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I didn't mean to say only one is responsible; this is in the context of raganwald's essay about how quality meritocracies (presumably not needing much improvement) don't choose the best because they only maximize their inputs and don't necessarily work with all of those with the most potential. So I wrote about improving the inputs by examining the prior systems.

What I completely missed, and what you alluded to by mentioning people in prison, with bad parents, and so on, is that the present generation of families also have inputs -- the systems that they went through (education, military, commerce, etc.) and their own parents. The issues we have today are partly the results of mistakes made by parents living a hundred, five hundred, even a thousand years ago.

It's a depressing thought when expressed that way, but on the bright side, if we do as well as we can given our limited inputs today, we at least give the next generation of parents, teachers and employers a chance to do better than we could possibly have done.