Educating the Wheelers

I can already hear the protests – why would you deprive your child of their education? If you have the money, what good could possibly come from depriving your child of the chance for a bright future?

The truth is that tuition costs have risen to a ridiculous rate in the United States and paying for an overpriced education can be a recipe for disaster. What kind of concept of money will your kids have after they spend 6 years in school, rack up mid six figures in debt, and it gets magically paid off for them? How long will it take for them to appreciate the value of money?

Note: I’m not saying its bad for anyone to pay for their child’s education, this is simply my personal philosophy.

1. Force your child to make more reasoned choices

If your child knows that they’re going to have to pay their whole loan back one day, it can force them to attend a more reasonably priced school and save their money. The typical teenager with a job spends every dime of their paycheck. If your child knows that they are going to be responsible for their own education, it will force them to make wiser choices, or face the consequences.

2. Instill independence

I personally tried to teach my kids to be financially independent as soon as they were old enough to work. Granted it took awhile, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but a financially disciplined teenager can actually go a long way towards paying for their own tuition if they make some sacrifices and choose wisely. Look at it this way, taken from an example from my eldest son:

Age 16: part time job for 15 hours a week x $10.00 per hour for 8 months (5250) + 40 hours a week x $10.00 per hour for 2 months (4000). That’s $9250 they earned in the year, minus $2250 for their own expenses , that leaves them $7,000 saved up in the bank.

Age 17: Let’s say they get a pay raise to $12.00. With the same working hours, they’ve now earned $6300+$4800 = $11,100, and saved $9,000. They’ve now saved $16,000 total

Age 18: Let’s say they worked hard, and they’ve managed to get a raise to $15.00. Not unreasonable at all. This year, they earned $7875 + $6000 = $13875 and saved $11,000, bringing their total to $27,000 in the bank, not counting the interest they’ve earned on their deposits. That’s definitely a good start for an 18 year old, I know a few middle aged adults who don’t have a liquid $27,000 sitting in the bank.

Age 19: At this point, if they studied hard enough they might have managed to land a scholarship to a decent school. If not, they could always take a year off and work. When they’re in school they can work part-time and full time in the summer (4 months of the year), and they can do a co-operative program that rotates work terms. There are plenty of ways of making college work, without resorting to hand outs.

Is it easy? No, but in my humble opinion, the character built through hard work and sacrifice is much more important for future success than ensuring that they have an easy path through an elite college.

3. Tuition doesn’t need to be six figures

What’s wrong with a cheaper school? Are we saying that no one outside of the Ivy Leagues ever accomplished anything in this world? Nonsense.

4. Good Grades -> College -> Good Job Is Not The Only Path

Do we really need to worship at the altar of higher education? The typical middle class path we suggest for our children is to get good grades, graduate from college, and get a good job. Then find a nice girl (or man), buy a nice house in the suburbs, have some kids, and work until you hit retirement age. Every parent seems to want their child to grow up as a neurosurgeon making the big doctor salary, or a corporate lawyer, making that big law cash.

But that’s really not the only path to success – especially with the power of the internet enabling people to start their business with virtually no costs. I’ve encouraged my children to take a path of entrepreneurship if they chose to, but I also supported their decision to go to college – as long as they were willing to pay for it themselves. Being forced to make this decision, in my opinion, has made my kids who did attend college much more appreciative of the whole experience.

A lot of people these days work from home usually hunkered over their desktops, laptops or iPads in their full blown home office. These entrepreneurial individuals have the unique opportunity to be able to work from just about anywhere they want. With mobile computer options and smart phones, we aren’t confined any longer and can escape the four walls of our office cave at home.

While this is a convenient way to make a living, why not take advantage of the change of scenery available that can be a whole lot more interesting and cozy. For a change of pace, pack up your laptop or iPad and head down to your local Starbucks, order your favorite cup of coffee, and nestle in at a table in front of a window or a cozy fireplace or (many Starbucks have them).

Even though coffee served in coffee shops can be a bit pricey, the change of scene can be inspiring because a change of environment promotes creativity. Even the best offices (off site or home offices) can lead to stagnation (boring routines) and boring routines are the enemy of creative thinking. Changing your work environment, even for a day can turn things around when it comes to inspiration and creativity. You’ll also be avoiding that always aggravating state of procrastination.

Sure, I love my Keurig coffee maker and my Grove Square coffee, but every once in a while visiting your favorite coffee shop provides a nice change of pace.

There’s’ something about the cheerful atmosphere, particularly at Starbucks, along with comfortable seating, and a relaxing surroundings, complete with high speed WiFi connections; a great escape from the distractions at home. Working from your laptop in a coffee shop gives you a secluded area where you can drink coffee, go online, work on your projects and enjoy yourself in different surroundings.

Lately I’ve been doing some writing for CuriosityAroused.com.  The nice thing writing about science, especially nature, is that kids really have their own natural intellectual curiosity – if you let them discover it.  The key is not pushing them to learn things they don’t want to learn, but rather, helping them find the topics that they truly find interesting.  That’s how I discovered my intellectual curiosity at a young age and why I still find science and nature so fascinating today. Read the rest of this entry »

Why does learning have to be considered “boring”?  In my generation, it was TV that was considered improper learning.  My parents always insisted I read instead of watch TV, because TV rotted the brain.  Now, a whole generation reads blogs on their phones and tablets, but its this new form of media that’s “rotting the brain”, so to speak.  Or maybe its new media in combination with television?

It’s true that the internet has fueled the amount of junk that makes it into our reading material.  Even reputable news sources have no choice but to resort to running weird news and celebrity gossip stories on the front page in order to earn the pageviews that pay the bills.  But there’s still a huge difference between a random piece on, say, the world’s most polluted cities or the world’s most dangerous cities, dangerous dog breeds or snakes, some random article on ridiculous & stupid laws or weird sports, and truly mindless fodder like articles on the richest teenage celebrities, or gossip websites with whole categories devoted to snooki.

Let’s not lump all new media into the same category.  You can certainly use youtube to watch some really low level stuff, but you can also find plenty of very educational, informative, and legitimately entertaining yet intelligent pieces.  We should use new media to make learning fun, not simply dismiss it altogether.

For most people, drinking is a fun, harmless experience. For others, it can be devastating. Alcoholism takes a tremendous toll on the alcoholic’s physical and mental health. It can also have a devastating effect on those around them

When it comes to dealing with alcoholism, education is extremely important. While education itself cannot treat the problem of alcoholism in our society, it is an essential component. It can help reduce harm, and also give friends and family members of alcoholics some of the tools they need in order to understand how to confront an alcoholic and get them the help they need.

Educational programs designed to reduce risk of alcoholism need to be targeted at at-risk populations.  At the same time, efforts also need to be made to spread awareness through the general population.  While most alcoholics are aware of the benefits of quitting alcohol, most will continue to deny that their behavior has a negative effect on their life and the lives of those around them.  When it comes to drinking, our society also has to closely examine the fact that many negative incidences arise out of binge drinking – an ever popular pass-time amongst youth.

Educational messages are currently being delivered as mass media campaigns.  While mass media has been successful in reshaping society’s view of drinking and driving, it has had much less success in terms of dealing with alcoholism.  Perhaps a school based educational program about alcohol is one step forward towards change.  Surprisingly, many school boards still don’t have a focused alcohol awareness program.

Local municipalities and community organizations must also target their efforts to wards at-risk populations, such as troubled youth, those arrested for drunk driving, as well as families where family members report the dangerous drinking behaviors of a loved one.

While a single method alone may have little impact, a combination of several alcoholism awareness initiatives will have a positive effect on the problem over time.

It appears that Texas is one of the best states for homeschooling. Their stance is that if your school doesn’t take state money, the state can’t tell you what to do — and here, a home school is considered a private school for those purposes. In the late 80s, the court ruled on a Texas standard for homeschools — they need to meet 3 criteria:

There needs to be 1. Bona Fide learning going on with a 2. Curriculum in 3. the Required Subjects.

What are the required subjects? Reading, spelling, grammar, math and good citizenship.

Good citizenship! I’m sort of charmed by that. When I was in the 4th grade, we took a tour of the Capitol building, and I got to sit in Gov. Sununu’s chair. [It was a nice chair.]

I stumbled across this post today [via Joanne Jacobs] on how widespread early calculator use affects later academic performance. [Hint: it’s not good.] My post-partum memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall not using calculators regularly until my college statistics class. In fact, I still have my trusty TI-36X from that class and still use it. [I’ve since sold the TI-81 that I used in calculus.] I always enjoyed calculating in my head — I remember working at San Francisco Street Bakery in college, and I’d keep running tabs for folks as they picked out their items and would announce their total to them before I even got to the cash register. Cheap fun. Heh.

I’ve been reviewing different math curricula lately — there’s a fairly wide variety of approaches out there, but my gut tells me that tried-and-true like Saxon or Singapore Math is what most effectively teaches math competence. [The girls who babysit for us — and who are homeschooled — use Saxon.] One thing I like about them is that they discourage calculator use.

We got a Very Important Looking mail from our mortgage holder recently and I just love it:

Your Account Has Been Reviewed And We Would Like To Speak With You.

A recent review of your account indicated that your home may be carrying up to $large_number in equity. This amount is very important because it is the number that can help determine how much cash you may be able to access by refinancing, blah blah, blah blah blah, etc.

It goes on in this vein for the rest of the page, implying that they’re going to do us a favor by letting us take out our equity, and reset our mortage at an interest rate over 2 points higher than what we currently have.

As the movie SuperTroopers once noted, desperation is a stinky cologne. It couldn’t be that we have such a large equity amount because we’ve been aggressively trying to pay down our mortgage for the last 3 years, could it? It couldn’t be that with the recent and upcoming spates of ARM adjustments that our mortgage company — who has been on the forefront of exotic and risky mortgages and refis — really wishes that we would stop squeezing their profits on our own mortgage, which is one of their least likely to default, and get back on their cash cow wagon?

They Would Like To Speak With Us, Indeed.