I had lunch yesterday with some folks who live in an extremely wealthy neighborhood in Southern CA. It occurred to me as I listened to them talk about things they’re doing with their kids that it’s not surprising the rich get richer. These folks are taking their kids to Europe before college, because “they have to have that broadening cultural experience” before going off to college. They are sending their children to the best schools they can get into so they can build networks that will serve them well throughout their careers. The parents of these kids are obviously very successful financially and well-educated, and they help them a lot with homework and high school projects. It’s easy to understand why people growing up with high parental involvement, exposure to different cultures, and a focus on “meeting the right people” do better than many others.
The important part of this is the "high parental involvement" aspect. While I grew up in a struggling middle class family, and much of my younger years in what many here would consider an inner city ghetto, my parents were involved and did the equivalent of what these "rich" parents did with their meager resources. They made sure we knew the value of education, even though neither had college degrees (in fact my mother did not get her high school equivalency diploma until after all her kids had their college degrees). They read to use and encouraged us to read. Many weekends were spent in libraries and museums (all free), where, even though we could not visit those places, we read and saw about them, so we knew there was more to the world than our neighborhood. They attended every parent-teacher conference, they were involved in the PTA.
While we may not have been around "well-connected" kids, we learned that teachers will go out of their way to make connections for kids who show interest in their school work. My siblings and I had teachers who made connections for me and my siblings for summer jobs and college, including Ivy league colleges, primarily due to our academic efforts at school. And we knew that these were "luck" or "opportunities" (depending on your view) and took advantage of them. Not all of them turned out as we hoped - but we also learned to keep going because you just need one to turn out the way you hope (or in a way to did not anticipate).
And this may not be politically correct these days, but as immigrants, my parents wanted us to assimilate. English was not my Dad's first language, but he and my mother agreed he would not speak his native language around us while we were growing up, as they wanted to be sure that we had a solid foundation in English (and that foundation in fact helped advanced my career in the IT industry). They taught us the realities of the existence of prejudice and racism, but also not to use those things as an excuse to avoid achievement.
Also... when it comes to smarts, there are 'book smarts" and there are "street smarts"... and out parents made us aware of both. The latter IMHO is really more important. It is like playing a sport. You can get all the "book smarts" in the world by reading up on a sport and knowing all the rules, and the processes, etc. But when you actually get on the field and start playing is when you learn the "street smarts" of a situation and start learning how to react. I think that is where folks, again if guided properly, can improve their lot in life.
