Believing in the value of education and pushing your children to achieve educationally is an inherent demonstration of the possession of privilege.
For example, the janitor dad who wants a "better life" for their kid, and pays for their college education by working overtime. Or the single mother who puts her child through school working two jobs as a secretary and waitress.
These are generic, but just look around. There are countless examples I'm sure from your own life.
So the problem lies not with privilege or lack thereof of parents. It's the fact that in this country good education is scarce.
Education is a public good and should ideally not be a scarce resource.
This sort of thinking seems...religious.
A parent can only push as far as their ability to identify, access and afford opportunities, and that’s where privilege does play a major role in terms of information asymmetry and spending power.
Having 'access to knowledge' is one thing. Believing that knowledge - say, from personal experience of it applying to people you know - is privilege.
- not understanding standard of care regulations around early childhood education and thus believing that your child's current learning environment is of sufficient quality or not knowing there are paths to advocate/demand more
- having your child attend a school that lumps all students with learning differences and behavioral issues in the same classroom (for all kinds of systemic reasons like the lack of qualified special education teachers), and not understanding how to get your child diagnosed in a way that gives them legally-mandated better accommodations... like more time to take the "tests in school"
- having the school itself be unaware or untrained in all of the accommodations your child could possibly need, or having the school be ambiguous about where learning/values/behaviors are the responsibility of the school vs. home, and thus having no direction on how to partner with your child's school
An okay analogy is "doing taxes". Sure all of the rules, codes, regulations are there in plain sight, but unless you know someone who has maximized their tax return under a similar situation as your own, then you're just doing your best unless you have the resources to hire an accountant. Similarly, a parent can know all of the ingredients that go into a successful education pathway, and can endeavor to understand all of the rules and regulations. But with no understanding of how these things play out for their kid's specific use case (or with no money for tutors, test prep, application coaches, college visits) then it can be tough sledding in actual practice.
Knowing how to act in a productive and effective manner is privilege.
That's the whole point, that so many are contorting their logic to ignore: children all deserve a chance. To make education a game that parents play is to tragically disadvantage innocents.