and are not attractive. It is what he actually loves about life that is more important than what he thinks about politics and really for most Americans, religion is just a useful way to justify your politics. Imagine him talking to his grandfather or great grandfather about current events and today's political issues and then imagine the conversation turning towards real life and farming. The one is ephemeral and silly, the other is lasting and worth remembering.
You raise good questions. "which side ends up prevailing, in the end, in the event of such disparity..."
The side that gets the good done will prevail. And I supect it is more local than we suspect too.
Yes, I hope so.
The thing is, the top-down rot is these days so pervasive and so encroaching that it is increasingly difficult to transmit one's small-scale good sense when one does not at least have a vague understanding of the good and the rotten on a larger scale.
Imagine him talking to his grandfather or great grandfather about current events and today's political issues and then imagine the conversation turning towards real life and farming. The one is ephemeral and silly, the other is lasting and worth remembering.
My father, not a deeply political man (I actually got my political views from my mother), used to tell me, making gestures to illustrate, "sphere of my control versus sphere of what you are talking about." On the other hand, if any ordinary decent man thinks that he can casually shrug off the mold eating away at what remains of the beautiful peach of Western society (and I don't know whether he does) and not have this upend what he rightly loves about his life and family, he is mistaken. You don't have to obsess or sign up for a life of activism in order to take a side. Admittedly, in the U.S., as the critiques of American conservatism in this journal never tire of pointing out, locating that broadly "good side" is increasingly a stretch.
And thank you for your kind words...
Readings for older boys,
Robert Ruark, THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY
THE OLD MAN'S BOY GROWS OLDER
James Warner Bellah, THE VAILIANT VIRGINIANS
John W. Thomason, LONE STAR PREACHER
May I second Prof Wilson's recommendation of "The Old Man and the Boy"? 50 years later I think of that book every time my dogs spot a squirrel and I knock it out of the tree -- a weekly occurrence. I read it to my daughter when she was young, replacing the omnipresent cursing with more suitable phrases.
This past Thursday, the morning temperature fell to 58 degrees Fahrenheit. God had opened squirrel season; alas, if we do not want to be fined, have our guns confiscated and be posted as criminals, we must wait for the state-sanctioned opening in early October. I killed my first squirrel, a fox squirrel, in a beach bottom in the upper reaches of Clear Creek with a single-shot 410 bore shot gun at the age of eight.
Upon the recommendation of Dr. Jim Kibler, I have ordered Mississippi Cotton by Paul Yarbrough. I think that it will be one of those books which we will want to recommend that young boys read.
Jim B and Mr. Peters, I'm hoping to get out in the woods this hunting season. I had to forego hunting during the years that my wife and I cared for her mother, who needed around-the-clock attention. The only relief my wife got was when I was home from work. I'm a much better explorer than hunter though. I always want to see what's over the next hill or around the bend in the trail. I move too much. Some of my best memories are of the hours I spent watching a beaver build a dam one afternoon while I waited in vain for a thirsty deer to show up to drink at the stream.
Mr. Van Sant,
My father allowed me to tag along after him when I was four or five years old, without a gun. He missed, I am quite sure, deer and squirrels because I had not yet acquired the skills of the hunt; however, before each hunt, he would communicate in some way that a four-year old and then as the years progressed, an older boy could understand, that a hunt was always much more than for deer and squirrels. One should anticipate the unexpected and learn to apprehend, long before one could comprehend, the "unseen" things. I got my 410 when I was eight. I later learned from my father, much later, that I received it that year because I had been faithful, since my toddler years,to his stern warning never to touch one of the guns. That he could trust me established that he would entrust me with the 410. My father read four things: the Bible every day, reading it through once a year for nearly forty years; the Alexandria Daily Town Talk which was once when locally owned and edited an excellent little paper; U.S.News and World Report until a day came when my father decided that it was liberal; and Zane Grey novels. When he entered his last days, he returned to the Zane Grey novels which he had begun to read as a boy. His chief reference book was the Farmer's Almanac.
Mr. Peters,
My father was not a hunter. He was a Boy Scout leader who taught me woodcraft, among other worthwhile things. He wasn't much of a reader, but my mother was, although she had only an eighth-grade education. Both of my parents were very involved in church activities. They kept my sister and I involved, too. I became a hunter late in life as a way to counter the anti-hunters. The Maryland DNR called a series of meetings for hunters and other citizens to provide input on hunting in the state. The anti-hunters boasted that they would flood the meeting in Annapolis with protesters. I attended the meeting to see what would happen. There were about two protesters. A long-time gun owner and shooter, I subsequently took the hunter safety course and started to hunt on public lands in Maryland. In addition to returning to hunting, I'm going to start helping out at my gun club as a range safety officer and assistant teaching the state sanctioned and required hunter safety course, as I did before I had to stop in order to help my wife with her mother.
Hunting serves a number of purposes. The most obvious one, of course, is the gathering of food, and closely linked with this one is the discovery of and contact with wild nature (since food that you gather yourself always tastes better, as both farmers and hunters will attest to) and by extension with the reality of the life cycle. (Too many people are under the bizarre impression that food comes from Safeway.) On this note, it is frustrating and/or infuriating that coursing is prohibited in the U.K. and rarely practiced in the U.S. (I think... but then maybe it's just the fact that in my circle of friends in France there happens to be a disproportionate number of coursers for any society) as it is the form of hunting that most closely approximates the wild, natural chase that would ensue were we to leave animals on their own.
Another is ecological management: right now the wild boar is wrecking havoc around Fontainebleau and needs to be destroyed.
Lastly, there is the ceremony, the pomp, the tradition, the wine, the gear and the guns... because, let's face it: hunting is just flat-out FUN!
Thanks Robert for the Fantasy Theater.
Roald Dahl's poem "TELEVISION" is perhaps too long, but seems to fit the subject....
The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.