Family Fairness?

Everybody has the right to raise their family whatever way they see it fit, right? Right. This however doesn't make some of the decisions some take somewhat hard to understand, to say the least. The other day I overheard some people talking about their position about higher education for their children. To understand it better, we should say first of all that these are people with a US$60.000 yearly income (US$5000 per month). It is not customary in here to give cars to the kids when they get their driving license, so a home with two cars means one for mom and one for dad, and more cars usually mean that either one of the kids bought their own car or one of the parents have an extra or more cars for whatever reason.

So, I overheard this people speaking, and they were saying that since nobody helped them with their college studies, they wouldn't pay college tuition to their kids, maximum give them money for the bus fare, but if their kids wanted to go to the university, they should go get a job and pay for it "otherwise they won't appreciate it". This honestly shocked me.

I'm not a parent, so I can't talk about how hard it might be to raise kids, but as a daughter, I can still tell you what's like to have parents and be raised. It is a fact that no children becomes a carbon copy of their parents, nor they swallow everything parents tell them, but they develop also by their own. That's also why siblings can end up being so different even if treated equally, or why siblings can be so similar even if marked differences were applied in their upbringing. However, whatever the way children end up being, most of their attitudes and character is formed in response of what they see their parents and the rest of their family do. For instance, you can tell them that they must always work hard, but if they see you slacking all the time and complaining about the job you should be doing, then that's what they'll learn.

The capability to appreciate is also learned at home - usually. It's at home with the attitude of the parents how children learn to appreciate what they have, and how to see things for what they worth. This is how they learn to appreciate the fruit of hard labor, or where they learn that they must be aggressive and take things hostage or they won't be given to them, or that nothing has value and all can be disposed because there are always new things coming to amuse them.

I've been to the University - you don't get to become an economist any other way, even if you would doubt that seeing the loads of idiotic economists that flood the news today with the most insane ideas about how to "save an economy" - and if you've been there you know how hard it can be. Sometimes schedules can be so that you wouldn't be able to work and study at the same time. However, some classes can be really hard - REALLY HARD! - and if you have to work next to your books, you'll be moving to hell soon. Just imagine you have an 8 hour job during the day - which is nearly impossible given the fact that most jobs you can get without a diploma tend to be the 12-hour-a-day kind, and lets be realistic: there aren't that many part-time jobs, since most companies prefer workers that compromise with the task. But let's pretend you have an 8-hour a day job, then go to college, where you have one four hour class or two two-hour classes. In the begining you normally have to take the most classes - at least here in Costa Rica - so in the first year you might end up with 4 Humanistic lessons a week, one artistic or sports class, and let's say you also take two pertaining the career you are picking. That's 7 lessons. Even if we pretended that all classes were two-hour classes (which usually is hardly so with the introductory classes of the career), you'd be spending at least three days a week at college.

Say you start working at 8 am, you end up at 4 pm, classes start at 5 pm and you get out one day at 7 pm and the other two at 9 pm. Then get home. Question: and when do you study? According to many teachers, you should study at least twice as many hours on your own as you do at class. Now you might smirk: "Come on! They say that, but nobody does that!". Yes, you are right. And I guess all those $150 books you bought, with over 800 pages just read themselves, right?

As a matter of fact, whether you like it or not, when you are at college, you do spend at least twice as much time studying on your own as you do sitting in class. Then there's the research, and I don't mean just sitting in the library, but often - and depending on the career - you must do lots of legwork, go from Institution to institution to get the information you need to prepare a paper. Sure, today you have Internet and you can Google lots of things, but there are still things - many of them as a matter of fact - where you must go to this or that place to get the most acurate information. Yes, the Internet doesn't hold (yet) everything. Interviews, conferences, in site data gathering... all these are part of the College Student life. How are you going to complete them if you have to punch a card at a factory because your $5000-income-parents are too cheap to pay off your semester and books, which in the most expensive of cases runs up to $2500? (And not up to $400+books a year at a public university, which are the best in here?) Oh yes, and in public universities, not all classes demand expensive books, and many can be lent at the library. Also, many students often team up to buy each a book and then lend it to the others so that they can xerox it (at least when that wasn't exactly ilegal).

Maybe it's because my folks paid my studies - and it didn't hurt that I had a scholarship! - but shouldn't parents make sure their kids have all possible advantages in life? You don't want them to take everything for granted. Good, start by teaching them from early age that things shouldn't be taken for granted. That doesn't mean to give them lunch only after they've moulded the lawn, or washed the car, it means to show them that you don't take them for granted. Make a rational use of things and explain to them that we have streets and parks because people who work pay taxes. Well, for instance.

Parents forget that children owe them nothing, and children aren't some strangers looking forward to squeeze them out of their hard earned fortune. If they are so, when what have they done to teach them that? Nothing? ... Really?

When you could afford to send your children to college without forcing them to work, and yet at legal age you dump them out on the street, kick them on the butt and tell them "you are on your own now", you are teaching your children the following:

1. Those who love you don't care about you

2. You can't count on those who love you

3. Life is hard and you have no support but your own

4. The only way to survive in life is through looking for shortcuts

A working student won't be a dependable student. Oh, they can be good, but in order to get all that research done either they have to slack at work, or they'll have to rely heavily on their classmates losing valuable experiences and the knowledge acquired only on the field of academic work.

Yes, there's a lot of people who had to work and study, maybe even work, study and take care of a child or a sick/handycapped family member. Their lot was hard, and if you ask any of them they would tell you that yes, they did it, but they would have prefered to be able to just study.

This seems much like the 47% freerider speech of the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, where people who receive aid are depicted as something less than decent people. When you make sure your children can have a college or university education without worries other than their studies, you are teaching them a very valuable lesson - if you've been a really good parent and have taught them other values an principles through the prior part of their life. You teach your children that it is okay to help others get access to a better life. It's okay to share your income, promote further education. You don't have to say a word, but from this they'll pass that to their children (if they choose to have children, if not, trust me they'll still pass it on). They won't frown when part of their income goes to Social Security, which in turn will go to pay for the medical care of themselves but also of people with lower income or no income at all. It won't bother them to know that part of that money goes to take care of children and elderly. They'll learn about the value of solidarity, that though they are responsible for themselves and should look out for themselves, life happens in a social environment and as such they should also care for that society.

They'll learn that poor people don't think they are entitled to welfare, but they'll learn that people have the right to a dignified life, and as part of society we all should make sure everybody gets those chances. They'll learn that the solution isn't in the charity of the wealthy, where they give from what they have left, but that the whole of society is a responsability of all those who are part of it, and that the solution is in actions based on equality and solidarity.

But then again, it all depends on what have they been exposed from the crib, and if you raised crows and leeches, or an obnoxious Paris Hilton, no stupid "Now you are on your own" policy would undo the damage.