I think the article itself is disappointingly shallow, but it touches on an important issue worthy of discussion.
My understanding is that a large part of this comes down to two things. First, how the parents value education and model the value of education to their children. That is, they are encouraging their children to learn and to do well at school, not just by telling them “you have to do well at school”, but by little things, like not belittling the scientists on TV because they “don’t live in the real world”, or by turning up to their child’s school events and displaying enthusiasm for their efforts.
And second, by how the parents act as educators for their children. Things as small as reading to your children before bedtime have been shown to have an enormous benefit to their reading ability. Or spending time with them playing games with educational value that help them enjoy learning. I remember as a young child really liking the old Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and my dad would play “maths Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” with me. Literally just a multichoice maths question, but by framing it around a show we watched I got more into it.
Both of these factors can be difficult for people of lower socioeconomic status to do, because if you’re busy spending all your time at work just to make ends meet it doesn’t leave a lot of time for play with your child, or to go to their events on a school day. And many parents probably just don’t know the value of these things or how to do them in such a way as to get the best outcome for their child. And of course if your parents didn’t do those things, you probably just internally think of it as normal not to do those things, because so much of what we do is modelled after our parents. So it’s a difficult problem to solve, but it’s one we need to really acknowledge as a society before we can even begin to solve it.
It all comes down to money. A family that doesn’t have to worry about being able to pay bills or eat are able to focus on other things such as education. It’s not hard to understand.
I grew up in a working class family and am the first person in my family to complete university. My parents put a lot of emphasis on my education because they held it up as being a way to have better career prospects than they did. They spent more than they could afford on sending me to a private school. But they didn’t have the skills or education to help me with my studies so I struggled a lot compared to my peers. Being the working class kid at a school with wealthy kids who had more support and resources than I did made it difficult for me to understand why everything felt so much harder for me. Undiagnosed adhd and Autism also didn’t help this. Now I’m doing a PhD and it’s strange how familiar the feeling of being a first gen academic is to being the poor kid at a rich school.
Yep. Similar, not exactly the same but dad went to a technical school and entered into a trade of sorts, and mum dropped out due to moving a lot and education being different (like she’d learn things she already knew but then didn’t learn stuff that the other kids knew). And education was really important to them, especially because I struggled a lot. I got diagnosed with auditory processing disorder at like 10 but lived with undiagnosed ADHD until like two years ago or so.
But I went to public school for all of my years. Ended up having to go to Tafe for a few years until I was a mature student (didn’t get the atar I needed) and got into uni with the degree I wanted. And now I’m the first person in my family to have a uni degree. And while it’s great that I could still go and not worry about paying everything up front, it’s still going to worry me for when or if I have to eventually pay off that debt.
Especially since I want to get a master’s in my field of learning (and eventual PhD but that’s because hardly anywhere recognises Mx as a title). But yeah it’s tough.
As a phd student I strongly advice anyone to think very carefully about doing a phd unless you already come from a wealthy position in life. In fact I would actually try to convince someone not to do a PhD. The title means fuck all outside of academia and even if it did that it not a good reason to pursue one.
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I think it’s bringing up a couple of good points actually, that are worth considering when crafting public policy, and observing where our current society is heading.
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Treating and thinking of our current public education system as “the great equaliser”, such that children coming out of it operate at a roughly similar level once they leave, isn’t actually a reality.
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The outcomes of children, despite going through this “great equaliser” system, is actually still significantly affected by parents, meaning parents, and the way they interact with their children, still have a massive role in children’s outcomes.
I think a lot of people, and teachers, have observed that parents appear to be increasingly farming out non-academic responsibilities onto the school system and teachers (e.g. discipline, life lessons, social expectations), let alone give time to help their child academically.
And I imagine a lot of this is due to themselves being overwhelmed, under financial stress, or simply having to work more hours less securely to cover rapidly rising living expenses.
All of this adds up to a picture that creating the conditions in our society where parents are under less pressure financially and mentally (presumably similar to conditions experienced by university educated and CEO parents) is likely to improve children’s educational outcomes, and their future outlook and experience in life.
TLDR; it suggests easing life conditions for low socio-economic parents, such that it enables them to spend more time with their kids, would have more of an impact in improving their children’s life outcomes, rather than focusing money and resources entirely on the education system to do the same. Admittedly some assumptions in there. But worth investigating.
And another reading could be that putting resources into making university more universally accessible, and something that is encouraged to be taken even by those pursuing careers not requiring university, and structured in a way to more easily and unobtrusively allow that, so that more parents had university experience, could be a better way of improving children’s educational outcomes than putting the same resources purely into public schooling and children.
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Bloody right? Those are two very different classes of people. Not everyone with a uni degree works a white collar job. My dad has an engineering degree and worked in a factory. Like, compared to the kids of a CEO, we had enough to be comfortable but only small luxuries besides that.
