Originally Posted by
Tom M King
Back a little bit on topic, when I was involved with a Boy Scout Troop, we had a wide range of backgrounds that the kids came from. Some from educated families to some from families who could not read. From my experience, I can say that well educated families are educating their children better than educated families did when I grew up. Uneducated are about the same.
I grew up in a very rural county in Virginia where we had one High School and a few Elementary schools, so kids from all backgrounds went to the same school. All my friends who ended up with PhDs came from families that had gone to college. These kids from educated families came to the first grade not reading better than anyone else, but they always got what they could get out of school and always had good grades. The kids from uneducated families always struggled. I always expected the better educated kids got help and motivation from home. The gap grows wider.
These days, the very well educated people my age have children that they read to a lot and their kids could read very well when they were four years old. These children had a running start in school, ended up getting scholarships and higher education with very good jobs to start with. The ones from families who couldn't read ended up getting through school somehow but are still struggling decades later and hoping for someone to "give" them a high paying job.
I had one parent who finished high school, but somehow managed to get through school pretty easily and was lucky. We also read to our children a lot when they were young, probably at least 20 minutes a night when they were old enough to look at the book and listen, to longer as they grew. Both are pretty successful now and can do what they want to.
One problem we saw with the young guys starting in Boy Scouts was that they weren't comfortable talking to people who weren't their age. We went on a lot of camping trips and when we stopped at a fast food place on the way on long trips, they were required to order their own food. Most had not ever done this by age 11 or 12 and it took some effort to get them to the point that they could do it.
As leaders we saw and discussed that every year the boys that came in were less and less capable than last years boys, and most leaders gradually just dropped away from the job. Even the newer, younger leaders that came in were less and less capable of doing simple tasks like pitching a tent.
I could talk for hours about personal experiences, including working with guys who no one else would hire when I was building new houses. Out of the 30 or so that went through my "program", several are in jail, a couple shot and killed, and really only a couple of success stories over 33 years. One that took pride in never working on Mondays, changed his ways and is now married to a Nurse with three well behaved little girls. He owns 3 dump trucks, has every building license there is, and thanks me with high praises whenever we run into each other every few years.
It's a hard path to get out from a poor start. People who can't read think that being able to make out words on a page is knowing how to read. They will never understand.
As far as personal experience in owning a house, I/we lived in a tent during Summers for several years, and in the house I was building for sale through cold weather. The phenomenal, gorgeous woman that I've been with for 46 years and married to for 43 years stuck with me for a few of those years in a tent in Summer. We built a small house out of scraps, leftovers, and recycled materials around the time that we were married. We thought we'd stay here for a while and build a "real" house when we could. We're still here and raised two successful, capable children who have been grown and gone for a couple of decades now out of it. I have added onto the house a few times since then. We now have accumulated what is our dream place, and a lot of other people tell us theirs too, and I'm working on getting it to support itself to leave it to our kids.