A note about Analytical skills
I’m focusing on helping my kids learn analytical skills, everything else they need to learn will be more accessible to them than this, now and in the future. STEM, leadership, and other career-specific skills are often (but not always) learned while working, most adults would agree with that.
A big difference between poor kids and rich kids are the options they are given from an early age. Kids from a low-income family are often given directions to do things, instead of analyzing things and make decisions on their own; they have little or no choice about the things they can do.
When people are given options from an early age, they learn to analyze them; they learn to compare and choose what option(s) are better for them. They learn critical thinking skills and use this knowledge to solve problems and make decisions.
One of the most significant differences in early education between different social classes, in my opinion, is the access to options and the ability to make decisions about those options.
Allowing kids to think and showing them that they can pick their homework, their chores, their schedule, etc. based on the information they have at hand, and letting them discover the output based on these decisions is critical.
Analytical skills will prepare them better for life, and this, in fact, might have a more significant impact than learning technical skills for example. This is one of a thousand things that can help with the inherited disadvantage.
STEM skills should be taught, but not instead of analytical skills, especially to those kids in disadvantaged households. Most technical and job-specific skills are learned while working. So, while it is great to bring attention to the gap in STEM education for example, I believe it is just as important if not more, to teach our kids analytical skills to teach them how to think, how to make decisions, and how to have a perspective on the things that they will encounter in their future.
