| > And that's in most cases parents who themselves are educated. Read my comment again. My mom wasn't educated past 7th grade. She knows simple arithmetic enough to count money and pay bills. She doesn't know what an isosceles triangle is though. My father was educated well but he had lost his job and didn't have work for years. We didn't have enough food to eat. But what my parents had, was a desire for me to be educated. Not by forcing me to necessarily get good grades but by encouraging my hobbies. EDIT: removed an unclear sentence > Are you sure you (and those who upvoted) know what social class is? ... having a university degree would be put your father as middle class in most of them. What about a homeless person on the streets who has a PhD? What class are they in? I would say they are in the "poor" class. What about not being able to buy food or clothes? What class is that? I would say in the Western society nowadays that would qualify as "poor". Granted there were some who didn't have a place to live and fared a lot worse, but we were not far from it either (at least that's how I felt and remember it). Education and social class don't necessarily go together. > Just because you have a different experience doesn't mean you're the norm or that the argument is invalid. Of course. I think that is implied since that statement is followed by my personal story. However I knew some kids my age that went through a similar experience. It seems in general these type of situations are common in countries that have decent education but ultimately suffer an economic meltdown. So my experience was probably more common for those who grew up in ex-Soviet union and experienced its collapse. We ended up with a lot of educated people who, despite their education, became very poor. |