Barry Carter
Imagine telling a person from the Agriculture Age that one day their children will no longer be taught at home. Their children will go off to a building where the parents have never visited and be taught and disciplined by people that the parents have never met. They will be grouped with hundreds of other children in one building. The father and mother will no longer work at home with their family. The mother and father will work inside of separate buildings many miles apart. They will have so little control over their work that they will have to request permission for a drink of water or to relieve themselves. Since both parents will work outside the home, the grandparents will be warehoused in a building with dozens of others and taken care of by people who don’t know or love them. The parents and children will be away from home all day doing different things in different places and controlled by people who have little stake in their long-term well-being.
Upon hearing this, a person from the Agricultural Age would probably conclude that this new world would be anti-family; he would be right. Centralized wealth creation produced anti-family institutions. It was the bureaucratization of the family. The “division of life” of the Industrial Age sent different family members to different “non-passionate” bureaus of society to have their needs met. This division of life, however, no longer works as our poor school statistics, along with problems in work and society, reflect. The classic song, Cat’s in the Cradle, by Harry Chapin aptly describes the anti-family nature of Industrial Age wealth creation.
Child arrived just the other day,
He came to the world in the usual way,
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay,
He learned to walk while I was away . . .
I long since retired, my son’s moved away,
Called him up just the other day.
Said I’d love to see you if you don’t mind,
I’d love to dad if I could find the time;
My new jobs a hassle and the kids got the flu,
It’s been so nice talking to you dad,
So nice talking to you.
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
He’d grown up just like me,
My boy was just like me.
We desperately need, and are headed for a wealth creation system which is family-based and oriented; one where the parents take back ownership and responsibility of the knowledge development and the learning process for children and one that puts parents and children together for longer periods of time working, learning and playing together.
Each year more and more people are working at home. Mass Privatization will have the majority of people again working out of their homes. Toffler, in The Third Wave, introduced the concept of families, including children, sharing work. Since most of the people working at home will be doing knowledge work, it makes perfect sense for children to share in this work as a major part of their education.
One of the biggest problems with Industrial Age education is that it is too theoretical. Kids must go to school twelve, fourteen, sixteen or eighteen years before they begin applying the theory. There is little relationship between what they are learning and the children’s present reality. It isn’t real to the children according to the laws of quantum physics as defined in Infinite Wealth.
Schools, as we know them, will almost completely disappear in the Information Age. They will be replaced with customized and personalized learning that is fun, exciting and relevant to their current reality. Knowledge development will be heavily computer-driven. Children will be interconnected with people, teachers and other children worldwide as they work to create knowledge and wealth concurrently. They will work to add value for other humans, interact directly with people from around the world, explore the universe learn directly hands-on, assist their parents in the adding value for customers, learn from the best teachers worldwide, attend virtual reality lectures and demonstrations from Einstein, Newton, Washington, Jefferson, Buddha, Jesus.
Learning will be more like playing than the boring “factory style” lecture that we knew. More time and wealth shall also be available for parents and children to travel and learn from experience first hand. Parents and children in the near future will be learning, working, playing and living all at the same time and all of their lives.
The anti-family nature of public work is especially hard on one of the new types of families—single parents. Mass Privatization will allow for new types of families as a normal part of the Information Age—gay parents, working parents, single moms, single dads and more. People today talk about getting the father back into the family. This is good but it misses the point. Our wealth creation system today does not support the family of today. With mass privatization mothers who are able to stay at home with their children and work, will begin to break cycle of poverty. Mass Privatization provides a capable system of work for today’s reality, not yesterday’s dreams.
In our business my wife and I targeted people, for employment, who were stuck at home taking care of their children. These people were desperate to work. There was an abundance of them, they were above average in intelligence. We then customized the work, partially privatizing it, so that it could be done at home. This way we got top talent and they could work at home with their children and everybody won. Mass Privatization is a family friendly wealth creation system.
We are seeing a shift back to more natural and healthy families where the family is the key social institution at the center of society. It will displace the company and the government that today shares the center with the family and in many cases has replaced the family. The family will have direct control of the wealth creation process and the education process, which will eliminate the need for many government programs, including the public school system, welfare, social security and a large chunk of the taxes we pay.
Copyright 2002 by Barry Carter
About Barry Carter. Infinite Wealth is available at the author’s website, and can be purchased in bookstores everywhere including Amazon and Barnes & Nobel. There is also an abbreviated free online version, which has been reposed at Future Positive:
See: 1) The Rise of a Win Win Civilization 2) A Personal Journey of Discovery 3) Why Corporations Don’t Work 4) The Emancipation of Capitalism 5) Mass Privatization: Organizing in the Information Age 6) Decentralized Wealth Creation 7) The Infinite Wealth Potential of Liberated Humans 8) The Mandate for Win-Win Wealth Creation 9) Breakpoint: Why You Must Act Now 10) SYNOCRACY: True Democracy Through Synergy 11) THE SHIFT: Awaking to a Win-Win World 12) The Synthesis of a Win-Win World and 13)Vision for a Synergic Transition.