From kindergarten on we train young people for a job that they someday should get, but structure that training and the future job as divorced from real living.

In other words, from kindergarten on we invite children into an unsettled half-life. What is more, with ever more homework, we quickly enter them into the false fight of work-life balance.

This diagnosis raises many questions, none of which are easy to answer, and all of which lead quickly to large changes in the way we live. One question which can best get us started is, "how can I make my home and/or classroom a place where life and work are not balanced for children and myself, but united parts of the same whole?"

Now is as good a place as any to acknowledge the fact that we have recently quit sending multiple emails, one for families, and one for educators.  The reason for this is because we see this divide as an essential problem, related inextricably to the conversation at hand.

The truth is that parents are and must be educators. Educators, likewise, must be in the business of building home in their classrooms, if they are serious about meeting the needs of children.

Below are questions to help all of us begin to answer the question above.

• How can our family (or our students' families) more fully share the labors of our adult work and their childhood education?
• Is there a way we could begin pursuing income and/or livelihood (i.e. food sustenance) through shared labor at home, rather than at separate work places?
• If my work became our work and was fully incorporated into where and how we live as a family, what kind of work would we be doing and what changes would it require?

Educational Philosopher John Dewey, in talking about the "normal life" activities of cooking, cleaning, building, etc. said,  ". . . it is possible and desirable that the child’s introduction into the more formal subjects of the curriculum be through the medium of these activities."

• How can I as an educator begin founding my curriculum in real-life activity?
• How can I transform the learning environment of my children, if not literally into a home, into a place that functions more like a home?
• How can I fill my children's days with less homework and more educative work of the home such as cooking, cleaning, building, etc.?