Well I do agree that it was somewhat simplistic comment from my side. In reality,I'm not even sure what would work best: a school dropout not encouraging their kids to read or learn in general is catch 22 situation, because they won't know how the life would have been for them should they continued to attend the school. If you fail to see all the opportunities that could have opened because of education, it can be hard to tell your kids to do it. So in such situation, either the parents pull their shit together and do what they need to do, as responsible parents,or the state intervenes to help them,or if the help doesn't work, punish somehow.

It’s a tricky problem, for certain.

In some ways, we do have a punishment system for parents with truant children, but it’s very hard to thread a line that’s actually good for the children. You want to scare the parents with punishment if they don’t have any intrinsic (or social) interest in educating their children, but actually jailing parents won’t help most kids one bit.