Consequences of a Failed System: Part 2

(Excerpt  from Stop Beating the Dead Horse)


Deterioration of the Family Unit

It is no wonder that there is a weakening of what was known as the family unit. In days long gone by, the family unit consisted of two parents, children, and often extended family members such as grandparents and cousins. Families were together for a large part of each day, often working together, playing together, and always eating together. Children played with their siblings, shared a room, sometimes even slept in the same bed with them, and shared the same toys. Parents taught their children what they needed to know to get by in the world.  Children respected their parents and trusted them to steer them right. Grandparents were especially respected for their knowledge and wisdom. Families generally got along with each other, enjoyed being together, and, indeed, treasured each other.

Fast forward to today’s family. Today’s family may consist of parents and their children, many times only one parent, or sometimes a grandparent raising a grandchild without the parents’ involvement. Today’s family spends most of the day apart, with parents working and children going to school or day care. Often, they spend an average of only two or three hours a day together. Parents entrust the education of their children to institutions instead of teaching them themselves. Children mistrust their parents, roll their eyes at them, and rebel against them. They feel their parents can’t possibly understand what they’re going through, mainly because they really don’t know each other very well. Today’s family often eats breakfast on the run, lunch apart from each other, and supper together only if their various schedules will allow. Siblings often fight and vie for their parents’ limited attention; they have playmates from school and don’t like playing with their siblings; they have their own bedrooms and their own toys which they do not share with their brothers and sisters. Grandparents, though loved, are often thought of as old-fashioned and out of touch with the world and therefore not worth listening to. When the grandparents can’t care for themselves, they are sent to an institution for care, instead of into the arms of the family they raised. Today’s family treasures independence and encourages separateness.

It’s no secret how all these changes came about. With industrialization came the need for workers. Women entered the workforce and their children had to be cared for by someone else. Some people believe that public schools were instituted for the sake of industry for two reasons: it provided free babysitting so that women could be free to work outside the home, and it provided a training ground for future workers who would be required to work in large groups and not do too much thinking on their own. Other people believe an additional goal for public schools was to create a nation of consumers to drive the industrial age. Early industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie spent huge sums of money (actually more than the government did at that time) on public schooling between 1900 and 1920.1 Their actions may have been purely altruistic or may have had an underlying purpose.

Whether or not public schooling was started for the sake of industry, the reality is that it separates children from their parents, both physically and emotionally. The system, in recent years, has been trying to separate children from their parents at earlier and earlier ages. In the 1800s, the average age for beginning compulsory school attendance was eight years old: by the year 2000 the age requirement was lowered to five or six in over half the states. In the other states, even though attendance isn’t compulsory until later, usually age seven, it is universally accepted that children start school at the age of five or six.