Teacher Tom: A Valuable Thing Children Can Learn From Their Parents Who are Working at Home

Teacher Tom: A Valuable Thing Children Can Learn From Their Parents Who are Working at Home

A Valuable Thing Children Can Learn From Their Parents Who are Working at Home

My father is a civil engineer. For most of my childhood he would leave home in the morning and return in the evening. What he did, why he did it, and who he did it with were largely mysteries to us kids who were left at home with mom. Today, it's not just dad, but mom as well who heads off to work. As we got older, we were packed off to our schools. That's the way it's supposed to work, right? Everyone in their place, surrounded by colleagues, clients, and classmates, doing our work, whatever that is. The evenings are usually too short for much social time, either within the family or with neighbors. That's what weekends are for, yet another compartment in our increasingly compartmentalized lives.

Of course, this isn't the way it's always been and, from at least one perspective, there is nothing natural about it. For most of the experience of Homo sapiens, work, family, and play were inseparable, an aspect of the human survival strategy that allowed our species to thrive. For ninety-five percent of our existence we've been evolving brains that function best in the context of communities that include the whole family, many families, young and old, work and play. And one of the results of living in these communities is what we could have called, had we the word for it, education. But we didn't need a word because what we today call education was, as John Dewey wrote, "life itself."

I hope there are a lot of kids right now who are helping their parents with their work. I hope that those working from home these days aren't just shutting themselves up in a basement CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: A Valuable Thing Children Can Learn From Their Parents Who are Working at Home