Working-class parents often come home too tired to help their kids with school work, if they even have the background to do that. They cannot afford all the activities that middle-class parents enroll their kids in, and drive them to, to enrich their educations. It is also hard to have aspirations beyond those of your parents when you haven't lived that life growing up. We tend to go towards what feels "normal" to us and be tense with what doesn't.

I grew up in a home that went back and forth economically between working-class and poor. My mother had a high school education. My father had two years of college but never made much money. But they were both heavy readers and there were always a lot of paperbacks around the house. By the age of 12 I was reading their books, plus whatever I got elsewhere, and the habit was established. In my opinion reading is the key to knowledge. It is difficult to understand anything without reading.