Comment by omegaham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by omegaham | Hacker News Reader

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This is really important.

I grew up upper-middle class. While I was going to school, my mom stayed at home and my dad worked few enough hours that he could help me with my homework. I learned a lot more than other kids in the same timeframe because I had someone always pushing me to learn more.

Now that I'm an adult, I have a lot of opportunities. If I have a question about finances, I can ask my dad. If I ever needed financial help, my parents could help out. If I need advice, support, or even just someone to talk to, my parents are knowledgeable and can help me with pretty much any situation. Not to mention that even if they can't help me, they have a network of similar-minded people who can do so.

Poor people don't have that. Education? Go to your shitty school and learn; if you don't understand trig, don't ask me because I never learned it. Finances? I'm in debt up to my eyeballs with payday loans and bad credit cards, don't ask me. Actually, do you have money? I need some right now, son.

I get frustrated with people who say, "You just have to work hard and avoid bad decisions." Poor people never learn how to make good decisions, and they do badly as a result.

I envy having that kind of parent/mentor. It's taken me many years to learn basic things on my own, financial responsibility, social skills, the importance of education, discipline, study habits, etc.

My parents came home and either sat in front of the TV or laid out by the pool and drank. I was very bored at school and teachers see too many students every day to focus on a few to help. I'm not saying that support was impossible to find, but you had to know where to look, that is something that I didn't learn until much later in life.

Most successful people talk about their mentors or how their parents pushed and constantly educated them. That's one of the things I looked for in a wife, the passion to teach children.

Laziness and lack of discipline appear to be taught, and it's something that's very difficult to unteach.

I remember asking my parents to teach me things like taxes or let me help with the work they brought home, the answer was always "later" or "you wouldn't understand it" or "I don't have time to teach you right now", eventually I stopped asking.

I agree with what you said but some of these problems could be helped by a better public education system. Just because your parents don't understand finance or the tax code doesn't mean you should have to figure it out yourself. There should be a high school class or two on these kinds of practical subjects (USA).

The problem is that these poor adults don't realize what they're missing. Maybe they know on some abstract level that education is good, but they don't value it where it counts - time, money, and effort. They get mad when they're expected to be involved with their children's education, ("It's your job to teach my kid - you're a teacher") they refuse to spend money on extracurricular activities, and they don't put forth the effort to actually make sure their kids are learning.

What's more is that they are unwilling to pay the taxes that would pay for better public school education. Public schools in many areas are as minimalist as they can get. They teach only the required subjects; in many schools, home economics, auto repair, cooking, and budgeting are barely even electives.

What's more is that the rich parents see these terrible schools and say, "Well, it's going to cost $10k a year to get my kid an education, but we need to pay it." Now the bad schools are filled exclusively with kids whose parents are indifferent to education. Not good.

I think it is a gross simplification to say "bad schools are filled exclusively with kids whose parents are indifferent to education"

I agree that better schools would help with this issue and that there is much room for improvement in the american school system, but I think that parental valuation of, and involvement in, education in still essential.

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