I pay about $9k tuition per kid for 4th grade, 3rd grade, and kindergarten. With fees and other charges it is probably >$10k. It is a bit sickening to me to pay that, but my wife and I both attended private catholic schools so we honestly never even considered anything different for our kids. The education IMO is superior to public education in our area as well, and it includes faith, which is important to us.
I've had some employees of mine say they'd take a big paycut if there was essentially barracks housing and a full time teacher available ( would only work for younger kids) as part of the "benefits" package for work.
The cost of housing and daycare is very punitive for many people, and I pay pretty well against market across all my businesses.
The concept of a mid scale "commune" is not so far fetched from a practicality standpoint. The large issue is you don't want to invest in something like that when you don't know the other people. And you don't want to invest if you actually DO know the other people.
But I've given that some thought. What amounts to barracks system simple housing for my younger single employees. To attract good talent. But that brings problem of it's own ( many will start sleeping with each other, and the you'll have the clique problem, which doesn't bother me socially, but it would end up interfering on an operational level)
During the core phase of the pandemic, I hired tutors in math, science and English/writing and made them available via Zoom, etc, etc for my employees with young kids. It was used pretty heavily and it was good for overall morale, at least with the parents. I could not however logistically justify having a full internal "school" available.
My godson had a full time nanny when he was young. There was always a concern on my part of the balance between having a stronger overreaching hand in some areas and also letting things take their natural course so the kid could learn some life lessons on his own. Getting into fights at school was one of those issues. I believe it's good for young boys to get into scraps with other young boys. However there's the concern of bullying. Then there's the concern your kid might end up being the one that was the bully. And there was the factor that my godson was essentially taught basic boundary/self defense principles from someone like myself. "Put them down fast and cut their throats" doesn't fly so well to other parents of 7th graders.
It's not very easy to find good talent in the personnel area. For example, while I was essentially fully off the forums for probably 12-13 years of the 17-18 years I've been registered here, I've only identified
@johnnycakes and
@krista4 as those worthy of even an interview on my side of things. I've always thought
@David Dodds was uniquely creative in a rare way but that's entirely different as he's likely more on a peer level. So for many companies out there, the idea of providing housing and education as part of the employee package, that is something I can see happening in the near future. But potential liability profile is daunting. For example, there have been some things that krista has said over the years that is impressive. Insightful. But she craves attention. She has the pretty standard issue over educated westernized woman feminist angst streak in her. She wants it known she's a woman here in a sea of mostly Beta males. You put her in a barracks living situation with a bunch of men and also families and kids and I don't know how that shakes out. Won't be good I imagine.
My take on many kids coming out of college today, from the employer viewpoint, is many are exposed to more information and have more access to more information, but many functionally "understand" less. It's not easy to find good problem solvers. I'll give krista that much, I recognize immediately she can self motivate and problem solve, which makes her a high utility type employee in terms of potential.
Employers crave those who can lead themselves and potentially lead others. Many of these young kids have no leadership acumen at all. I mean not even the basic principles that come from standard effective family unit socialization. Modern colleges appear more and more to be training future cannon fodder, and cogs in a wheel to keep the tax base infused, not helping these kids become fully formed people.
When I was single, I didn't think twice about the local school systems. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. I didn't have siblings with kids. I didn't hang out with too many people who had kids. But when I inherited my godson to raise, then I truly got a full close up view of the total incompetence of the average public school. Even ones in "nicer" areas and with more resources. Then I got a whiff of the incompetence in many private schools too. I can see why some parents pay to the point of their own long term financial demise to get their kids into something they perceive as "better" It's hard to stomach some of the things that some parents see out there. Just the utter lack of integrity from many teachers and administrators. But there are good teachers and good principals and good schools out there, it's just most people will have access as a function of luck or logistics.
I recognize my situation was entirely unique for my godson's education. If he needed a different school, I'd move to a place where that could happen. If he needed a longer commute to get to that school, I could pay someone to drive him daily. I could afford access to things like a nanny where he could get some out of school socialization. If I wanted him in a school, I didn't stress about the potential cost of it. I had essentially an entire lifetime of earning before I had to raise him under my belt.
The end result I see is large corporations will take part in "educating" the children of their employees, but will only see the long term benefit of that if they can turn that into a future feeder system that replicates the "salaryman" dilemma in a place like Japan. Where people literally work themselves to death.
The most anyone can do is try to give a child as much practical life skills type education in their personal households. Part of this equation is that the majority of parents out there today are likely not suited to be parents. If you won't show up at a Jamba Juice or something like that, and put on an apron and shove fruit into blender and sweep some floors but would rather see your kids potentially be homeless in a few months, then why exactly are you a parent in the first place?
Most people don't get that you can't choose two things at once. You cannot, on an individual adult level, choose your narcissism or your fear of failure or your doubt or whatever is holding you back in life, and then also choose what's best for young children. Some people pick their demons, the ones they sleep with at night, over their own kids. Even to the point of risking those kids out on the streets and untethered over it. Again, why are some people parents?
Does that offend people? Because I don't care if it offends people. My parents were horrible people. I certainly would have been better off not being born at all. I did not make it to the other side. I only have the social/cultural/material trappings of "success" where society will say I made it to the other side. But I still carry all of that legacy with me. The evil in them, the evil that decided to choose to have a child and then abandon their child, some of that poison is deep down within me. That was my greatest fear for my godson, that I'd only revert to being the father who outright refused to raise me. I love my godson more than my own life. But I didn't enjoy raising him. Not a single bit of it. I don't begrudge him anything, he was an innocent, but I understand I am not naturally suited to be a parent. The only litmus test I had left was to understand that I had to change the worst parts of myself, so I could try each day to become the kind of man that I wanted him to grow to be, so he'd have a chance in this life.
What did Herb Brooks say to Mike Eruzione? He said -
Worry about your own game, trust me, there's plenty there to keep you busy.
I see far too many parents who have not gotten past the worst parts of themselves as individuals. Why try to have a child on top of that? Or multiple children? So they can grow up and be tossed out on the street because you won't work at a Jamba Juice and have to bus a table that might be full of your other local "helicopter over privileged school mom fake friends"?
A highly rated expensive private school does not wash away these other issues above. It doesn't make up for the toxic pathology of what many parents do as discussed above.
@Otis complains endlessly in public about becoming a borderline alcoholic, yelling at his family, being unhealthy physically to the point of risk, acknowledging he's evolved into a fully formed hateful resentful person, for a life he chose no less, and the only person who challenges him on the toxicity of that as a zero example to his actual children is the retired geriatric who is the truly the most "not a good person, not even close" individual here?
The kind of schools out there is a problem. I won't disagree. But the real war for your kid's futures is fought in your homes first. It's fought at an individual level through you and being accountable to reaching your full potential as an authentic person.
