The home schooling I received 4th through 8th grade and then the private alternative prep school I went to for high school, almost certainly saved my life, and taught me analytical and creative skills that leave normies bewildered.
This is all great and I should probably write a Part II.5 to cover more of the logistics.
I think either residential or commercial will work provided zoning laws aren’t an issue. There are plenty of small towns on commuter routes throughout the country that have cheap downtown space in attractive if run down buildings. That can be worked on and owning the property outright is preferable to a mortgage and the risks of owning money. The ballpark of $8,00 or so a year is doable, even with the costs you didn’t mention, like insurance and benefits for employees. That works out to about $800 a month for each kid. Online classes are also a great idea. My next installment will include my proposed school day, but I envision classes only in the morning followed by exercise and leisure in the afternoon. During that time, a teacher detailed for that purpose can handle online ed while the bother attend to the in-person students. The sort of student I envision is smart but teachable,an outsider to the system but able to function within it, and a asset to the school who is also able to function without supports if needed. The qualifications will include questions like “what do you read?” and “why do you read?” This along with an in-house exam and perhaps even a PT test. Mens sana in corpore sano. I will write more shortly.
I've always thought educational funding should follow the student rather than the "school". 2024 state education expenditures per student range from $7900 (Utah) to 24,800 (NY) so it wouldn't take many students to fund your school/classroom. The public school system is a financial black hole with student/teacher enrollments staying the same at 34% increase, and administration growing at 83%. I was in education for over 30 years and the most frequent response I received to any questioning was "that is the way we have always done it." I applaud your thoughts on a new way to educate our treasure!!
The public schooling’s gravest sin bar none is that it kills the natural human curiosity.
🗨 Serendipity and an attitude of playful exploration both have such a huge role in discovery.
↑↑ A sensible reaction in the context of recent refutal of presumedly self-evident conjecture involving millennia-old Apollonian gaskets. Which started to come about with laid-back summer research project for (under)graduates ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🗨 Mathematicians have been left to wonder what widely held belief might be the next to fall.
I used to think that it was public schools that killed curiosity. Then I thought that kids were naturally incurious and that public schools failed to build the habit of curiosity. Now I wonder, but I lean toward the idea that it’s our society as a whole that crushes whatever sense of wonder kids have out of them, and we are all conspirators in this. Life is so organized and efficient and maximized for extraction that anyone stopping to pick wildflowers would cause an intolerable traffic jam.
The system makes so many demands on our time that there is little left to stop and think. I think all of us are conditioned to some degree to think of purely intellectual activities as somehow a waste. Our brains are for work, and when they are not earning money they are best shut off during frivolities. Sitting and thinking throws a wrench into all those gears, and curiosity is the root of that, so encouraging it would lead to chaos.
So many demands on our time but most of it is a waste of time
Like Primary School children spending 6 and a half hours at school and then carrying a backpack full of homework ( which is usually completed by the parents)
Public school days are scheduled around the demands of the working life of adults; they are there for as long as the parents need them to be watched. In a better world they would have perhaps four hours of seat time and two to four hours of exercise and arts, depending on age, and even then perhaps only 3-4 days per week. That will be the subject of my next installment.
I find this a strange remark and really counter to creative endeavors. I know I'm extremely far from rare in coming up with my best work in the shower or while slicing the mushrooms or washing the dishes (and better if I come up with them during the latter two activities when it's easier to run over to my laptop and write them down before I forget them.
Perhaps it's a real arrogance to look at a vacant-eyed guy stocking the shelves somewhere and think he's empty-minded. For all you know he's designing in his head a dollhouse for his cousin's daughter while wrangling the Froot Loops.
People needn't have big thoughts about the origin of the universe or the border Scots influence on country music to be using their minds usefully on private exercises while earning their crappy paychecks in jobs they don't much like.
Highly astute observations about how alternate schooling can actually benefit the quiet kids with a lot of creativity the most. One of the most common arguments I see against homeschooling is that the kids will not be "socialized" yet they fail to address that the structured public school is not the ideal place for teaching socializing, or that the kind of socialization that happens there is not always the kind that parents may want for their kids. By stuffing young people of varying ages, backgrounds and characters into one building public schools have taken many a quiet child and spat them out socially anxious after years of bullying, and taken many outgoing teenage boys and turned them out as drug addicts by exposing them to older young men who got held back a grade at the age when psychological tests show they are most vulnerable to peer pressure.
Smaller schools that exclude delinquents and focus on kids' interest over endless diversity talk could do a lot to elevate the children's mental health crisis.
I don’t think any one school or method of education is perfect for everyone. Given that, however, I think that kids who are smart but unassertive or indifferent fly under the radar and would benefit from a more traditional focus, given the way the public system alienated anyone with unique sensibilities.
For sure! Children are very different when it comes to their needs so there probably won't be one special private school to suit everybody, but giving parents and kids alike more choice in the matter is the first step for elevating the problem. I myself have wished for alternatives like what you describe for some of our local youngsters, especially after Covid-19 lockdowns and an intensification of government propaganda in school showed how frail and potentially harmful our current public system can be
How selective should such colleges be? Taking all comers looks like a recipe for failure. We want high quality people so that they can go far in the long run, but in the startup phase we want high quality students so that those who get in understand that they have achieved something noteworthy simply by being accepted. Do the teachers administer a test of some sort for applicants? If so, what's the nature of the test? A simple IQ test? A test of character? Physical fitness? All of the above?
<<"Taking all comers looks like a recipe for failure.">>
Indeed! And our modern education system goes even further by taking all comers (and going out of their way to get certain demographics to participate) and making sure they all cross the finish line and graduate together. (And if they don't graduate because they steadfastly refuse even to show up so they can be carried across the finish line, then that is a failure of the teachers and the schools, rather than a failure of the student and their family.)
Curtis Yarvin (aka the mentioned Cathedral guy) takes us 'further down the line' ↓↓ 😇
🗨 The 21st-century voter, regardless of age, is a child. He is frivolous, vain, whimsical and ironic.[...] This voter is not convinced by virtues or statistics. He is convinced by dreams, visions, stories and jokes.
An awesome idea, I would have loved the sort of school you speak of, I always spent more time in the library than anywhere else in the school, or somewhere else with a book.
I just retired from a 20 year teaching career in public middle schools. I predicted that with the growth of the Internet, our public education system would begin to crumble. And this is the case. Public schools are so fractured that little in the way of education takes place, even if one is a motivated teach-or-die individual. The current cultural climate that revolves around social media driven narcissism is tearing our children to shreds. Our culture is littered with the bodies of our children both actual and metaphorical.
I argued that homeschoolers who are motivated are on the cutting edge of a paradigm shift in education. I predict that education will devolve back to small community systems where teachers will gain the independent function to actually educate youth rather than satisfy the norms established by Testing, Inc., and the unionized stakeholders that contaminate every level of government sponsored schools. It's political incest in its most vile form.
What gives me great joy is the fact that some important universities are no longer using test scores for entry. They are literally biting the hand that feeds them out of some sense of greater purpose by elevating unqualified candidates to the status of valedictorian. To quote the Disney movie, The Incredibles, "When everyone is special, no lone is special."
Learning communities are the future. Any young person, especially those who are disillusioned with the sewers that make up a pluralistic number of public schools, should consider creating a consortium of like-minded men and women to form their own learning community. People will find their way to you with their children and their dollars. As is always the case in education you will never be filthy rich, but you will build wealth - that of accomplishment and delivering to children that which they richly deserve.
The practical nuts and bolts are worth thinking about. Assume 4 teachers for the initial cell. They need a physical location. Residential real estate is expensive, currently. On the other hand commercial real estate is cheap and getting cheaper, thanks to work from home. On the other other hand, there are locations where residential real estate is extremely cheap; however, the buildings tend to be wrecks and the neighborhoods tend to be dangerous.
Next, tuition. This needs to be enough to meet both the mortgage on the property (or the commercial rent), while also supporting the scholars. Assume each teacher aims to clear $80k annually - comfortable but not wealthy by any means. Assume 50 students. Annual tuition fees are then $6.4k to meet salary; if the mortgage is $2.5k/month, a number I pulled out of my butt but which I think is a bit higher than the average current mortgage, that's an even $7k/yr.
That is indeed considerably below the average private school tuition in the US, which Google informs me is about $12k. Of course this back of the envelope calculation does not fold in equipment, books, furniture, and so on, but I tend to agree that these can probably be found fairly cheaply. Including those, and allowing for enough of a profit for the institution to expand over time, say $8k/yr - still cheap compared to private school. Albeit, conventional private schools are selling networking and status brand recognition as much as, or more than, education.
I think dunning parents for persistent lateness or something along those line is ok, but I’d prefer to reward excellence rather than punish weakness regarding fitness.
Aug 14, 2023·edited Aug 14, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
Finally got around to checking out your ol’ goody city-journal link—and felt an irresistible urge to drop by for most heartfelt ty! 🤩 Those dispatches from ~1½-century-deep time read like from another planet, nay galaxy 😔 Past is a foreign country indeed (times couple gazillion).
🗨 "But I left school at thirteen with a sound grounding in the basic arts of communication, reading and writing. . . . I had gained some knowledge of the Bible, a lively interest in literature and, most important, some impetus to learn."
🗨 One day, he was stunned to hear a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate." "You are quoting Pope," [collier] Keating exclaimed. "Ayh," replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well."
It's one of my favorite things to read over and over and a reminder of what progressive education has stolen- our heritage. If you are inclined to repost anything I've ever linked to, kindly make it this.
In fairness, that’s the SAT of intended majors. It may be that the less adept think they can hack it and find out otherwise. However, from my experience in a graduate education program, I would say the low scorers progress pretty far. They don’t find out they can’t hack it until they get to the classroom. Then they become administrators.
If numbers matter, you might consider interspacing this serious series of utmost importance (no arguing here!) with lighter writings on less vexed subjects 🙂
My comeuppance didn't take long to arrive: have just read the great military expert Professor Taki passionately thrashing the bores dispensing advice 😂
It's reasonable to write about education; the capacities of the population affect everyone.
But if you start from unrealistic premises you won't build anything useful. Women have always needed babysitters. Even in cultures that claim to highly value marriage, it was common to to raise a crop of maiden aunts too, who were the household drudges and could be loaned out as needed to their married sisters/sisters-in-law.
Society today has two serious problems re childcare that will be hard to remedy. People really desperately need housing that includes space for multiple generations to live comfortably together. And grandparents these days often aren't available. Sometimes they're still working.
Hammering on about capitalism is intellectual laziness. Everyone needs to earn in one way or another the means of paying for what is necessary and what is enjoyable in life. The bazaar and the products and services it offers have been the engine of civilization.
There aren't any permanent solutions to anything in life. It's always a cycle. It's bad to be stuck in a bad one. But it's also true that a good education--enabling people to live by their ideas rather than by crafts and agricultural labor--lead to softer people. People in hard rough times have always striven for an easier more comfortable life. And so, as they say, it goes.
And putting all the earning burden on the husband--well, literature from the beginning of the skill of writing is full of miserable guys wanting to escape that fate, and a considerable portion of rightist writing today celebrates all that manly adventuring which happens to be bad for family survival.
So the cycle goes, in fine words of John Adams written to his wife Abigail:
🗨 I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
So it goes <-- as Vonnegut memorably keeps repeating in Slaughterhouse-Five. While A N Whitehead of 'footnotes to Plato' fame offers kinda path to consolation ↓↓ 😏
🗨 Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
That's because there is no "modern." There's just now.
These are old problems. Tough clever people do things and discover things that enable less tough, less clever people to survive, which is reasonable. There are useful roles for everyone who's not profoundly handicapped in one way or another. It's too bad that "stupid" is such a pejorative. People don't choose the quality of their brains and there are limits to what society can improve on.
Many kinds of work are suited to non-intellectuals and I keep wondering where all the rightists were when trade high schools began to be extincted. Where they were when all the factory jobs were globalized. I feel somewhat leery of the idea that we can be rescued by guys who were so easily defeated by screaming meme-ladies.
There's no one magic system--belief or technological or economic--that fixes everything. We always need to find the best ideas from every source and try to encourage those to flourish.
The home schooling I received 4th through 8th grade and then the private alternative prep school I went to for high school, almost certainly saved my life, and taught me analytical and creative skills that leave normies bewildered.
This is all great and I should probably write a Part II.5 to cover more of the logistics.
I think either residential or commercial will work provided zoning laws aren’t an issue. There are plenty of small towns on commuter routes throughout the country that have cheap downtown space in attractive if run down buildings. That can be worked on and owning the property outright is preferable to a mortgage and the risks of owning money. The ballpark of $8,00 or so a year is doable, even with the costs you didn’t mention, like insurance and benefits for employees. That works out to about $800 a month for each kid. Online classes are also a great idea. My next installment will include my proposed school day, but I envision classes only in the morning followed by exercise and leisure in the afternoon. During that time, a teacher detailed for that purpose can handle online ed while the bother attend to the in-person students. The sort of student I envision is smart but teachable,an outsider to the system but able to function within it, and a asset to the school who is also able to function without supports if needed. The qualifications will include questions like “what do you read?” and “why do you read?” This along with an in-house exam and perhaps even a PT test. Mens sana in corpore sano. I will write more shortly.
I've always thought educational funding should follow the student rather than the "school". 2024 state education expenditures per student range from $7900 (Utah) to 24,800 (NY) so it wouldn't take many students to fund your school/classroom. The public school system is a financial black hole with student/teacher enrollments staying the same at 34% increase, and administration growing at 83%. I was in education for over 30 years and the most frequent response I received to any questioning was "that is the way we have always done it." I applaud your thoughts on a new way to educate our treasure!!
Thank you very much; this series was my first multi-part work on Substack.
I’m enjoying reading my way through your works.
The public schooling’s gravest sin bar none is that it kills the natural human curiosity.
🗨 Serendipity and an attitude of playful exploration both have such a huge role in discovery.
↑↑ A sensible reaction in the context of recent refutal of presumedly self-evident conjecture involving millennia-old Apollonian gaskets. Which started to come about with laid-back summer research project for (under)graduates ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🗨 Mathematicians have been left to wonder what widely held belief might be the next to fall.
I used to think that it was public schools that killed curiosity. Then I thought that kids were naturally incurious and that public schools failed to build the habit of curiosity. Now I wonder, but I lean toward the idea that it’s our society as a whole that crushes whatever sense of wonder kids have out of them, and we are all conspirators in this. Life is so organized and efficient and maximized for extraction that anyone stopping to pick wildflowers would cause an intolerable traffic jam.
Whence do all these conspirators (aka we) come? 😏 No easy escape from wholly vicious closed feedback loop 😟
The system makes so many demands on our time that there is little left to stop and think. I think all of us are conditioned to some degree to think of purely intellectual activities as somehow a waste. Our brains are for work, and when they are not earning money they are best shut off during frivolities. Sitting and thinking throws a wrench into all those gears, and curiosity is the root of that, so encouraging it would lead to chaos.
Rhymes with what the author of history's most famous wager thought 🙂:
🗨 All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
So many demands on our time but most of it is a waste of time
Like Primary School children spending 6 and a half hours at school and then carrying a backpack full of homework ( which is usually completed by the parents)
Public school days are scheduled around the demands of the working life of adults; they are there for as long as the parents need them to be watched. In a better world they would have perhaps four hours of seat time and two to four hours of exercise and arts, depending on age, and even then perhaps only 3-4 days per week. That will be the subject of my next installment.
Yes A child minding indoctrination service
The ideal that you describe is very much like my experience in Primary School which I fondly remember ( 1960’s Australia)
You mean I shouldn't be reading this during the work day? Whoopsie.
I find this a strange remark and really counter to creative endeavors. I know I'm extremely far from rare in coming up with my best work in the shower or while slicing the mushrooms or washing the dishes (and better if I come up with them during the latter two activities when it's easier to run over to my laptop and write them down before I forget them.
Perhaps it's a real arrogance to look at a vacant-eyed guy stocking the shelves somewhere and think he's empty-minded. For all you know he's designing in his head a dollhouse for his cousin's daughter while wrangling the Froot Loops.
People needn't have big thoughts about the origin of the universe or the border Scots influence on country music to be using their minds usefully on private exercises while earning their crappy paychecks in jobs they don't much like.
That guy wrangling Fruit Loops could have the most active life of the mind in town. I've known some.
Highly astute observations about how alternate schooling can actually benefit the quiet kids with a lot of creativity the most. One of the most common arguments I see against homeschooling is that the kids will not be "socialized" yet they fail to address that the structured public school is not the ideal place for teaching socializing, or that the kind of socialization that happens there is not always the kind that parents may want for their kids. By stuffing young people of varying ages, backgrounds and characters into one building public schools have taken many a quiet child and spat them out socially anxious after years of bullying, and taken many outgoing teenage boys and turned them out as drug addicts by exposing them to older young men who got held back a grade at the age when psychological tests show they are most vulnerable to peer pressure.
Smaller schools that exclude delinquents and focus on kids' interest over endless diversity talk could do a lot to elevate the children's mental health crisis.
I don’t think any one school or method of education is perfect for everyone. Given that, however, I think that kids who are smart but unassertive or indifferent fly under the radar and would benefit from a more traditional focus, given the way the public system alienated anyone with unique sensibilities.
For sure! Children are very different when it comes to their needs so there probably won't be one special private school to suit everybody, but giving parents and kids alike more choice in the matter is the first step for elevating the problem. I myself have wished for alternatives like what you describe for some of our local youngsters, especially after Covid-19 lockdowns and an intensification of government propaganda in school showed how frail and potentially harmful our current public system can be
I hope my work inspires still another option.
How selective should such colleges be? Taking all comers looks like a recipe for failure. We want high quality people so that they can go far in the long run, but in the startup phase we want high quality students so that those who get in understand that they have achieved something noteworthy simply by being accepted. Do the teachers administer a test of some sort for applicants? If so, what's the nature of the test? A simple IQ test? A test of character? Physical fitness? All of the above?
<<"Taking all comers looks like a recipe for failure.">>
Indeed! And our modern education system goes even further by taking all comers (and going out of their way to get certain demographics to participate) and making sure they all cross the finish line and graduate together. (And if they don't graduate because they steadfastly refuse even to show up so they can be carried across the finish line, then that is a failure of the teachers and the schools, rather than a failure of the student and their family.)
The refusal to fail students is one of the greatest failures of the education system.
When my students ask if I’ve ever failed anyone I tell them, “I don’t fail you. You fail you; I just record it for posterity.”
Kek.
💬 Public schools produce grown children
Curtis Yarvin (aka the mentioned Cathedral guy) takes us 'further down the line' ↓↓ 😇
🗨 The 21st-century voter, regardless of age, is a child. He is frivolous, vain, whimsical and ironic.[...] This voter is not convinced by virtues or statistics. He is convinced by dreams, visions, stories and jokes.
An awesome idea, I would have loved the sort of school you speak of, I always spent more time in the library than anywhere else in the school, or somewhere else with a book.
I just retired from a 20 year teaching career in public middle schools. I predicted that with the growth of the Internet, our public education system would begin to crumble. And this is the case. Public schools are so fractured that little in the way of education takes place, even if one is a motivated teach-or-die individual. The current cultural climate that revolves around social media driven narcissism is tearing our children to shreds. Our culture is littered with the bodies of our children both actual and metaphorical.
I argued that homeschoolers who are motivated are on the cutting edge of a paradigm shift in education. I predict that education will devolve back to small community systems where teachers will gain the independent function to actually educate youth rather than satisfy the norms established by Testing, Inc., and the unionized stakeholders that contaminate every level of government sponsored schools. It's political incest in its most vile form.
What gives me great joy is the fact that some important universities are no longer using test scores for entry. They are literally biting the hand that feeds them out of some sense of greater purpose by elevating unqualified candidates to the status of valedictorian. To quote the Disney movie, The Incredibles, "When everyone is special, no lone is special."
Learning communities are the future. Any young person, especially those who are disillusioned with the sewers that make up a pluralistic number of public schools, should consider creating a consortium of like-minded men and women to form their own learning community. People will find their way to you with their children and their dollars. As is always the case in education you will never be filthy rich, but you will build wealth - that of accomplishment and delivering to children that which they richly deserve.
I think it would be worthwhile for you to write a full essay on the subject.
I will second that, please do so Mr. Ferguson.
The practical nuts and bolts are worth thinking about. Assume 4 teachers for the initial cell. They need a physical location. Residential real estate is expensive, currently. On the other hand commercial real estate is cheap and getting cheaper, thanks to work from home. On the other other hand, there are locations where residential real estate is extremely cheap; however, the buildings tend to be wrecks and the neighborhoods tend to be dangerous.
Next, tuition. This needs to be enough to meet both the mortgage on the property (or the commercial rent), while also supporting the scholars. Assume each teacher aims to clear $80k annually - comfortable but not wealthy by any means. Assume 50 students. Annual tuition fees are then $6.4k to meet salary; if the mortgage is $2.5k/month, a number I pulled out of my butt but which I think is a bit higher than the average current mortgage, that's an even $7k/yr.
That is indeed considerably below the average private school tuition in the US, which Google informs me is about $12k. Of course this back of the envelope calculation does not fold in equipment, books, furniture, and so on, but I tend to agree that these can probably be found fairly cheaply. Including those, and allowing for enough of a profit for the institution to expand over time, say $8k/yr - still cheap compared to private school. Albeit, conventional private schools are selling networking and status brand recognition as much as, or more than, education.
Obviously, more revenue can be generated via online course material delivered at a discount.
I think dunning parents for persistent lateness or something along those line is ok, but I’d prefer to reward excellence rather than punish weakness regarding fitness.
This was a huge "white pill" for me.
The “micro school” as you describe it here was the dominant model of education in much of the English-speaking world in the 18th century.
Minus the online stuff, of course
Yes, very true. And the model was effective.
You write beautifully. Thanks for the uplifting reading experience.
Thank you; that’s very kind.
Finally got around to checking out your ol’ goody city-journal link—and felt an irresistible urge to drop by for most heartfelt ty! 🤩 Those dispatches from ~1½-century-deep time read like from another planet, nay galaxy 😔 Past is a foreign country indeed (times couple gazillion).
🗨 "But I left school at thirteen with a sound grounding in the basic arts of communication, reading and writing. . . . I had gained some knowledge of the Bible, a lively interest in literature and, most important, some impetus to learn."
🗨 One day, he was stunned to hear a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate." "You are quoting Pope," [collier] Keating exclaimed. "Ayh," replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well."
city-journal.org/article/the-classics-in-the-slums
It's one of my favorite things to read over and over and a reminder of what progressive education has stolen- our heritage. If you are inclined to repost anything I've ever linked to, kindly make it this.
That SAT chart startled me.
I know it’s gauche to trot out one’s measurements, but I feel compelled to mention that I got a 710 verbal AND a 710 math.
In fairness, that’s the SAT of intended majors. It may be that the less adept think they can hack it and find out otherwise. However, from my experience in a graduate education program, I would say the low scorers progress pretty far. They don’t find out they can’t hack it until they get to the classroom. Then they become administrators.
loving these reflection; thank you.
Thank you. Writing about education is touchy and generally results in unsubscribes (net -5 on this one so far) but it’s very important to me.
If numbers matter, you might consider interspacing this serious series of utmost importance (no arguing here!) with lighter writings on less vexed subjects 🙂
You are right. I just felt motivated to say this here and now, I suppose.
My comeuppance didn't take long to arrive: have just read the great military expert Professor Taki passionately thrashing the bores dispensing advice 😂
Your advice was good. I don’t know which Taki to whom you are referring, but if it’s the one from Takimag, id be surprised. He’s a real gentleman.
Oh he sure is! The same Taki, the gentleman for real 😊
(If in mood to be surprised, his regular Sat piece --> takimag.com/article/a-tale-of-two-presidents 😏)
It's reasonable to write about education; the capacities of the population affect everyone.
But if you start from unrealistic premises you won't build anything useful. Women have always needed babysitters. Even in cultures that claim to highly value marriage, it was common to to raise a crop of maiden aunts too, who were the household drudges and could be loaned out as needed to their married sisters/sisters-in-law.
Society today has two serious problems re childcare that will be hard to remedy. People really desperately need housing that includes space for multiple generations to live comfortably together. And grandparents these days often aren't available. Sometimes they're still working.
Hammering on about capitalism is intellectual laziness. Everyone needs to earn in one way or another the means of paying for what is necessary and what is enjoyable in life. The bazaar and the products and services it offers have been the engine of civilization.
There aren't any permanent solutions to anything in life. It's always a cycle. It's bad to be stuck in a bad one. But it's also true that a good education--enabling people to live by their ideas rather than by crafts and agricultural labor--lead to softer people. People in hard rough times have always striven for an easier more comfortable life. And so, as they say, it goes.
And putting all the earning burden on the husband--well, literature from the beginning of the skill of writing is full of miserable guys wanting to escape that fate, and a considerable portion of rightist writing today celebrates all that manly adventuring which happens to be bad for family survival.
So the cycle goes, in fine words of John Adams written to his wife Abigail:
🗨 I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
Pretty grim for any thinkers today that all the wisdom has already been thought of and written about.
So it goes <-- as Vonnegut memorably keeps repeating in Slaughterhouse-Five. While A N Whitehead of 'footnotes to Plato' fame offers kinda path to consolation ↓↓ 😏
🗨 Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
No kidding.
That's because there is no "modern." There's just now.
These are old problems. Tough clever people do things and discover things that enable less tough, less clever people to survive, which is reasonable. There are useful roles for everyone who's not profoundly handicapped in one way or another. It's too bad that "stupid" is such a pejorative. People don't choose the quality of their brains and there are limits to what society can improve on.
Many kinds of work are suited to non-intellectuals and I keep wondering where all the rightists were when trade high schools began to be extincted. Where they were when all the factory jobs were globalized. I feel somewhat leery of the idea that we can be rescued by guys who were so easily defeated by screaming meme-ladies.
There's no one magic system--belief or technological or economic--that fixes everything. We always need to find the best ideas from every source and try to encourage those to flourish.
As I recall, King Solomon made a similar observation.