Like alot of moms, I am the keeper of the family calendar/schedule.  We have
a computer in the kitchen for general family use.  Each family member has an
account.  

Ideally, I'd like  each child to keep their own calendar in the usual way,
mark some items as "private" (such as friends' birthdays), and have each
person have the ability to merge all the non-private events from all 5 family
members' calendars into a single view.   I suspect that is not possible.

As an alternative, I'd like to keep a master copy of the calendar in my
account (as I currently do), but make it readable (and maybe even writable)
for other users of the "Kitchen Computer".  

All my help searches for sharing calendars always boil down to "Exchange
Accounts" which I gather require networking and servers.  I need a much more
old fashioned solution.