I'm seeing the other side of this, recently (disadvantaged white people). It's astonishing the loser mentalities and habits that many disadvantaged children learn from their early caregivers and peer group. As middle to upper middle class people, we often have no idea how many little bits of knowledge we pick up to work the system (legally), from those around us.

No. You have parents that are not able to attend to pre-school education, whether it's a time or money issue, or even an education issue themselves. And then you have children, let down by parents who were let down by society, who are ashamed of how far behind they are.

The idea that you can further shame people into "shaping up" is farcical. Please stop being part of the problem.

> But this also was a major source of resentment and ostracization that I'm still dealing with to this day.

Isn't it possible that resentment and ostracization could lead someone to not want to try as hard to learn?

Isn't the standard expectation that children enter first-grade completely illiterate? I remember learning how to read and write letters one per lesson in first grade.

I'd guess that maybe 5% are taught to read by parents?

A theory my parents had was that the limiting factor in teaching a child to read is not the mental capacity, but their eyesight - supposedly it's normal to start out relatively farsighted and unable to focus on small print close up. So they started me and my sister on words printed in very large letters and gradually reduced them.

(I was taught by my parents before even that, and when I started school they didn't believe my parents' claim - had to prove it by reading a new book aloud to them)