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It's amazing what about a decade could do to the schools.

Indeed. Even a year could be night and day. I'm closer to you and seem to have just missed most of the nonsense. I attended high school in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, so things changed a bit sooner than in most of the country. My senior year in high school (1966) was pretty much still the 1950s: the big three sports dominated, kids drank (mostly beer) and cruised, went to the drive-in. Girls were still sent home for sweaters that were too tight or skirts that were too short, or wearing jeans except on designated days. It was right out of American Grafitti. By the time we graduated, I doubt more than half a dozen kids in a class of almost 550 had smoked pot. Of course, we all hit college and pot was the rage, but at least we were all 18 and a little more mature.

By the end of the next school, 1967, reliable estimates were something over 2/3 of the seniors (and almost 40% of the whole school) had smoked pot. The dress code was gone, and rock and roll had been replaced by acid rock, and the hippie scene in the Haight-Ashbury was the height of cool.

In college and graduate school, I must have been just ahead of the post-modern nonsense, because I saw none of it. As a result, I had a solid 'modern' education in history, philosophy, economics and the law. I have a lot of sympathy for the article's author who talks about the effect of post-modernism in graduate school. I've tried to read some of the stuff done over the past twenty years or so in my old academic fields, and find it unreadable, often drivel. The worst areas are political science, history and the humanities. In history, the trivial has become the focus of most work, and things involving real ideas seem to be thoroughly out of fashion.

It's amazing what about a decade could do to the schools.

I would look even earlier . . . to the fifties and perhaps even to the forties.

Between 1941 and 1946 when Truman ended WWII by Presidential procalmation, more than 16 million Americans had served in the military. Millions more worked in defense related industries. We moved from a collection of rather insular enclaves into a much larger world.

One 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran, speaking at a reunion of the 141st Infantry Regiment, made the startling claim that World War II was a good thing, because it forced us to come together as a nation rather than a hodge-podge of races and ethnicities. The proof of that was in watching those Japanese Nesei veterans mingle with those 36th "Texas" Infantry Division veterans. Some of those listening to him owed their lives to him, and to others like him who broke through to rescue the "Lost Battalion."

If you're 59, you may remember watching your favorite serials sitting in front of a radio. :-)

But among the very most powerful influences was the WWII G.I. Bill of Rights. While the troops were still overseas, military newspapers began advertising the Bill and what the G.I.s might do with it--everything from vocational schools to academic degrees. As a result, something like 850,000 G.I. freshmen stormed the college campuses. A good number of those became teachers and professors. By the time Ms. Grabar came along, some where still teaching and some had become administrators.

I would thank that the sudden magical appearance of so many educated farm boys had a dramatic impact upon the country. Pile onto that the displaced Rosie the Riveters, labor movements, and the not-so-gentle stirrings for racial equality, and you get quite a lot of potential energy set to become kinetic in the sixties.

I wish Ms. Grabar had been a bit more expansive and reflective.

I'm about the age of the writer, and things had begun to sour in my 'small' town. There were rumblings, and my education wasn't all that it could have been, but no one could have guessed the direction it was headed at that point. That said, those four years younger than me got squat and the responsibility for that was not shared, no responsibility was laid to rest on the schools-it all was put on the students. Extremely brilliant minds were wasted. And yes, I mean that in all senses of the word.

I, personally, have a very interesting theory about public education which I will offer:

I believe public education began well enough with a sound theology. It became a tool to keep a section of our country, blacks, repressed. WWI and WWII drained first fathers, and then both fathers and mothers from 'the hearth' and teachers took up the slack, bit by bit, as would be natural. Women (guardians of the hearth) began to move into the work force in the 50's, giving teachers more authority over the nation's children. The 60's found everyone stoned....who's watching the kids? Teachers. The 70's found everyone still stoned and now screwing...who's watching the kids? Teachers. I became a parent in the 80's. I and many others took responsibility for our kids. But when mine started school, it wasn't what I remembered. I had a constant struggle to get teachers to understand these kids belonged to me. Why? They'd become accustomed to being in control. And when I made it clear that they were not in control of MY children... that this didn't work in my book- they didn't like it, not one bit.

Much of the problem is the left, indeed! However, much of the problem IMHO stems from the public inadvertently dumping responsibility on teachers (when folks 'needed' help) then taking them for granted and never resuming personal responsibility and/or teachers being in charge and loving it and/or the left seeing a 'in' and taking advantage of the situation.

I certainly didn't think that jumping off the wagon was a good idea (nationally) I decided to stay on the wagon and get the reins back.

BTW, BTS....My mother called to tell me she just rented the best movie of her life. It's called, 'Beyond the Sea"!