At the end of Chapter 4, Ed promised to think about the Visitor's ideas. That is what we will do now. Almost no one would argue against the claim that personal life offers our greatest opportunities for happiness. What can education contribute to the enhancement of personal life?

One of the most important tasks for every human being is that of making a home, and much of a child's fortune depends on the sort of home into which he or she is born. Our visitor from another world is baffled by our educational neglect of homemaking. How did it happen that something so central to our lives has been so consistently ignored in schools? If we were to redesign our curricula, what might we include about homemaking?

In addition to making a home, most of us also become parents, and that task is another one that is largely ignored by schools. If one's home and parents are more important than any other aspect of life in predicting school success or failure, it seems odd that schools do not teach something about parenting so that more children can have a better start in life. Today we seem to take the attitude that the schools should help all children learn enough for economic success. Then, it is supposed, they will be able to provide better homes for their own children. It is not clear, however, that mere economic improvement will guarantee better homes.