Preparing Sons: Chapter 11 - Part 1

Honestly, I was surprised that the book didn't end immediately after Chapter 10.  The book is about how to prepare sons to earn enough to support a single income family and the last chapter covered what a teen needed to know or do before graduating high school.  In my world, high school graduation is the beginning of adult life.  Parents are still very important for advice, emotional support and financial support - but a person in their late teens needs to start making career choices for themselves since they are the ones who live with the consequences.

Steven Maxwell disagrees with me strongly in the chapter titled "Post Graduation":

If you have only recently begun to consider the subject, there is much to do. It will be difficult to attain what you might have if you had started sooner, but not impossible! Begin by rereading this book beginning at chapter six. Be confident that you are building on a sure foundation. Then proceed gradually to apply the suggestions in each chapter. Proceed to the next chapter only after you are satisfied with the progress your son has made through the suggestions in the current chapter. Be committed that if it takes your son until he is in his twenties to have him properly prepared, you will do it.

For the parents who have been preparing their son for years, be encouraged that the fruits of your labor are close to being harvested. You may decide that your son is to continue his education and training. Or there may be other plans. Possibly he owns a business or is about to begin employment with another company. Regardless of the direction, be sure of God's leading. (pg. 163)

I've had plenty to say in other posts about irresponsible homeschooling, but I've never met a homeschooling family that waited until a student had graduated high school to think about post-graduation options.  Even the least organized, most hands-off parent knows that the next step is for the kid to become employed somewhere.  That often works because there are plenty of jobs for people who do not have a high school diploma in retail or restaurant services that are underpaid and have high turnover. 

Maxwell's plan to have the imaginary family who waited to prepare their kid for the workforce until he was 16-19 years old is ridiculous.  The imaginary family does not need to have their teenage son shadow Dad without helping in the family business as recommended for the 2-6 year old kids or start with extremely basic organizing tasks in the 7-12 category.   Definitely skip requiring that the kid's first job be willing to have a parent stop by whenever the parent wants to judge the Christian nature of the workers and clients.  My two-cents is based on having worked with some really unprepared high school students; have them get a job at one of those retail or food service places I mentioned before.   Those places expect to have to do a lot of employee training on workplace expectations anyways so may as well see if they can teach the kid faster than you can

Maxwell ignores an inconvenient legal truth - in my state, once a person has completed a high school diploma they are a legal adult for purposes of working.  In the US, legal emancipation happens at age 18 regardless of readiness of the person in question.  The system works pretty well, but can require some advanced planning for families with offspring struggling with developmental, cognitive or emotional disabilities.  A parent may be willing to slog through the Maxwell plan of career-readiness for half a decade or so, but they have no legal recourse if their young adult offspring decides to follow another path.  CP/QF parents can use financial restrictions to penalize young adults who stray from the family "mission" and many will restrict access of "wayward" young adults to their younger siblings - but all of these things are time-limited by nature.   Once a young adult has a job at a store or restaurant, they will meet other young adults looking for a roommate in their house/apartment.  Plenty of minimum wage workers make do by holding multiple jobs and sharing costs with multiple roommates.  Bluntly, a young adult who is driven enough to get out of a family-based cult has most of the soft skills they need to move up into positions that pay a bit more than minimum wage on the first step to a long-term career that is closer to lower-middle class income.

The second paragraph is just strange.  As children become teens, they should be taking on more and more of the responsibility and excitement of planning their own careers.  Parents shift from making the decisions on behalf of their children (like "Should Juinor start preschool this year?") to taking on a purely advice-giving role (like "Which job offer should I accept?")

Maxwell begins the chapter topics by rehashing the same fluffy spiritual goals he's been trying to make sound different from the chapter on ages 2-6.   This time, he decides to try to see how scaring his readers goes over:

(... )there are undoubtedly many working men who are not mature believers, but as examples in Chapter One illustrate, there are consequences. Even if your son goes on to receive an advanced degree, if he lacks the ability to make wise, Biblical decisions, there is no guarantee that he will ever earn enough income to adequately provide for his family. (pg. 164)

Who knew that the answer to the War on Poverty was as easy as being saved in a method viewed as valid by Steven Maxwell?  How did the government miss that the best predictor of having a middle or upper-class income was being a conservative fundamentalist Baptist with no advanced education or training and reliance of God to plan family size?   I mean, it's clear that as soon as one of God's Elect becomes an atheist they will lose all their financial freedom.

Seriously, Maxwell.  That's an especially daft one even for this book.

The next topic is service.  Maxwell gives two examples:

For example, several post-high school young adults from our church minister at a local Housing Authority. They work with the children from the complex in a weekly after-school program. Jesus is proclaimed in deep friendships between the children who attend the program and the leaders are developed.

Another example of serving in the post high school years is Christopher. He helps his grandfather with a living Last Supper performance each year around Resurrection Sunday. He is responsible for the lights, staging, sound, set up, and tear down. There are lots of details to manage, including overseeing his assistants during the performance. It takes a significant amount of time each year, but he loves to help. (pg. 165)

I am extremely curious where these post-high school young adults in the Maxwell's retirement home church came from.  Are they employees who come to the service weekly?  Are they grandchildren of residents?   Hmmm.   Equally striking to me was the fact that none of the precious Maxwell hot-house flower young adults were encouraged - or allowed - to participate in that program.  I suspect that participation in that ministry would have been eye-opening if not mind-blowing for Christopher or Sarah.   When the book was written, Nathan was working full-time launching his technology career so he probably wasn't available, but both Sarah and Christopher have talents that would have been appreciated by that ministry.

Instead, Christopher continues the yearly round of doing the same production under the watchful eyes of his grandfather.  I stage-crewed in two plays a year during high school and spent most of my childhood "helping" at my dad's high school productions so I'll let you in on a secret.  The first time a company works in an auditorium (or church) is the hardest because everything is new.  The next hardest thing is when members of the company move up in their job category because being an assistant to the sound manager is different from being the sound manager.   Doing the stage crew work for the same production yearly in the same space is not difficult because the crew has already figured out the kinks of how to build the set, light the stage and optimizing the sound.   Yeah, there are always a few snags each year, but it's not like he's being dropped into a new auditorium with a different show every year.

In the chapter, Maxwell dives into a section on purchasing a home debt-free by having a young adult start their own business.   This section requires a pause for discussion at the end of each paragraph so I am going to separate it into its own post for next week.

After that topic, Maxwell decides to double-down on his objections to academic higher education followed by objections to seeking vocational training from anyone else:

Whether your son continues his education - and, if so, where he goes - may be one of the biggest decisions of his life. Schools are described as learning institutions. The students sitting under professor's teaching will be influenced by that professor's words and attitudes. If the school is a secular institution, your son could adopt that worldview or at the very least be influenced by it. The university he attends, could potentially impact every decision he makes after having attended that school.

[...]

If you choose to send your son on for more education, I implore you to be zealous in your evaluation of the school and your son's maturity. Instead of the Godly influence of his parents, peers and professors will now surround him. That is why you want to carefully evaluate your son's maturity, the school, and God's direction where higher education is concerned. (pg. 168)

Wow.  The sentence that explains that schools are "learning institutions" deserves some sort of Captain Obvious award. 

As a practical matter, if a young adult is unable to hear about another worldview without immediately giving in and following that worldview, parents should simply give up all hope for that kid.   They should also invest in a good lawyer and psychologist because the family is going to be forcibly bailing their kid out of cults for the rest of their lives. 

In my experience, college students are fairly impervious to different worldviews.  The stereotypical atheist professor - or his liberal counterpart of the fundamentalist Christian aimed at conversion - can certain blather on about their worldview, but the students will pretty much tune them out.  More usefully (or less depending on the point of view), the students will also probably ding the professor at student evaluation time for wasting their time if they are off-topic in a class that's required for a major or a minor.

Next, Maxwell decides to mix a real problem with an imaginary one:

Unfortunately, if God isn't directing your son to attend higher education and you encourage him to go, his life may never be the same. If God hasn't provided the finances, your son could carry the financial burden of repaying student loans for many years. Many young men meet their spouses at college. If your son isn't living in the center of God's will, how will that affect his consideration of a spouse? Other wrong influences may negatively affect his walk with the Lord and his relationship with you. All of these can have a potentially damaging in fact on your son's provision for single-income family. That is why I encourage you to be certain higher education is God's will. (pg. 169)

Try reading that paragraph aloud with a dramatic "Dum-Dum-DUUUUM!" at the end of each sentence that includes "God" or "the Lord" in it.  It really improves the experience for me!

To paraphrase: If your adult son goes to college, he will want control over his life.  Avoid that trap or you won't be able to arrange his marriage.

I'm flabbergasted that Maxwell can't see that he's undermining his entire spirituality training regimine in this paragraph.  People have been training their son in being a Godly Christian Who Walks with The Lord (TM) since infancy but the training is so flimsy that taking "Business Finance Law" with an atheist professor is going to cause the student to become an apostate immediately.   

Practically, young adults should be mindful of the amount of loans they take out to pursue advanced education or training.  People can and have ended up with absurd amounts of debt relative to the salary they can expect to earn on leaving college.   Ironically, CP/QF families shouldn't be dismissive of this; it's the direct result of changing private college loans from being highly monitored by the government to opening the loans to free market practices.   The free market is as Christian as the American flag, you know! *rolls eyes*

Lastly, Maxwell makes sure parents know that their kid can totally homeschool their way through advanced training, don'tcha know!

Training is often a high priced commodity, and if your son is able to study on his own, he can save thousands of dollars. For example, we agreed with Nathan that God was leading him to pursue further certification. To learn the necessary material he could either take classes or by the curriculum and study independently. Nathan chose the study on his own even though he knew it would take significantly longer to get a certification. He was successful in achieving a certification and saved himself thousands of dollars. (pg. 170)

I enjoyed a good giggle when I read this part.  There are a lot of well-paid skilled manufacturing and utilities jobs that have training programs that are fully funded by business-union partnerships.  In my area, jobs like pipefitters, HVAC, electricians, plumbers and welders have apprentice programs where a candidate will receive 3-5 years of training that is fully paid while also being placed in local businesses.  This means that at the end of the paid training, most journeymen have multiple job offers in businesses that will support their continuing education to become masters.  Financially, let's just say that a journeyman generally makes at least what I did as a full-time teacher and a master would outearn me easily.   For these trades, studying on his own (like John Maxwell did) is NEVER cost-effective.

Let me demonstrate. 

A lot of my former students were interested in nursing, but wouldn't be able to qualify for a BS or AS program in nursing right away.  Instead, they took a short training course to become an CNA.  The total maximum cost for all tuition, fees, and equipment is $1,580 dollars.  CNAs in our area make between $10-14 dollars an hour.

 $1580 dollars / $10 dollars per hour = 158 hours.

Essentially, if a person can study for the CNA and pass it in LESS than 158 hours (which is 19 8-hour days) of study, they may be better off studying on their own rather than taking the course.   (I'm ignoring some of the other benefits like employment help - but you can estimate it by taking $80 dollars off the total cost of tuition for gained day of employment if you want.)

Let's look at Nathan's choice.  A local program in leading to the same security IT certifications he has takes a total of $7,500 in tuition and fees for an expected salary of $25 dollars per hour.  That means the mathematical breakeven point is around 300 hours of study.  Now, the CNA program took roughly the same amount of time as the breakeven point of studying by yourself - but the IT program moves a person through in 180 hours (or half the time) - so unless the person can study at the same pace as the class, they are better off paying the money for the class.

The funniest one is John Maxwell's choice.  To become a plumber or electrician apprentice would have cost him $0 in tuition plus a paycheck of at least $10 per hour while studying.   Choosing to study for those certifications on his own COST him money.

Good thing he listened to his dad, huh.....