# Are low-income parents usually this disinterested in their kid's school? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 28, 2012, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153 "2012-09-28T16:59:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/161 "2012-10-01T13:46:53Z")
Or in any other country in the world, but still - if it’s school hours it’s a time when students in Spain would be expected to be in school, not bussing to another one. And games involve buses, not parents playing cabbie. The level of parental “volunteering” that’s apparently expected and taken for granted in many American schools is mind-boggling to any Spanish parent. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/162 "2012-10-01T13:55:18Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Heck, for many people outside the US, it’s weird whether it’s football or not - and the idea of having an inter-school HS sports competition in the middle of the work day? Hell to the nay, at that time the kids are supposed to be in _class_, not traveling between schools! Amen to this. There ought to be a law. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/163 "2012-10-01T14:04:47Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Or in any other country in the world, but still - if it’s school hours it’s a time when students in Spain would be expected to be in school, not bussing to another one. I think the same is true here. School ends at 3 or 4 p.m. The game was scheduled for 7 p.m. > [@](#): > > And games involve buses, not parents playing cabbie. The level of parental “volunteering” that’s apparently expected and taken for granted in many American schools is mind-boggling to any Spanish parent. It’s mind-boggling to many of us Americans in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/164 "2012-10-01T15:26:24Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Meh. 9 to 5 are pretty well established “working hours” and whenever I’ve worked a job that wasn’t 9 to 5, if you needed a night free, you found someone to cover. When I’ve worked in service jobs, we were usually _required_ to work at least one weekend night. These were the busy periods, and they required all hands on deck. Theoretically you could swap shifts with someone, but since weekend nights were pretty much fully staffed, realistically it wasn’t usually possible to get rid of a weekend shift. I’ve worked retail jobs where the standard response to wanting a night off (like, say, to attend a funeral or take a final exam) was to not assign you any hours for that entire week. That wreaks havocs on your ability to eat that week, let me tell you. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/165 "2012-10-01T17:58:30Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Heck, for many people outside the US, it’s weird whether it’s football or not - and the idea of having an inter-school HS sports competition in the middle of the work day? Hell to the nay, at that time the kids are supposed to be in _class_, not traveling between schools! Some of our interschool sports competitions in the UK were in the middle of the day, though there were only one or two a year, and parents didn’t play a part in organising them. Actually, I’d be amazed if the parents of anyone but the kids involved actually even knew when they were on- I only occasionally found out when one of the kids involved mentioned it, or if they won. I think I skipped as many classes as a choir member as anyone in the sports teams did for competitions. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/166 "2012-10-01T18:09:15Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > To answer the first part of your question, yes. If you’re going to engage people in a conversation via a computer BBS don’t be surprised when you receive replies based on what you wrote. No, I’ll continue to be surprised by unnecessary leaps like that. A reasonable person would consider suspending broad judgments like “What a sad childhood you had” based on very tiny bits of information. It wasn’t necessary to the conversation or the topic at hand. You took it upon yourself to draw broad conclusions from infinitesimal data. Which is exactly the problem that the OP exhibits. You’re two of a kind. > [@](#): > > You could have easily said, “my parents stopped going to my concerts but…” You didn’t do this. Instead you simply said they stopped going once you could drive yourself. Based on the information you initially provided my conclusion was hardly unwarranted. Of course it was unwarranted. You weren’t invited to draw such a conclusion; such a conclusion was not necessary to the conversation. And anyone could see that basing such a conclusion on such little evidence would be shaky. That’s actually a lesson to learn from the OP and this thread: Given little information, suspend judgment. ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/167 "2012-10-02T09:12:40Z")
It’s mad late, but I’m jumping in here to remind myself to post tomorrow. As a Texan who attended an inner city, low income high school, who then went on to teach at an inner city, low income middle school, I think I have some insight into what might have been going on… ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/168 "2012-10-02T16:42:37Z")
Right. So I went to school in East Austin, in a prototypical inner city, low income high school. It’s since been closed due to not meeting AYP standards for 4 consecutive years. (The school is physically there, but it’s now two charter-type thingies.) The OP mentioned the cost of games. $8 a head is no joke. You are not going to get people who are peripherally interested in the game to go at that rate. As others have noted, lots of people, students and parents, work Friday nights. They are giving up time where they could earn money and spending money - not to mention how difficult it is to get off on a Friday night if you’re scheduled to work then. The other thing that’s not clear is what kind of game the OP attended. It sounds like a new matchup. Our stands were packed when we played our rival schools, but people were less likely to attend if we had an odd matchup or an unknown out of town school. We usually had two out of district games with some schools in San Antonio - the students came out, but not so much with parents. How about tradition? At my high school, football, basketball, and girls’ volleyball were big. Baseball, which we were actually decent at, always had a pretty sparse crowd. The other sports typically were full on game nights. It’s also not clear if there might have been another school event that night (that’s fairly unusual, but occasionally it happens). There’s a lack of understanding about what goes on at a Texas high school football game on a Friday night. For a lot of communities, it’s a town meeting. At my high school, the teachers, administrators, local business owners (many of whom were graduates of our school), and city council/school board members would be in the crowd. Last time I went to a game, about seven years ago, I saw an old friend, who took me over to his bleacher where the former mayor and school board president was sitting. It’s not necessarily people poring over every snap of the football - it’s a place to see and be seen, to make deals, etc. So aside from the 40 or so kids on the football team, you had the cheerleaders, dance team (that sat in the bleachers until halftime), band, flag squad, and occasionally other athletes or student council types that were recognized at halftime. Tons of kids involved who didn’t play football. Our school had a strong place in the community. I went to school with kids whose parents, and even grandparents, attended the school. That particular part of Austin had a very strong sense of community, and the local businesses - flower shops, dry cleaners, auto shops, and restaurants - were almost all owned or managed by alumni of the school. So we always had a pretty significant turnout, regardless of how the team performed. (Typically, we’d do well in the first quarter, then get progressively worse as the game continued.) It should be noted in Austin, there were three district stadiums - your home stadium was the one closest to your school. Ours wasn’t near our school, so you had to figure out transportation to and from the game. We also had pretty cheap admissions - $3 or $4, and maybe $5-$7 for adults. So if the game was a distance from the school and the community, that might account for the lack of people in the stands. They would run a bus on occasion to the game for students but I’m not sure if adults could ride it too. Anyway, just wanted to fight some ignorance about what actually goes on at a high school football game in the stands. ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/169 "2012-10-03T19:54:32Z")
> [@Troppus](#): > > The OP’s point is that parents in a certain community appear to have little interest in their kids’ activities. My point is that extracurricular activities are exactly that: extra. And beneficial to the kids who participate, and harmless to those who don’t. Not sure it’s “harmless” to cut class time short to herd everyone into the gym for a mandatory “fawn on the jocks” pep rally, forcing those who get bullied to join in adulating the worst bullies in the school. I dealt by slipping out and going home early, since I lived in easy walking distance. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Slant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mr.Slant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Slant)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/170 "2012-10-03T20:03:07Z")
> [@Seanette](#): > > I dealt by slipping out and going home early, since I lived in easy walking distance. 😃 They didn’t do this at my high school. At my middle school, they did, but the process annoyed me enough that I… provoked senseless fights DURING the pep rally, and thus got excused from future rallies. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/171 "2012-10-03T21:34:20Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > I’m a bit puzzled as to why you’d equate attending a football game as being involved in their kids’ education? It’s one thing if their kid is on the team and in the game, but you make it sound like you’d expect most people with kids in the school to show up regardless of being on the team or not. I never once went to a school team game myself, in HS or college, of any kind, nor did my parents. Then again I see that you’re in Texas so as I understand it, HS football is basically the state religion 🙂 Yes. This. I went to a high school where the parents were _very_ involved. Super-involved. Parents showed up for every single parent-teacher conference, and lots of other events. Fund-raisers (non-public, free school), you name it. But athletic events? I played on the basketball team (we didn’t have a football team, probably because we didn’t have a football field). I don’t recall ever seeing any of my teammates’ parents there. I certainly never saw mine there. The school really didn’t emphasize athletics. Athletics were for fun, that’s all. And I guess the parents took their cue from the schoo. ---
**Author:** ![boozilu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@boozilu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boozilu)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/172 "2012-10-03T22:30:59Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > This makes sense. Generally speaking, low-income families have a low income for a reason. Many are lazy, on welfare, hook on drugs, and have an apathetic attitude toward life. Their children are completely unsupervised and run wild. “Responsibility” is not in their vocabulary. It makes sense, then, that the parents wouldn’t attend a student-teacher conference or sports game. They simply don’t care. To address this and OP about interest in their child’s schooling, there was an interesting article in the Washington Post (last week, I think) that pointed out that most working poor are so \*mentally \*exhausted by trying to figure out where the next meal is coming from every fucking day and whether to see a doctor about that persistent cough and how to get to work tomorrow etc that they often make poor decisions. They are just too tired to think clearly. (For parents out there, remember how hard it was to think when your kid was a newborn and up all night – the mental and physical exhaustion was crushing.) ---
**Author:** ![tomcar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tomcar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomcar)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2012, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/173 "2012-10-03T23:37:21Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > High school football is a cultural thing. Are you honestly that surprised that not everyone values it quite as much as you do? I know some schools here that are very, very in to their lacrosse teams. Should I be shocked that not every school in DC is obsessed with lacrosse? I don’t know about Texas, but in California poor schools often had a high concentration of immigrants, and no, a bunch of Hmong and Armenian families couldn’t give two hoots about a game they’ve probably never heard of. > > I’ll give you, though, that people are more likely to value that which has given them value. If you had gone through the public school system and ended up trying to raise kids while being broke as a joke, would you be particularly gung-ho about that education? If you don’t think you will ever make much money, high school is just a hurdle you need to get over on your way to what’s next. > > I’m sorry, but I think you have no concept of what a poor school is like. I can’t grok separate gyms- our school was literally crumbling around us, with much of the school in portable units because our ceilings had a habit of collapsing in heavy rains. Our metalshop kids made practice equipment for our gym. Our theater was a small stage in the cafeteria. We took the city bus on field trips because who can afford to rent a bus? And I hardly went to the worst school in the world. Anyway, fancy perks for the drumline was basically our last priority. > > Poor people don’t have “sweat equity” to spread around, because all their sweat equity is going to managing food and rent. The worst part about being working poor is what it does to your time- you are basically always working, getting to work, getting dressed for work, or recovering from work. Even managing basic household stuff like cooking and laundry is overwhelming. > > Really- listen to yourself. You are sounding very “Let them eat cake” with this whole thing. If they had their butlers leave out their clothes and hire drives to get them around, they would have alot more time. Why don’t they just tell their boss they are going to take off early on Friday to play some golf. That always works for me. I am mean who really works at 7pm on a Friday other than healthcare workers, food industry people, store workers, gas station workers, hotel workers, customer service people, utility workers, entertainment industry people, etc, etc… ---
**Author:** ![tesseract](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bb73d2/32.png) [@tesseract](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tesseract)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153/174 "2012-10-04T06:58:08Z")
Long thread so I could have missed it, but I don’t think anyone mentioned this – not only are many of the kids from the innercity school from single-parent families, a lot of them are likely foster children, or kids being raised by grandparents, or otherwise in less than traditional or less than stable home situations. Not necessarily the recipe for a lot of rah-rah parents at football games. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-low-income-parents-usually-this-disinterested-in-their-kids-school/636153.md?page=8)