Training for?
In the 21st century, parents are increasingly confused on what to do with their kids, especially their future.
The confusion stems from a vortex of generational and social issues that pervade the United States, including those in Christianity, that produce parents and kids living without foundational truths and wisdom for real life. We are left watching and dealing with millions of people confused, clueless, careless, or a mix of these clawing at anything that seems helpful to their lives vs. living inspired by truth and love.
College is one of countless life issues parents and kids face throughout the last 100 years, mainly after WW2. College has become a degree machine and income producing lifestyle for administration, professors, and coaches while outside businesses and overall economy have tried using college as a direct and indirect way to narrow who to hire. Much of what college offers is the professionalized classroom version of what parents and earlier education was to have already trained in a kid throughout real life and any formal education that helped parents refine to accompany their life training.
Now kids are growing up without basic living, work, communication, and social skills with character just as absent. If college has become the solution to correct failed parenting, then we have truly erred. Overall, the experiment of training up kids to have a better life beyond college has proven unsuccessful and unhelpful by the millions. Businesses now are seeing students unsuitable to hire and the economy struggles with increasing financial debt. Relationships are being strained, people turn to immorality and hedonistic lifestyles and ultimately rejecting what is truthful and loving.
Now, anyone becoming parents have no foundational understanding of what a parent is to be let alone do or say to train up their kids. Kids are left to the governmental educational system to fund, feed, teach, counsel, and socialize them from pre-school to college (now going into graduate levels). We are outsourcing parenting and following counsel that says college is needed for life.
Is college evil? No. Is college always wrong? No. College is merely a decision that comes from wisdom. Parents merely need to train and prepare their kids, including providing sound, wise counsel for life which involves the subject of college. If not, parents are left learning from colleges on what to do with their students.
College counsel?
Even the world of academia (trade schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries) have been distraught with the effects of parenting in various ways, including the inability for students to thrive in college — socially, academically, financially, etc. This leaves the academia world (public or private) concerned and reaching for answers to their plight, especially attempting to avoid the similar demise of other institutions — closing. Therefore, what counsel do they provide parents and students? They provide financial counsel to increase crushing financial loan sizes to endure life in college as well as instructions of how to prepare kids for college early as preschool.
Who is the beneficiary of this counsel? Superficially, it’s the student and parents. Systemically, it’s the institution — paychecks and positions (i.e. the fear of loss).
Though the fear may be real, the counsel is misappropriated and misguided and leads to a lot of misinformation, which has greater domino effect on parents, students, and the greater society well beyond the college years. The United States of America college debt is in the trillions and the students who have graduated with degrees are left finding jobs outside of the scope of their degree purview to attempt survival and maybe the possibility of paying off the loans before God returns.
Is the whole world of academia world like this? No. Are there good intentions and people at work to help parents and students for real life? Yes. But this is not the pervasive ‘trend’ or ‘tradition’ proving there’s much to be fixed. There’s countless reasons other people (including those within collegiate institutions) will provide for going to college; however, what if college has been misplaced as a ‘possible or potential tool’ to be used in life to a ‘must have for life?’
This leaves parents and the academia world in a confusing relationship, as if parents now should be training up their children to be prepared for college and college prepares the children for useless degrees and burdening financial debt. All the while, parents have a sense of accomplishment and security and the institutions survive (at least for another semester or two).
Wise counsel?
Is college really what a parent is to set as the goal for their students? Is college really the helpful tool for life? Is it worth it, including the financial debt? There’s a litany of questions to be asked, but if our aim in life is off, then any of the problem solving for that misguided aim will also be misguided — regardless of good intent.
If parents train students to get good grades throughout their early to high school education in order to attend and graduate college for them to get a job that pays them well, then what have we truly trained students believe? Wise counsel? No, rather, we have trained them to be selfish and see the world for their use and gain. Grades turn into paychecks, and hearts turn to greed (rich or poor; indebted or successful). The economy then is filled with the exponential result of greedy hearts grabbing and clawing their way through life regardless of truth or love.
Citizens, companies, and customers fight each other for the next dollar, employment positions are seen as another goal to obtain like a degree or dollar, and the government is filled with people who truly ‘represent’ the culture of greedy, selfish people. Is this true for everyone? Of course not. But, it is pervasive and more so foolish, showing people’s need to repent and be inspired beyond themselves by the one who created them.
So, what then is wise counsel to parents and their kids (and ultimately for the culture, economy, and nation)?
Stop looking to college to solve your life problems and look somewhere else well beyond your benefit to what is truthful and loving. What is it? It’s not a what, but rather a ‘who’ — God. When we seek him, we inevitable learn life because he’s the creator and center of life. Those that awe (i.e. fear) him begin to change from self-centered to God-centered people, learning to live for him in real life and not for themselves. Read what Solomon says a few thousand years about wise counsel:
“The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:
To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth — Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:1–7 ESV)
Telos Education?
Parents then have the right and instruction by God (not government, college, or culture) to train their kids to know that what affects (telos) their hearts then aims (telos) their life. Therefore, what will parents train (educate) their students to be their telos? Themselves, college, life, or God? If God is their telos, then they will see and live life for him, regardless of outcome, and countless people become the recipient of God at work to love his creation.
When God is our telos, we will be people who learn to be wise problem solvers and decision-makers that truthfully love people with their life — finances, time, skills, attention, words, and education. We will know how to learn as well as to steward. We will consider the decision of going to college together with parents seeking God’s guidance and wisdom for his purposes, means, and ends. We learn to ‘count the cost’ of life’s decision and even errors, and become responsible for them.
Parenting then will be less of pendulum swinging between extremes of ‘musts’ (i.e. we must do home school or college) and more sound in principles for life. The sounder parenting is, the sounder kids become to survive a broken world filled with countless problems — of which they are one. But as parents are able, they train them to see that they are not a problem but rather someone to love. And if a kid listens and learns to at least that one life lesson, then they will grow up seeing people not as problems but people to love as their parents have loved them and more so, as God has loved their parents and them.
God loves the world. He does not want parents to train kids for bubble living or safe spaces. He does not want parents to hide from the world, especially training their kids to hide from the world — a world that he created, entered, died and resurrected for, and relates to.
So God wants kids to be in trouble or get hurt? No. God does not want evil, but until the final time God will deal with evil overall, he instructs parents to train their kids in a better way than ‘protecting’ them. God actually does protect parents and kids, but he does so instructing parents to ‘prepare’ or ‘train’ them — a better, sounder, stronger, and more enduring trait:
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6 ESV)
A trained kid learns to listen, be aware, problem solve, and ultimately become a mature, responsible, and respectful person that loves. A trained students does not go into extremes like independent or dependent, but independently dependent. They learn to grow up by their parents (or guardians) prepared to live on their own for God’s purposes.
So, should parents protect their kids? Yes. But, could there be foolish and misguided ways to do so? Yes. And if a parent has trained a kid to be in a bubble of their own world, where they can control everything, and it’s all for them, then that’s just as bad as training up kids in an educational system for their greedy gain of grades and future paychecks. God did not create the world of small bubbles but real people living for him to love him and each other.
Therefore, if college in general or a specific college is worth it, then go. If not, re-consider. Either way, stop falling into quick sand traps that have vicious generational and economical impacts on people. Let’s be a people impacted by God. Let’s be people who are inspired by God, the greatest one who is truthful and loving.
The result? The result would merely be that, a result or an effect. It is never to be the reason, aim, or telos of our life:
Families are strong, relationships are reconciled and respectful, people are faithful in their jobs, debt is at a low, generosity is at a high, hospitality in homes and businesses pervades, customer service is a premium, craftsmanship is long-lasting, friendships are sincere, local churches are training people for real life, government is merely to protect against evil, loneliness is minimized, people grieve loss together, and purpose for living is clear.
Prepare for College or Life?
Therefore, we will have prepared kids for life that may include college that could provide a sharpening to their tool set of skills to love a hurting, broken world because we have trained them to trust in someone beyond themselves and live life for no-one else’s sake but his — God.
