The feudal slave who produced grain for his lord, the Communist proletariat beholden to Uncle Joe, and the medieval peasant who paid cash for the forgiveness of sins were no less free than today’s parental serf.

The parental serf does not work for his family and his independence. He works for a higher master: his children’s educations. He starts paying college tuition when his children are young, putting them in expensive programs that will boost their “preparedness.” The goal is clear and predetermined: Admission to a good college. Expensive elementary schools, more expensive extracurricular programs, private lessons – no expense is too great if it creates an edge. The serf works so hard he barely sees his children. He does not know what they are learning or why. He becomes fully indentured with the whopping bills of late adolescence, the yeomen equivalent of a thousand bushels of grain. He pulls his wagon up to the fancy financial offices and empties it out. Anything this expensive must be worth paying for, he tells himself as his mule clip-clops back home. If he can’t afford it, his children can take out loans and become indentured too.

The parental serf speaks with misty-eyed fervor of M.I.T. and Duke. He’s not sure what his children get from these schools and it has never occurred to him to question what they might get. Their massive athletic facilities and glass-enclosed science buildings convey such an air of magical permanence, he wants to be a part of it. The Egyptians must have felt the same way about their pyramids.

It must be something important. There are millions of working adults who could teach a young person what he needs to know. Communications are advanced and inexpensive. Learning is everywhere. But, people say an expensive school makes all the difference in life. In his dark hours, when he thinks of his son or daughter sitting in a crowded lecture hall with a graduate student at the front of the room, the parental serf reassures himself. He must be working so hard for more than a few slips of paper and four years of mere school.

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Jen writes:

After reading several of your posts, I’m intensely curious to know how you believe the mother’s childrearing “cycle” should go. If a housewife/stay-at-home-mom places the utmost importance on education for their children, a HUGE reason for staying home to literally raise their own children, what would be the expectation for their children to grow up to be? To further clarify, I read an article written a few years back about how many students at Ivy Leagues have decided to discontinue their careers and become stay-at-home moms once they have children.
 
Should the quest to give their children a chance to have amazing learning opportunities (given at Ivies and top-tier schools) be dropped down in prominence over the teachings of cooking and cleaning? I’m vastly serious here.

I’m curious to where this cycle began. Many of those children were also raised by their moms (as opposed to daycares and the like I mean). But did those moms invest energy, time and resources in preparing their little girls for the ivy league just to have them quit…….and eventually do the same to the grandkids? What if their children were truly gifted in the sciences or math? Should they not pursue becoming doctors just because they want to have children some day?  What’s your opinion on this?

Realistically……can a child (who is gifted in math/science) grow up to attend an ivy and become a physican, but eventually become the stay at home mom they wish to be?

The line is just fuzzy for me (maybe ’cause it’s late) on where the hard-work of education brought on by the mom’s payoff by raising successful children who will eventually do the same. Hopefully you can help me on this. I would love your input. Thank you.

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In the previous discussion about homeschooling, I mentioned that homeschooling mothers are the happiest mothers in America. Why might this be true? Parenthood is not just economics and emotions. It’s more than just providing a home and security. It’s about passing on what you love to others and thus ensuring its survival. The highest purpose of education, as Aristotle said, is to make the young love the right things. The highest goal of a parent is to make sure his children love the right things.

The homeschooling parent doesn’t have to fight the persistent intentions of school to make his children love the wrong things.

The homeschooling mother is more than a drudge, more than a mindless chauffeur and cook. She is not a de facto employee of the local school district, filling out endless forms, staffing pointless fund-raisers, and supervising evening after soul-killing evening of boil-brained homework. She forms character and minds.  That’s why she tends to have more children than her counterparts. She knows what she loves will survive. That’s why she is happy. Betty Friedan was wrong. Women didn’t want to leave home. They wanted their homes back.

Plutarch, the Roman historian, was once the standard fare of any well-bred boy’s education. He was forced on boys for hundreds of years because he instilled important moral lessons in his biographies of figures such as Pompey, Alexander and Julius Caesar. But, it was more than that. Boys liked Plutarch. Here is history filled with conquest, intrigue and political machinations.

My 15-year-old son is reading Plutarch this summer. At first he strongly objected to this assignment. I was destroying his summer. I was ruining his life. Once again.

 But, last night, at midnight, he was busy tapping out written commentary. I may be wrong but he looked like he was having a good time. He wrote the following for a writing assignment on Plutarch’s Julius Caesar:

   Caesar’s extraordinary valor from a very young age paved the road for future success. One story that is most striking from Caesar’s life is his time being held for ransom by pirates.  During his passage back from a long period on the run from Sylla, Caesar was captured and held for ransom by pirates off of the island of Pharmacusa. What is most striking about the tale is his time and behavior during captivity. The boy was far from the timid and submissive nature of most who are kidnapped. He instead was commanding and aloof, a small young man calling a set of burly pirates illiterate and barbarous. He even went as far as to claim that he would one day hang or crucify them (which to the shock of the pirates came true). It was this unconditional valor that led him to be so loved by those he led. From his time in captivity as a boy to moments before he crossed the Rubicon he never once showed true fear. Even after he achieved the title of “dictator for life,” amidst rumors of assignation, not once did he break form. In the words of Plutarch, “When his friends advised him to have a guard, and several offered their services, he would not hear of it, he would not hear of it; but said it was better to suffer death once than to always live in fear of it.” It was through Caesar’s undying courage that a strong foundation for unimaginable heights was obtained.

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