A newly proposed ballot initiative called the Colorado Marriage Education Act would require anyone wishing to marry for the first time or remarrying widows to complete 10 hours of pre-wedding marriage education, 24 hours for second marriages and 30 hours for third marriages. Curiously the act would not apply to civil unions, as if they don't have equal need of dealing with the issues of relationships.
David Schel and Sharon Tekolian of the sponsoring group "Kids Against Divorce" told the Denver Post that the intended purpose of the act is to "better prepare individuals going into marriage to fulfill their new roles as spouse and potentially as parent, to furthermore protect children given that marriage is the foundation of a family unit." They will need to gather 86,105 valid signatures by Aug. 4 to put the initiative on the November ballot. Kids Against Divorce plans to propose similar initiatives across the land.
This Marriage Education Act is well intentioned to protect children of divorce but is too little, too late. By the time a couple is contemplating marriage, the relationship is set in stone. The couple can see the finish line and aren't about to let a little matter like a weekend seminar get in the way of eternal bliss. They have already made irreversible emotional commitment and stopping the train at this point will cause a huge wreck.The better solution is to require the teaching of marriage as decided by each state at the junior high level. Social scientist Aimee Dorr has shown that adolescents are figuratively sponges waiting to soak up information on topics they have great interest in but poorly understand such as love, sex and marriage. This is the perfect time to develop healthy habits of courtship and learn to relate to the opposite sex in a life-affirming way.
Charles V. Larson observed in his book "Persuasion and Influence" that unlike our ancestors, who learned to model themselves as good husbands and wives from the people around them, children today learn about roles from the mass media. Thus it is important for schools to combat the mindlessly irresponsible behavior that is promoted on film, music, television and the internet and acted out by negative role models like Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber, Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, Robin Thicke and Kim Kardashian. Professor Virginia Wexman notes that "in a society in which the choice of marriage partners is in theory at least completely free, marriage patterns will be influenced by cultural institutions." Our schools can be a cultural institution for good by promoting a curriculum that gives the history of American marriage and why marriage is so important to the health of a nation. Schools could be instructing adolescents on the difference between patriarchal and companionate marriage, contrast healthy and unhealthy courtship and how to create mature long term relationships that may lead to marriage. This would be much more constructive that trying to change the made up minds of adults so close to their goal of matrimony.