Or, put slightly differently:
Parents with means in expensive districts with healthy schools will find their children adequately educated regardless of their level of input and enthusiasm. Their children can also do decently well skating on social and cultural capital if they’ve failed to absorb the intellectual material they’re exposed to. Their parents can afford to be complacent, though as the systems and networks around them are robust. Under these circumstances, an engaged parent will raise the level of the education to excellent, no question.
The equation for poor children with shitty social services, crumbling infrastructure and overstressed networks is entirely different. An engaged parent (a thing that it is magnitudes harder to be when struggling financially) can raise the education from utter shite to effective, and in rare cases, excellent. Regardless the kid still faces a hundred other cirumstancial currents to fight against to succeed. Any kids who don’t have parents with the capacity (mental, temporal, physical or spiritual) are more or less fucked.
Exceptional adults should be working to make sure that there is a system (schools, health care, libraries, museums, playgrounds, nutrition) that supports all kids to succeed, regardless of the luck or the draw in their parentage, rather than simply raising the chances of success for their individual offspring.
