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The Education of Our Children
I was looking through some old pictures. My kids are 19, 21, and 22 now, and I miss the days when they were little girls. They grew up on a mountaintop in northeast Tennessee. We had 60 acres, surrounded by National Forest – it was a great place for kids to grow up. Anyway, I noticed a pattern in these old pictures. See if you notice the same thing I did, in this series of pictures of my youngest daughter, when she was 8-10 years old:
Ok, so what do you notice about these pictures?
The first thing I noticed was that she seemed to spend a lot of time doing stuff that eight-year-olds aren’t supposed to do. Too dangerous. Riding in the back of pickups (while carving a stick with a knife), riding 4-wheelers (overloaded with other kids), climbing up a slippery hot metal roof to help her Dad sweep the chimney, and so on. You may be thinking, “Didn’t she get hurt a lot?” And I admit, yes, she did. But she was indestructible (like most kids), and bounced back. Nothing serious – lots of scrapes and bruises, a couple of broken bones. But valuable lessons learned each time.
I also noticed how often she was working. Not playing frisbee with her Dad, but helping me do jobs that needed to be done. She was expected to contribute to the family at a very early age. We went fishing too, but we worked a lot. And she helped.
But the big thing I noticed was how many of the pictures were of her learning a new skill from me, or my Mom, or a friend from church. How to knit. How to shoot. How to sew. How to fish. How to cook. She can operate a chain saw, various power tools, impact wrenches, etc. She can drive a stick shift, operate a skid steer, change tires, change her oil, fix a toilet, replace light fixtures, and split firewood. And so on and so on and so on.
It’s incredible how much time we spend teaching our kids. Not schools or tutors. Family. Families spend so much time teaching kids, that the contribution of schools to their education seems almost insignificant. Now that schools are teaching less and indoctrinating more, their contribution becomes even more insignificant.
My daughter just got back from her first year of college. She goes to a very elite university on the east coast. It’s so expensive that I wouldn’t have even considered it if she had not gotten an athletic scholarship. Very selective school. Top shelf students. But she was amazed at how spoiled, and how helpless, her housemates were. She lived with four other girls, none of whom knew how to mop a floor, clean a toilet, cook a meal, or any other basic skills. My daughter basically ran the household for the rest of them. She was amazed.
She was also dismayed – “Are all the kids my age this helpless?”
I told her that it may not be all bad. As kids become more and more soft, spoiled, and helpless, kids like my daughter will stand out more. And as schools get worse and worse, and parents get softer and less self-sufficient, kids that are raised well will have more and more of an advantage. This isn’t good for our society, but it may be good for the kids out there who aren’t completely helpless. I guess.
The world is getting stranger, people are getting softer, and they’re raising some helpless kids. So raise your children well.
And if you can’t do that, you might consider my approach – just do the best you can.
It’s important. Your kids will thank you. Even for all the hard work you had them do. They’ll thank you even for that.
Well, eventually…
Published in General
Just gotta mention that the younger pictures are pretty adorable. We all need a little d’awww in our lives.
I will mention that while I was not as capable a young outdoorsy persons as your girl, I was a latchkey kid around that age, and generally left to my own devices a lot of the time. I was often left in the car while my Dad did grocery shopping, which led me to memorize the car manual, and I was doing my own laundry (with a helpful guide made by Dad on the dot matrix printer) As I moved out into the country I ended up riding off alone on adventures, but that was in middle school.
My fairly safe childhood would give modern parents nightmares, which really bothers me. I was not a rebellious or adventurous kid, I was a little geek and reader of encyclopedias.
My dad had me help him roof our house. He did the first two courses and carried up the bundles. I had no fear then but I wouldn’t do that today. My husband won’t even allow me to climb a ladder to clean out the gutters. Climbing unto the roof today would scare me. Nimble bodies can be brave. Older ones need to be wise.
I noticed they weren’t absorbed in social media and were happy.
It’s probably all that Jack Daniel’s . . .
What I noticed was how focused and intent she looked and always seemed to be in charge of the situation. Good work dad.
Sadly, the answer to her question is most likely “Yes”. I hope she’s training them to do the work when she’s not there . . .
I lived at home my freshman year because the school was out of freshman dorm space. I
connedconvinced my parents to let me rent an apartment off campus. To my surprise, they agreed (OTOH, it should have been no surprise to want me out of the house). I already knew how to do cleaning, but I learned how to do laundry (cold wash, cold rinse – can’t muck it up) and to cook.Learning to cook story:
I got one of those countertop burger/sandwich fryers for that first Christmas after I moved out, so I ate a lot of hamburgers after that. One time, I opened a package of hamburger, and thought I smelled something like ammonia, so I called my mother.
Me: Hi! I have a question.
Mother: Go ahead.
Me: I opened a package of hamburger I had in the fridge, and it smells kinda funny. Is it safe to cook and eat?
Mother: How long has it been in the fridge?
Me: About two weeks.
Mother (gagging sound): Throw it out.
To this day, I either use hamburger the same day I buy it, or freeze it immediately . . .
I noticed that she was engaged in meaningful work counterbalanced by meaningful recreation. Notice the word recreation; it literally means to create again. Only America would invent a type of “fun” that involves activities that lead to physical exhaustion. One of the great strokes of genius in the American ethos is the adoption of recreation instead of the French idea of leisure, which basically means to sit on your ass. Good parents teach their kids to a) set goals, b) work hard toward those goals, c) enjoy the results of those goals through recreation, d) set new goals. Look. Climb. Plateau. Enjoy the View. Look again.
As for the relative danger she puts herself in, I have no issue with that at all. My own eastern Kentucky-hillbilly “raising” consisted of a broken nose (basketball!), a broken ankle (basketball!), two broken arms (playground antics!), a torn rotator cuff (cutting timber!), and two minor skull fractures (go-cart wreck!). (You know, the typical experiences of other people who teach poetry for a living). I got hurt a lot, but I had a ton of fun in the process and learned about the limits of my body and how to fight through pain. :) A few years back, I broke my ribs in the aftermath of an ice storm that left my wife and I trapped at home with no electricity for eighteen days. I think my rough and tumble experiences was what got me through that ordeal with my sanity intact.
Most importantly, I notice that the young lady had a helluva dad, someone that took the responsibility of raising a daughter in our turbulent age rather seriously. You’ve raised someone who is confident, tough, capable, and goal-oriented. She’s going to be successful in whatever path in life she takes. Her sense of self-respect and dignity will lead her to a husband that will be cut from a similar mold. She’s going to accomplish many wonderful things in her life, and these accomplishments are the combination of her own character and the distant echoes of a loving, thoughtful dad. This is the greatest gift you can give a child.
Yea but…the husband she finds will be one hell of a dude!
The weak will not survive . . .
More bad luck for you. When I went to Davidson, we just dropped off our laundry, and picked it up a couple of days later. I think my laundry number was 182.
My oldest considered going to Davidson. It seems to me that they still have a laundry service. That rings a bell. I remember being amazed…
Great school, by the way. Loved it. She ended up g0ing elsewhere because of athletics, but we loved Davidson.
When my daughter got accepted, it was out of our price range. I have fond memories.
If my daughter wasn’t an athlete, we probably wouldn’t have even gone for a visit. So many schools now are just insanely expensive. I don’t understand. $300,000 for an undergrad degree? Lordy…
Our middle daughter is not an athlete, so we pay tuition for her. Which why she goes to Clemson.
A few schools that she looked at had that type of policy. But with my income, we would pay full price. And that line is not outrageously high. Maybe over $100k annual income, or something? I can’t remember.
Now, to be fair, could I afford full price? I suppose I could, but I’d have to delay retirement by a few years.
But the question is, is that a good idea? With some academic scholarships she got, we pay Clemson about $16k per year – so $64k for a four year degree. Which is cheaper than just one year at a lot of schools.
I once worked out my BSNAME at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor set me back $14,000 for tuition, books and fees. This was between 1973-1979. My first year’s salary out of college was $17,500/year, which meant I recouped that investment in less than a year. (A year, if you considered what I could have gotten as a high school graduate and subtracted that salary from my engineering salary.) Michigan was considered an expensive school.
When my middle son graduated from college tuition, books, and fees for four years at Texas A&M cost about $120,000. His starting salary (2010) with a BSCE was about $55,000/year. A&M was considered cheap. He recouped costs after 2.25 years.
Somehow, I don’t think the quality of an education tripled between 1979 and 2010, but based on constant dollars the cost tripled.
When I went to Davidson, I think it was about $3,500/year. I had a National Merit scholarship, but even with that, I’m surprised my parents could afford it. It’s probably $60k/year now.
I remember tuition was about $360/semester when I was an undergrad (NC State). I believe it’s almost $10k now . . .
Kid on a hot tin roof?
What I ‘noticed’ about the pix was they were all normal. I was looking for some theme ….
Of course, what looks normal to me is abnormal now. I am well past the age I used to think of as ‘old.’
When my daughter was accepted at MIT, we toured & met with the Financial Aid folks. When I questioned the value they put on our house, they said they calculated it based on appreciation rates since it was purchased; the value they put on it was roughly equivalent to the four-year cost of attending. I offered to trade them even up. They declined. I think our ‘aid’ was about $500 — a loan, not a grant. My daughter decided to attend Case Western Reserve and Virginia Tech. She had less than $15k in debt through her PhD, rather than the hundreds of thousands that MIT thought they were worth.
Clemson is a good school.
Ask a Gamecock if he agrees.
It really is. We’ve been very impressed. Some of the best math & engineering in the country. I’m not sure if I’d go there to major in Peruvian-American Lesbian Literature, but for engineering, sign me up.
Plus, with all those kids majoring in math and engineering, about half the kids are conservative. And probably over 15% of the professors. So it’s a much less toxic place.
On Sunday mornings, my daughter walks down the hall of her dorm and says, “I need a ride to church.” There’s always somebody going.
She goes to the same church as Trevor Lawrence and about 50 football players. Pretty cool.
Skinner’s first step in higher education reform is to outlaw any release of the FAFSA, or any information on it to anyone except the federal government for the express purpose of awarding Pell Grants. That information is all a school needs to segment the market for purposes of price discrimination. That is they can divide up the market and set prices between students in a way that maximizes the schools’ revenue. The schools don’t hand out “aid,” to students, rather they set prices as high as each customer will bear.
How much social media was there, 10-15-20 years ago? Seems like usually if people don’t get started young, they don’t get sucked in.
I gotta admit Peruvian-American Lesbian Literature is pretty spicy though.
Not as spicy as the Peruvian-American Lesbians!
Women also tend to want men who are even taller than they are. As well as earning more, etc.
Men drool over Tina Louise (Ginger Grant), 5′ 8″, but they usually marry a Dawn Wells (Mary Ann), 5′ 4″.
Even MIT grads have to prove their worth once they’re out in the workforce . . . your daughter doesn’t need the “MIT” on her diploma . . .
When he’s sober . . .