In addition, it's a world of difference for a teacher to be able to say "I'm going to talk to your parents"--and that warning be actually real, because the teacher or principle will actually get a hold of a parent, rather than a teacher not even bothering because the only parent at home is either over worked, and exhausted and does not give a fuck (And maybe even resents the kid) or is out being worse than the kid they are supposed to be caring for.
I think I've mentioned this before, but I've actually heard kids say that their parents thought that the classes they were taking were a waste of time.
Of my parents/step-parents, only my mother ever took any college courses, and I think she dropped out after 1 semester. All my parents worked for essentially the same company for 30-40 years each. More or less blue-collar union positions. And to this day they're very much like my grandparents in thinking that only a tiny minority of people should attempt college and that unless you're going to school to be a doctor or a lawyer, that you should go get a factory job and punch your time card every day. Of course these are the same people who, after working 40 years for the same company, can't seem to wrap their heads around the notion that people don't walk down the street looking for work anymore and if people are out of work, then it's because they just don't want to work (this was a fun topic during the housing crash).
I still remember my stepfather telling me in like the 8th or 9th grade that because my grades weren't good that they weren't going to try helping me with college and that as soon as High School was over, I was going to have to move out immediately. It wasn't a surprise at all...I mean, you pick up on how things work at an early age. I probably knew which way things were going to fall many years before that, but that was probably the first time it had been succinctly worded as such. I remember thinking to myself that there was no point in trying for college at all, because I wouldn't be able to even attempt it without support from my family, and like many I had no idea how financial aid worked. Not a single person from my school ever even talked to me about it, likely because my GPA wasn't 3.0 or above. I think I probably thought that college was out of my grasp well before I even hit High School.
But anyways, my family always pushed me towards blue-collar work without getting an education in part because that's all they knew. My family was also really strange in that there was never any encouragement, only threats. There was never any active participation on the part of my parents, other than a paddling when I had to bring grades home. Their involvement stopped at
"Do you have any homework?"followed by either "no" or "I already did it", and they were satisfied hearing either. They were infinitely more interested in us kids not getting into any trouble and taking care of the livestock/house/outside work so that they didn't have to. We almost never saw our mother for decades because she worked 3rd shift, and we avoided our stepfather out of self preservation. In public it was all a sham...they didn't want the kids to embarrass them, because they worried what people would think...so in that vein, I guess they cared about the kids. But in private, the interest in the affairs of the children vanished. Publicly, I guess it worked, because I will occasionally run into people who think that our family had their shit together, but my sisters and I will exchange glances if we're together and hear people gush about how great our parents were.
But when I heard kids say that their parents told them that their classes were a waste of time...that their classes wouldn't be useful...I mean, it clicked with me. I don't think my parents ever said that verbatim, but you pick up so much without the words ever being said that they may as well have told me that when I was growing up. And it just makes me shake my head when I hear kids growing up with their parents more or less steering them away from an education. It just pisses me off that so many parents can't seem to be bothered by their kids, have no interest in their education, and the kids have to spend so many years just trying to get through school so that they can move out and get away from their shitty life at home.
