Busted families and education - the 'need' to warehouse kids under age 18.

Part of the reason for my meandering educational career is a paper I wrote for a graduate level philosphy-of-education class about 1991.  The paper explored who should have the final say about a child's education, the parents or the state.  It wasn't a very good paper, and I only got a B- on it.  My ideas were pretty raw, and despite trying to look at situations with a choice-and-consequences kind of view (rather than 'right or wrong'), I ended up dumping lots of personal feelings into the paper.

In 1991, my oldest child began Kindergarten.  Despite urgings from family and friends, I resisted pre-school.  I had a college degree, was finishing a Master's, had taught successfully for several years, we had a play group and cousins.  I didn't see the need to clutter up our lives with another commitment to be somewhere at a particular time when the parent-child ratio was so much better than the teacher-student ratio at any pre-school.  I liked doing things with my kids.  I could do them just fine, thanks.

But writing the paper opened my eyes to what people think about the need for public education.  By that, I mean that people believe that schools are a necessary part of a childhood experience, and also believe that schools are necessary to a functioning society.  We've also been taught that the school knows better than the parent.

Well, given our current, peculiarly American view on work, schools perform an important function for our society.  But are they the right functions?  Are they good functions?  Will they protect our society or contribute to tearing it down?

In America, there is a buck to be made!  In this land of opportunity, absolutely anyone can become a millionaire with hard work and a bit of good fortune. You don't have to win the lottery or be on a game show.  Opportunity plus instinct equals profits on everything from Beanie Babies to iPhones.  Among the parade of aliens in the Star Trek series, the Ferengi were the mercenary merchants of anything.  If there was a market anywhere in the universe, they would find it.  They had 285 Rules of Acquisition which their children learned like the Pledge of Allegiance.  Here are a selection of them, from http://www.sjtrek.com/trek/rules/. 

• Once you have their money ... never give it back.
  
• Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
  
• Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.
  
• A man is only worth the sum of his possessions.
• Small print leads to large risk.
  
• Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
  
• Greed is eternal.
  
• Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.
  
• A deal is a deal ... until a better one comes along.
• A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all.
  
• Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
  
• Never place friendship above profit.
  
• A wise man can hear profit in the wind.
  
• Peace is good for business.
  
• War is good for business
  

Doesn't this sound like US?  We ARE the Ferengi!  And we've failed unless we own the 3500 square foot house, have a student loan to match our mortgage, two cars and an RV in the 1200-square foot garage and a third car when the kids get a driver's license.

Which brings me to the topic of this post.

Somewhere in the last 100 years, children lost their status as economic asset and in this country are now 100% economic liabilities.  There's no financial reason to have a child whatsoever.  Children only cost money, they don't make money.  People with large families (more than 3 kids) are condemned for putting a strain on the earth's resources.

Since children cost money, that means that to afford them we have to make more money.  Where are we going to put the kids when we're out making money?  Daycare, from the earliest possible moment.  Pre-school, because the word sounds so much better and more productive than 'daycare'.  Then school, starting when the child is four or five, whether the child is ready for it or not, and not because the child needs to learn (you will hardly be able to stop that from happening), but in school because the parents need to work.  We tell ourselves we're putting them there to learn, but I propose that in our society, that's only a secondary reason, and only one of them.

Financial strain is a leading cause of divorce.  Divorce is a leading cause of financial strain.  Never-married and single parents are the heads of most households that are below the poverty level.  And then our school system preps kids to enter the job market and become Ferengi, and does zero, absolutely nothing to prepare kids to commit to and maintain lifelong relationships.

Is it any wonder that it's so hard to do school?  Perhaps we're raising kids for the wrong reason.  Maybe deep down inside we all understand that acquisition is pointless.  Are we hoarding because we don't have lives worth sharing?  If we have lives worth sharing, worth risking the economic liability of having kids for, why do we warehouse them so that we can work to give them more opportunities?  More electronic games?  A bigger house?  We're never there, so it's not like they can have their friends over.

Here we sit, in the most prosperous society the world has ever known.  We know how to make money.  We know how to make luxuries for everyone of which the emperors of the past could not even conceive.  We don't have a clue why we've acquired so many things.  We can't stay married until death parts us.  We can't make the world a better place for everyone.  We aren't even allowed to be the parents and primary educators of our kids.  And we can give them anything except a family.