We have about the easiest lives humans have ever led. (possibly beaten by those damn Scandinavians)
Quite so, quite so.
I'm a little bit curious that if you lived in a small village with a low overall education level, didn't the rest of the kids reflect the opinions of their parents towards your own parents?
I found out that the average crowd tends to suspect that the smarter people cheat them somehow. While I somewhat understand this, it occasionally ends up in a hen and an egg problem in a way that it makes it morally easier for smarter people to use them as pawns to whatever purpose they see fit later in their lives.
It makes it occasionally funny though, when somebody comes to ask my opinion about something and I realize that he has already made up his mind and is only looking for additional justifications. I usually say that I'd do it differently, but he might do so as he sees fit. There's no point in arguing about that as long as trying whatever he wanted to do doesn't ruin his life or kill him - then I find a way to intervene. It is a rather primitive teaching model that we call "Siberia teaches", but it usually works well that the person who asked something in the first place might listen the next time. People just don't like to be told what to do.
Oh yeah, UT, please don't ruin your chances of getting education in US. You could do the stuff what you have done here and you'd be forgiven quite a lot, but in the US it isn't so (a term in the University is about 140 € here, but not in the US). I now hop in the band wagon and say that it is necessary to understand the behavior of the people before trying to introduce anything new to them, especially when considering social reforms. Social reforms just happen slowly, and there's a reason for it too!