High School Invented/Required
In Chapter 2, we considered Daniel and his friends becoming TCKs and attending school in their host country. Like most TCKs today, Daniel and his friends had outstanding files in the office. They all came from good family backgrounds, and their physicians could find no defects to report on their physicals. Though people did not take photos in those days, these TCKs were all described as handsome. If SATs and ACTs had been available, these guys would have scored at the highest levels—probably above 700 on all the SAT scales and above 30 on all the ACT scales. Apparently their parents had done a good job of educating them in their passport country because they were knowledgeable, well-informed young men. They had high scores on their aptitude tests in all areas. In fact, they would be qualified for government service at the highest levels upon graduation.
Though we don’t know exactly how old Daniel and his friends were, they were most likely teenagers, about high school age today. They took three years of courses, including full-time summer school every year, to graduate. That time is equal to our usual four years of study taking summers off. It was a residential boarding school in his host country so Daniel lived in the dorm and ate in the cafeteria which served the finest food and drink available. That is not the case today, at least not if you listen to student comments about cafeteria food. The curriculum was to study the language and literature of the host country, sort of a liberal arts curriculum to learn the culture. After their three years of education they had positions in government service waiting for them.
Bible Times
Although Daniel and his friends were in a boarding school being educated in government supported schools, this was because he was being prepared for government service in his host country. The norm for people in his passport country was to be educated at home, not educated by the state or the church. Look at what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 6 when talking about the commandments.
Today we would express this differently, but Scripture says that education is to take place in everything you do as a family from the time you get up to the time you go to bed. We would probably have information on memory cards in our pockets (rather than wearing them as philactories), and we would pin things on bulletin boards and hang them on our refrigerators with magnets. The point is that it is done by the parents in the home.
In addition, Deuteronomy 6 later tells parents how to go about teaching. When children ask, “What do these things mean and why should we do them?” they were not to answer, “Because I said so” or “Because God says so.” They were to review the history of their culture and emphasize that God had given the commandments for their own good, to bring prosperity and long life.
The Talmud emphasized education by the parents as well. “The father is bound in respect of his son, to circumcise, redeem, teach him Torah, take a wife for him and teach him a craft. Some say to teach him to swim too. Rabbi Judah said: He who does not teach his son a craft, teaches him brigandage, ‘Brigandage!’ Can you really think so! -- But it is as though he taught him brigandage” (Kiddushin 29A). It went on to say, “And ye shall teach your sons. And if his father did not teach him, he must teach himself, for it is written, and ye shall study (Kiddushin 29B).” Education was the responsibility of the parents, and if they failed, it was the responsibility of the children themselves.
For thousands of years parents accepted this responsibility. In the Roman culture, if the parents could not do it themselves, they found someone to do it “in loco parentis,” in the place of the parent. This concept continued for centuries, and early schools in the USA were seen as operating in the place of the parents.
USA Years Ago
In Europe totalitarian nations began taking over the education of children after the Middle Ages. People in the USA thought that could never happen in a country that emphasized freedom. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century it was happening as shown by the following quote contrasting Massachusetts and Delaware. “The report of the Massachusetts Board of Education declares that the cardinal principle … at the foundation of their education system is that all the children of the state shall be educated by the state … This is not the principle of our school system … our school is founded on the position that the people must educate their own children. (All the state can do is to help and encourage.) (First state education convention, Dover, Delaware, 1843)
By the beginning of the twentieth century parents sued to try to keep educating their children at home, but they lost repeatedly.
By 1920 all but one of the states had laws requiring teenagers to attend school, and very few parents were able to educate their children at home. When they tried it, their children were considered truant, and the parents could have legal action taken against them. The first compulsory attendance law at the middle of the nineteenth century in Massachusetts required students to attend school six weeks each year until they were 14 years old. Thus it did not create adolescence. However, by the middle of the twentieth century most teens had to attend school until they were at least 16, if not 17 or 18, years of age unless their parents signed for them to quit at an earlier age.
Even this would not have created adolescence if age-grading had not been invented. Until the last couple centuries people just remained in a grade until they could do the work required in that grade, regardless of their age. For example, in Chalons, France, 1618-1620, students in the lowest grade were 8-18 years of age, students in the next higher grade were 8-21 years of age, and so forth. They were placed in grades on the basis of their knowledge, not how old they were. However, promotion on the basis of age became law, so that it was very difficult, if not impossible, for people to graduate from school before they were 17 or 18 years old. Thus, education change was a part of the invention of adolescence.
Of course, part of the reason for compulsory attendance was that western culture had passed laws forbidding people to work and marry, and nothing had been provided for the adolescents to do. They could not work, so one answer was to create something for them to do, and education sounded like a good solution to the problem of teenagers with nothing to do. It is little wonder that many teenagers do not enjoy school and are not motivated to study.
During the early part of the twentieth century, teenagers found themselves more and more likely to be enrolled in school. Records show how many teenagers 14-17 years of age were enrolled during the first one-third of the century.
As you can see, the majority of teenagers attending high school is an invention of the last century.
USA Today
During the last half of the twentieth century education trends reversed. Parents were increasingly allowed to educate their children at home or send them to private schools. By the beginning of the twenty-first century more than 850,000 children were attending school at home and another 11,300,000 were attending private schools. Parents were again taking the responsibility for educating their children. About one child in every six was either being schooled at home or in a private school which served as educating “in loco parentis.”
What can adolescent TCKs do?
Such statistics probably come as no surprise to most TCKs. In fact, most TCKs are either homeschooled or attend a private school of some kind. Although some attend the national schools in their host country and the public schools in their passport country, they are a small minority. However, the main point of this chapter is that TCKs, like other adolescents, attend school until they are about 18 years old. TCKs before adolescence was invented simply went to work and married soon after they reached puberty. Given that you have to go to school of some kind, what should you do? Here are some suggestions.