Got Family?

The Strong Family Act of America

One of the ways that the Obama Administration can stand out from all the previous American leaderships is to encourage the concept of family as a grass roots event just like the grass roots campaign that brought Mr. Obama to the white house.

Why family? Family is the building block of every society, a strong family environment eventually translates to a strong powerful nation. Family provides the strength for people to flourish and expand on their strengths and give back to society. Just think if every person in society could live up to their potential and contribute just a little bit in some way to the world outside of their immediate sphere, how different our world would be. It’s the same effect as the number of individual donors this campaign was able to reach out to and get them to part with money, it generated a lot.

The beginning of a strong family starts with good education. Most of the leadership around the world understand that education can make a major difference in a society and education is a talked about as our way to a better future for the next generation. However most educational institutions touch on many subjects of interest; science, math and the arts and unfortunately most of our educational efforts are towards awarding a degree which will enable the person to find a job. We no longer educate for the sake of gaining knowledge or building character and most importantly we do not educate to help people to function effectively in their family and social lives, even though that is the probably the biggest and most important part of our lives at least for most of us who work to live; or at least it should be.

Just like American history is a mandatory class in many states in the US. I encourage the Obama Administration to mandate family life classes for teenagers starting in 6th grade on upwards thru college. I also encourage the administration to associate financial incentives for all (tax rebates) in order to cover those who drop out of high school and college; to continue to take those classes to their completion. Of course these classes must be made available to everyone at no cost. This program however expensive would probably be the best money spent for America. Ideally I’d like to see such a program extended to the rest of the world; adapted for different cultures.

So what would this class teach? The content of this curriculum should be put together with experts in education and family life including counselors, social workers, doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists and should be regularly modified, adjusted and revised to the times. As an engineer I can’t claim to know how to structure the content or the way this class should be taught, but I can talk to what this curriculum should aim to achieve.

The goals should be:

1. To highlight the value of family and family life, and convey our responsibilities towards each other in our family units
2. To teach citizens on how to handle different and difficult family situations
3. To help parents realize the responsibility of having and raising children while not dismissing the joys of the experience
4. To make each citizen aware of the options available to them to help build a strong family
5. To enable every person to achieve a certain level of social skills, manners and courtesies required to be effective in a family

A stronger family unit will lead to better societies, countries and eventually a better world for our next generation. I think this is line with Mr. Obama’s vision for America and beyond.

copyright d.i.