Opting in, opting out

I've been thinking about those articles I linked below some more. Lisa Belkin's piece on Opting Out and the piece from the Chronicle about quitting a tenured position, especially. I have one friend who left her tenured position recently, and others who've never really tried for one, but I don't know many, really, who are opting out in the way Belkin and the pseudonymous professor outline. What I do know are many who are dissatisfied with the way work is--and I think that's the real problem. Belkin gets there in the end, too. We work too hard, we don't know when to quit, the expectations are too demanding... yada yada. Today I was thinking that the same thing is true of school as it is of work. Neither of my kids is really overstressed from homework, but I still see the stress of long days spent doing busywork, long days spent "being good." They come home tired, crabby, anti-social. Not always, but often enough that I wonder what they'd be like if we homeschooled. What we'd be like if home, school, and work were less at odds with each other.

I don't have any answers, just questions.