We all can agree that Education is one of the most important matters in a society; it will make future members be one way or another. It's all about what we teach them at school...or is it?
It is known that education results vary depending on the country (http://www.pisa.oecd.org). True that every country has a different way of teaching, but i don't think that's the only factor. School and teachers are not the things we have to look at to improve, the system could be better of course, as everything else, but I see that the roots of this issue are parents and environment. The term "parents" could be applied to family or close family, too.
Certainly it makes sense that environment and the teachings and habits you get from your parents during your life makes a huge difference. While the method is the same for every student, parents are not.
Ideally, students are raised by parents who often read, have culture related habits or interests (going to museums, hobbies and the like), friendly discuss/debate stuff with others, have a lot of common sense, went to college, etc and the most important thing: parents who know how and want to teach their children or get them into all of that (because other way it's pretty useless). Given this ideal parents and assuming the environment (children's friends, living place, the media) is favorable, education should be a succes.
All of the habits above clearly help the kid being successful at school by improving vocabulary, thinking and debating skills, and even making him more open-minded.
On the other hand, if parents are exactly or mostly the opposite as the ideal ones, the student is likely to fail. And by failing I don't mean ending up with a low wage job and no degrees, by failing I mean not having common sense or not having clue about general culture; two things which are a burden in anyone's life in my opinion.
School can be significant too. Imagine we have the second case of parents. The kid is not really motivated to learn and often fails, probably not caring much about it. However, if the kid has this perfect teacher who loves his job and is aware of his situation, this teacher is likely to "save" him and help him being succesful. Or the kid might sadly be a lost cause anyway.
The opposite would be a kid with ideal parents but a horrible teacher who barely cares about students and is not very good at teaching. In this case I think the kid would overcome this with his parents' support; they could explain whatever he couldn't understand, give him tips or even complain to the principal.
So yeah, states of the world. If you want to improve at education, take parents into account, too.
