Bringing School Home Kept You At Work...
The Public Education System is Nefarious
My kids started school on Monday, which inspired this piece.
2 QUESTIONS:
Did you hate homework growing up?
Did you ever ask your parents why you had to do schoolwork at school and then continue to do more at home?
I know I did; it was a war I remember fighting from the very beginning of my academic journey. I recall my elementary school principal telling me I’d set the record for most days held inside from recess; while some of that was from fighting and goofing around in class, it was mostly for failure to turn in my homework.
In middle school, I didn’t improve; I was suspended multiple times, sent to Scared Straight (remember that show?), and at one point, I had a journal that had to be signed by my father every night to show I completed my homework. I’d forge his signature, or do the work, show him to have him sign it, and still not turn it in because I thought it was stupid.
I’ll admit I was also a horrible student from the lens of sitting at a desk and doing as I was told. If you were a “great student” who did as you were told, I'm letting you know that other kids (like me) didn’t follow authority without question, and we said things like, “Why do we need to do homework?”, and “What exactly is this teaching us?”
Since 2020, I’ve realized that the answer to my question has become quite apparent, homework taught us that our “free time”, is actually time that could be filled with more work.
Schools Were Built Upon the Factory Model
Homework creates and affirms the belief that it's normal to work when not at work.
How many fathers brag about working holidays and weekends?
How many employees are seeing their boss and co-workers more than their spouse and children?
How often do you find yourself checking work emails now that you're "Tele-working", and are able to get ahead from your phone?
There's nothing impressive or noble about giving your job more than your family, yet that's the normal routine of many men looking to dial their family life in.
I have to remind these men that their wives and children deserve the best of them, not the rest of them, and if work is indeed getting the best, then all the family gets is what's left, and that's not fair...
It's neither fair to them nor is it fair to you.
As a husband and father, you should view yourself as more than a plowhorse paying the bills; you should not accept the notion that you were meant to work as much as humanly possible until death.
Your free time does not need to become available to work time - your life is worth more, and you deserve to keep the time you’re giving to the development of others, who are using you to free up time in their lives to spend with their family, to be a good husband to their wife and father to their kids…
You should want to be around family as much as possible and enjoy the fruits of your labor by spending time around the things you worked so hard to buy.
Honestly, what is the point of building wealth if you don't get to enjoy it?
Working to destroy your happiness and connections is like homework in school; it's stupid and goes against the freedom we all strive for. Work should remain at work, and the time away from the job should be spent doing whatever it is you worked hard to afford to do.
Stop letting your boss ask you to be the "extra hours" guy and let them know, if you're going to be getting any extra tasks, even answering a phone call, that you're going to log it for overtime and if they have a problem with that, they can call someone else.
Jobs are just jobs, don’t forget that.
- Zachary Small
PS: Want to work together to help you find a healthy work/life balance?