What is Ideal?

This past weekend my friend and I were bored and so we bought a movie called The Joneses.  It was the story of a 'family' of individuals hired as salesmen for companies.  These people pretended to be the perfect family so that everyone would want what they had.  The group of people never had any problems, were never unsure of themselves and lived life in the most 'ideal' way possible.  Just by being the most flawless family everyone in the neighborhood wanted to be exactly like them.  The whole neighborhood tried to copy this family because they were the epitome of what happiness meant.  The family itself was product placement.
In class this week we started talking about teachers and students.  Mr. Bolos brought up that studies show that teachers believe that the ideal student should be docile.  They believe that the 'ideal' student should be calm, passive and nonthreatening.  This movie and study got me thinking about what ideal means to different people.  In the movie, ideal meant the most money and clothes without any problems or anything that abnormal, and according to Mr Bolos' study the ideal student is very much the same.  Has the capacity to learn and is very generic and calm without being intimidating or rebellious.

Is there a definition of ideal that is universal to all people and situations?  Is the ideal person also the least variable and abnormal?  If this is true, how does our society reflect what is desired?