re: #384 Floral Giraffe

If the parents aren’t there, and don’t make education a priority, well, why bother. IT STARTS AT HOME. Yes, maybe 10% of kids would do well on their own, given a “good” teacher, but if the parents don’t follow through on homework, make working at getting an education IMPORTANT, forget it.

The reason to bother is that some of the kids will respond to it and make something of themselves. Giving them nothing only ensures another generation of parents who don’t value education either.

To be honest with you, most of the kids I have seen, and I mean well-scrubbed middle class kids and spoiled rich kids, are proudly ignorant and come from generations now of television watching rather than reading.
By the time they get to me it is very difficult to penetrate the enforced shell of proud ignorance and indifference to education. They need to get some role model from somewhere.

It is absolutely true that the vast majority of kids who do very well, had parents who valued education highly and pushed their kids to learn in constructive ways. What I mean by that is that if you want your kid to read, then let him see you reading.

There is a small percentage of truly astonishing individuals who quite literally pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and came from some astonishingly difficult background.

However, most kids are just like their parents. Dumb - and proudly dumb.