Selected Excerpts from Karl Marx’s Notes on Homeschooling His Children

September 3rd

Today Jenny struck Eleanor in the head with a book. I am fairly certain that this is rooted in the fact that Eleanor gets an equal share of the family economic output despite producing less labor. I explained to Jenny that the source of her frustration is actually her own economic oppression, at which point she bit me. She clearly has internalized her own oppression and the only solution is to give her full control of her means of production.

September 5th

During our morning lesson break, while I was spending a few minutes working on my manifesto, Eleanor drew a phallus on the blackboard. I believe she is demonstrating that the blackboard and chalk have no intrinsic value; their value is only provided by the working class students who are exploited in using them to solve equations for the gain of their teacher oppressors. I erased her demonstration, however Jenny must agree, as I found several dozen similar protests in the kitchen and bathroom.

September 8th

We continue to battle in an intrinsic student-teacher class struggle, in which am a slave to the product (Jenny and Eleanor’s education), whereby I enslave the students, forcing them into worse and worse conditions so that I can profit from their education with increased social status. Today, this was embodied by me forcing them to do extra worksheets when I should have let them take a break to play outside. Being the noble proletariat they are, they engaged me in class warfare through disobedience in the form of defecating in my shoes. Soon these minor, yet unsavory forms of class struggle may escalate to full-scale sabotage. While part of me fears this, I realize that this may be the only way to free both the oppressor and the oppressed from the cycle of materialism.

September 9th

We are nearing a breakthrough, the proletariat have seized the means of production! Today, little Eleanor stood on Jenny’s shoulders, reached up to the top shelf where I keep their textbooks, snatched it from its perch and set it ablaze on the stove. While the was huge in break our vicious cycle of capitalist appropriation, it derailed our lesson plan for the day, and the children sang dirty playground limericks while I drank schnapps in the study.

September 10th

Eleanor stabbed Jenny with a fork during our morning snack. Despite the fact that we have freed ourselves from our cycle of material-chasing oppression, we still fall back into our cycles of conflict. This is likely the natural reflexive class structure taking shape again. These structures must be stopped before they take shape, so I intervened by yelling at Eleanor and smashing an empty schnapps bottle against the wall. It seemed to have worked, at least for now, as I was able to have five minutes to think my goddamn thoughts.

September 11

This morning Jenny threatened to push Eleanor out the window and I, in a haze of schnapps and anger, told her she didn’t have the guts to. On a related note I have begun looking into private education for Jenny and Eleanor. I feel that I, while capable of understanding the issues that have plagued man throughout history, have no idea what is causing these little demons to behave the way they do. I feel that they are not driven by fulfilling their materials needs like the rest of humanity, but by the need to test my sanity. The school I have found, while expensive, claims to be the best that money can buy. For an extra 20 marks a day, they will also do an early drop off and a late pickup. To pay for this, I’ve taken a middle management position at a local lumber mill, and I will continue to write my manifesto when I’m not tied up with work.