Heh. Lack of any interest in my school progress was only one sign.
I mean, I get what you're saying--plenty of children obviously didn't have an involved parent to talk about things with. That by itself isn't neglect, and I agree.
I had a lot of other things going on. Having a filthy house with mice, bugs, and raccoons in the attic was part of the neglect. If seen today, the inside of the place I grew up in would be on /wtf/.
I wasn't taught to cook, or clean, or anything outside of school. My caregivers did not talk to me much. I remember thinking it was peculiar that one girl I was friends with would quote things her mom said, as if that even mattered. Like her mom had taught something valuable, or like she just sat and talked to her mother regularly. That didn't happen to me much. I mean, I would rattle off stuff like kids do to my grandmother or mom, but I was never engaged by my mom or grandmother.
Another friend had her dad teach her things, take her for archery lessons somewhere. Her mother actually provided a birthday party for me when I was 9 or 10. I don't even know why...maybe she felt sorry for me. It just happened out of the blue, I didn't ask for it or anything.
I wasn't abused directly, I wasn't hit, I don't have cigarette burns, I wasn't sexually abused. But I learned more by wandering into neighbor's yards and watching them garden than I ever did at home. I had a little circuit of neighbor houses that I would visit, because just watching those adults would teach me things, and that didn't happen at home. And I'd go to school with snarls in my hair, and clothing that smelled like cigarettes. A non-neglectful parent wouldn't have allowed that to happen.
It wasn't until I was adult that I realized neglect at home had a profound effect on me, that I lacked knowledge of small, everyday things that my peers had learned.
So yes, it did come as a shock to me when I realized that other kids learned things outside of school. REALLY learned things, stuff that could impact how well they did on projects. A mom or dad could casually mention something about their work, and the kid would learn from it, or have an idea that would spark the direction that their project went.
I was an island to myself at home. If I didn't learn it in school, and didn't find it in a book, I didn't learn it.