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I got thinking after Carl asked why I don’t talk about how the government should be focused on supporting the family. Carl is absolutely right that the no-such-thing-as-standard modern family is at the root of all of our social problems. What I have been realizing as I have thought about how we can support the family as the social unit where values that lead to good citizenship and productive adulthood can be fostered is that we have created a Catch-22 for ourselves.
Carl wants to know how government can be used to support the family structure while I contend that only family can support and improve the family structure. As I tried to consider how we might go about removing government from meddling in family matters I realized that doing so would create a vacuum in our social structure because of how much we have come to depend on the government to lend any value to the family concept. Couples get married often for little other reason than to procure the legal or material benefits of marriage conferred by the government. Among the fundamental purposes of families is to provide an environment where children can be taught those skills which are necessary to make them into healthy and productive adults. (Productive being defined as having something to contribute to society.) We have turned over the responsibility for educating our children to the government on an almost universal scale. At the elementary level of education we have developed an opt-out model that is compulsory (you can’t simply opt-out, you must opt out on terms that the educational establishment has agreed to). In higher education the majority of institutions are state funded and state run. Even at private institutions, the largest individual source of funding for students is provided by the government in the form of grants and loans.
The more we receive from the government the more we begin to expect and demand from the government. The more we rely on the government the less we feel inclined to support and be supported by our families. As the government has come to provide all the necessities of health and retirement benefits for the elderly there has been less incentive for children to take any responsibility to care for their aging parents. On the other end, since the government is fully integrated in the family structure and responsible to provide the education, and fill the time of the children through school in place of parents, it becomes more and more common for children to abandon their families, through emancipation or by simply running away, before they are ready and able to take full responsibility for their own care.
As I write I realize that the solution is simple, though difficult. The solution is for families to shoulder the burden of responsibility for educating their children. This does not mean that they cannot have their children in public schools (although to a degree that adds some inherent difficulty to the process) but it does mean that they accept that they are the final authority on what should be taught and they must be willing to fill in the inevitable gaps in any education received outside the home. Besides taking back the responsibility for educating their children, families must also teach their children to demand less from their government – this is one gap that will always be present in a public school education. As each generation takes more of the responsibilities back from the government which naturally devolve to the family the government will have to shrink and the family will once again regain its rightful place in society.
If this practice of families bringing family responsibilities back inside the home were widespread for two generations we would once again have a limited government that provided the protections, structure, and services that had been outlined in the Constitution and we would have a healthy society that would be less prone to the excesses and instability that we see in our nation today.
7 replies on “Cultural Vacuum”
I really liked this post. My wife and I were reading a book about teaching kids to read and one of the things stated was that kids can be taught to read (there were even examples of reading in multiple languages) before they ever got into kindergarten. Your post and my experience with Boys and Girls Club are entirely consistent. Every time a child had a functioning family, the child was well adjusted and ahead of the class.
I think public schools have a place in our society where they can teach subjects in which the parents are deficient. I surely don’t want to be the one to teach my children calculus as their careers in engineering would quickly be in the toilet.
The motivation for learning should come from the home as it rarely comes from school. I think parents should be responsible to teach morals, discipline, and general societal interaction. If they do that, then schools will be able to teach what they were designed for i.e. reading, riting, and rithmatic.
As it stands, schools are called on to teach almost everything and wind up teaching almost nothing. I think the voice that too many children hear is that of the television instead of their parents.
Carl,
We agree on what is happening, and we agree on what should be happening – now all we have to do is identify and implement a path from where we are to where we should be as a society.
I think the key is education – namely, we have to find ways to educate society, specifically the parents of today and tomorrow, so that they will reclaim the parental roles that have been degraded to the point of becoming nothing more than chauffeurs between activities and sources of endless toys and entertainment for their children. Any ideas on how to spread that ideal and help parents to make the changes in their homes so that it becomes reality?
Yeah, it’s a book called “Preach My Gospel”. Beyond that, at the rate I see the family being attacked, I see little hope for the survival of the stable family unit.
That may have been to glib a response. Honestly, I could see the survival of the family if all legitimate religions actively and non-competitively proselyted their beliefs. However, given the economics behind religion, I don’t see how they could remain non-competitive for long. As soon as competition enters the religion market, those preachers who are in it for the money discredit almost the entire movement in the popular opinion.
So basically, no; I don’t see any way to spread the ideal family. I’m just holding on for me and mine. (Oh, and stocking up on bullets and food for when The End arrives, when only the strong survive 😉 )
Without trying to diminish the value of religion – I think that the ideas to support strong families can be proselyted in a way that is not overtly religious. Like so many of the valuable tenets of religion, the principles are shared across a variety of faiths and perspectives. (I guess that’s the nature of truth.) We need to find a way to spread the message of personal responsibility and the strength of character to not lean on the government. I just want to know how to get rich and famous enough to purchase $1 Billion in advertising like Peter G.Peterson is doing on the issues of fiscal restraint.
David,
I think you’re being too pessimistic. As the father of three young kids one of which just started second grade I think my kid’s school does a pretty good job of maintaining its place as an education factory while leaving the parenting to me. Many make the argument that public schooling should be done away with in order to get the government out of our families. I disagree. I think we could make school less a part of our childrens’ lives by shortening the school day and eliminating the day care aspect of public schools but I don’t think we should abandon public education.
Great post and great discussion.
I don’t want to be misunderstood, so at the risk of disappointing a few people I would like to emphasize that I have never called for the end of public education. In fact, in this very post I stated:
I like your suggestions about shortening the school day and eliminating the day-care aspects of public education. My big problem with public education is the continuous call for more federal authority and the general assumption that everything children should learn is to be taught in the schools.
I’m glad that your school seems to have appropriate boundaries between teaching and parenting – not all of them do.
I think this post has had some excellent comments and I especially concur with Carl’s remarks.
One benefit of public schools that has been a little out of the scope of the discussion is the social development of the children in schools. (I’m thinking of the schools I went to, i.e. reasonably safe and well-run. I can’t speak for all schools, I also can’t say much about home schooling.) I just want to say that one benefit I see in public schools is that a child is able to expand his social circle beyond his immediate circle or the circle he is included in by virtue of his parents. I think it’s valuable for a child to learn to make friends on his own and learn what characteristics can make him generally well-accepted. Caveat: This is a general statement and I understand that there are specifics that I have not addressed.