I was speaking with a friend at Healthtrax early one morning and he told me that he still has three kids in college, each with  tuition costs of about $70,000 per year.

That’s $210,000 per year for four years which totals $840,000, just for college.

My buddy won’t be retiring anytime soon.

Despite the absurdity of these numbers  every family in America is faced with this ghastly situation.

Back in the good old days when  I went to college I think the tuition, room and board was something like $2,900 per year. Not anymore.

Here on Long Island we have many fine schools and universities.

Here on Long Island we have many  excellent public and private schools and universities.

Chaminade, Friends Academy, Kellenberg, Schecter , St. Domincks, LuHi and  St. Aidans to name but a few.  And then  we have Hofstra, C.W. Post, Molloy, St. Johns, Old Westbury and Stony Brook.  And parents are right to believe in the value of education.

In grammar school kids learn how to read, write and count.

In high school  these basic areas expand into study of the sciences, languages and history.

About 68 percent of high school graduates  go on to college where they select a major and head down a specific career path.

As competition for decent jobs increase the need for higher education increases along with it.

One of the definitive texts on education was “The Closing of the American Mind” written by Harold Bloom from University of Chicago.

He looks at the history of American education and suggests that real higher education started in earnest during the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century in Europe.

To enlighten is to bring light where there was darkness. The growth of science and reason took hold in the early part of the 1700s and replaced the mythology of both religion and the monarchs.

The age of enlightenment  led to the growth of democracy in Europe and then in the United States.

However, Bloom worries about the state of education in America.

By using Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Bloom explained  that the  American identity is based upon an over reliance on practicality, money making and status seeking to the neglect of arcane notions such as  transcendence, spirituality, art, aesthetics  and the humanities. De Tocqueville was the first to outline this problem  when he described Americans as endlessly busy and with their eyes  to the ground and never toward the heavens.  Bloom expanded upon this version  of  American exceptionalism and  warned that there was an emptiness, an impoverishment  and depletion in the American which is  why he titled his book “The Closing of the American Mind.”

We now have the so-called overspent American who is often depleted, restless and unhappy.

Trump suggests he will make America great again but nary a word about making America happy again.

Bloom used Aristotle as a role model.

Aristotle was a great souled man loved rationality but also loved that which was  beautiful and useless.

One of my favorite essays  called “The Lantern Bearers” by Robert Lewis Stevenson. This famous essay was written about Stevenson’s  idle and happy summer months spent as a child in a little fisherman’s village in Scotland.

Towards the end of September when “school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black”  he and his boyhood friends would play a game called The Lantern Bearers.

They would each find a tin bull’s-eye lantern, light the little fire and hook it to their cricket belt and then button up their top-coat to hide it.

They would then meet in some hidden place in order to idle away the evening talking privately about things.

Robert Lewis Stevenson used the image of the lantern bearers as a wonderful metaphor  symbolizing  the teaching function that every great artist and that every child possesses.

Great artists  teach us what is worthwhile to embrace and at the same time show the best way to live a life.

The artist reminds us no matter what our age we need to seek out idle time, fantasy time and to do things that are in no way practical. Sports, dance, music and art  represent “Homo Ludens” or man at play.

Henry David Thoreau  wrote “Walden,” which was simply about a man who spent a year in the woods relaxing.

Mark Twain wrote “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which was a lesson on how to enjoy river life.

More recently Elizabeth Gilbert penned the wildly popular best seller Eat, Pray, Love which was the true story of a woman who decided to take year off to enjoy herself in Europe and India.

Bloom is right when he said Americans are too rational and too addicted to work and money.  That is our strength and our weakness. So if you are one of those loving parents who will be spending  $70,000 per year to send your child to a great university make sure that you educate yourself as well.

A classic education can easily be obtained.

All you have to do is go down to the local  library, take out  a masterpiece and enjoy your evening.

And if the book starts out with a sentences like “Call me Ishmael”  or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13” you will be on the right track.