What Makes People Think They Are Qualified To Teach Their Own Kids?

[Igel]

29. Poorly put.

People without a good education have children who are much less likely to obtain a good education. There are lots of factors, all interrelated--low ed > low pay, low ed > low practical emphasis on education, low ed > low set of skills on helping kids achieve high. Etc.

Whatever the parents may say, the kids see the parents' behavior and are taught by their kids.

But "much less likely" doesn't mean "100% predetermined." This is pretty obvious if you think about it. There's a large cohort of fairly well-educated people. They're not to a person just the children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren of well-educated people.

Much of what kids learn from their peers is exactly the kind of stuff they learned from their peers before 12+ years of formal schooling was the norm. Another dollop is fairly new stuff, and it's only come about since kids were allowed to form packs and herds and set up one or more cultures at odds with the adult culture that they need to learn to live in and deal with. It means that when they hit the labor force at 18 or 22 they have a lot of adjusting to do because they've learned many of the wrong social skills from their equally untrained peers.