You nailed it. Of far greater importance than fancy schools and highly paid teachers, parents who spend time with their kids, and have an interest in what the kids are learning, IMO. My mother started school in what was effectively a one room school house, but her parents helped her get and keep an interest in learning. The local high school was larger and more modern, but kids back then got away with zilch in school. She went on to locate a nursing school that paid a small stipend ($15 a month) plus room and board, and got her RN. This was in
1928, and her studies contined on for three years, culminating in a job with the Feds that paid $1,100 a year, which was pretty decent money in 1931. Parental involvement.That RN license allowed her to keep our family afloat when my father was unable to work: all of it traces back to my lightly educated grandparents wanting their kids to better themselves. Out of 12 kids who lived to be adults, there were athree RNs, one high school Latin teacher, a contractor (probably made the most money of the lot), an exec for, IIRC, Hechinger lumberyards (granddad had a farm and sawmill--shades of the Waltons and same area, but a whole lot sweatier lifestyle), one was an auto mechanic (taught by my father) who ended up as a teacher of auto mechanics at a local junior college, one guy who worked in a machine shop, an assistant postmaster in Charlottesville, VA, and on. All got away from the farm, or mostly away. My auto mechanic uncle always raised a huge truck garden, filling his own family's needs, and giving the rest (about 70% most years) to local elderly or disabled people. One aunt married a farmer-- he died last year at 92, but she's still going, as is the former Latin teacher and the assistant postmaster.