There are a lot of sad things in the world, but one of the saddest is when parents don’t care about their children’s educations, and as a result, the children also don’t care.

Parents can be charged with neglect if they fail to feed their children, if they fail to provide a home for their children, if they fail to keep their children clean, or if they fail to seek medical attention for a child who needs it. While it may not be a criminal charge for a parent not to care about their child’s education, it is just as neglectful as any of the other things listed. By failing to care about their child’s education and by not encouraging them to do well, they are closing doors of opportunity for their children.

Some children can overcome that. Most cannot. Some children will fight the odds against them. They will see other children doing well and receiving encouragement from their parents, and they will realize they are missing these things. Some of those will use that as motivation to do well, to prove to their parents and everyone else that they can be successful. However, unfortunately, most do not. They see their peers doing well and being encouraged by their parents, and they realize they are missing these things, and they lose hope. After all, if their parents aren’t encouraging them to do well, if their parents don’t place value and importance on education, and worst of all, if their parents tell them to not do well so they can draw a check, it’s easy to get stuck in that. The younger the child is when that happens, the harder it is to pull that child out of that.

Often these children can be identified early in their educational careers, but more often than not, there’s little that can be done. By the time they get to high school, there’s almost nothing that can be done to change that cycle. And this is one of the saddest things in the whole world, looking at the faces of those kids who see no value in education and can’t see the doors of opportunity that are right in front of them. I can’t help but wonder how much better the world would be if all parents did right by their children – providing all their needs, loving them unconditionally, and encouraging them to value education and what it can do for them. The world would be a much better and brighter place, and the doors of opportunity would increase significantly.