Changing Roles of Public Education

　　One of the most important social developments that helped to make

　　possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education was the

　　effect of the baby boom of the 1950's and

　　1960's on the schools. In the 1920's, but especially in the Depression

　　conditions of the 1930's, the United States experienced a declining birth

　　rate -- every thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about

　　118 live children in 1920，89.2 in 1930，75.8 in 1936, and 80 in

　　1940. With the growing prosperity brought on by the Second World War and

　　the economic boom that followed it young people married and established

　　households earlier and began to raise larger families than had their

　　predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand

　　in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was probably

　　the most important determinant, it is not the only explanation for the

　　baby boom. The increased value placed on the idea of the family also helps

　　to explain this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into

　　the first grade by the mid 1940's and became a flood by 1950. The public

　　school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number of

　　schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar conditions, these same

　　conditions made the schools even less prepared to cope with the flood. The

　　wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and

　　1945. Moreover, during the war and in the boom times that followed, large

　　numbers of teachers left their profession for better-paying jobs elsewhere

　　in the economy.

　　Therefore in the 1950's and 1960's, the baby boom hit an antiquated and

　　inadequate school system. Consequently, the "custodial rhetoric"of the

　　1930's and early 1940's no longer made sense that is, keeping youths aged

　　sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could

　　no longer be a high priority for an institution unable to find space

　　and staff to teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby

　　boom, the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education

　　inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic

　　skills and discipline. The system no longer had much interest in offering

　　nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youths.