Fast-Forward a dozen years. It is 1963. The Civil Rights movement is in full swing. The Supreme Court rules on school-sponsored prayer. We are unaware that President Kennedy is nearing the end of his rope even as he launches the United States into the Space Race and threatens to heat up the Cold War. School children practice duck and cover routines while construction companies do big business on Fallout Shelters.
And for the first time anyone can remember, school achievement declines. The Class of ‘63 doesn’t score as well as the class before them. In suicide, pregnancy and crime rates, they do even worse.
A year passes. John F. Kennedy is dead. The Civil Rights Act is law. The British mount a Prime Time invasion of North America (pushing west out of Liverpool, the Beatles take New York in a single day). The Class of ‘64 achieves less than the Class of ‘63.
A year passes. We learn that U.S. military advisors are on the ground someplace called Vietnam. Things get out of hand at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Class of ’65 achieves less than the Class of ‘64.
And so it goes year after year; America’s children achieving less than their grandparents in the boom at the turn of the last century, less than their own parents in the depths of the Great Depression. What gives?
One theory ties the decline in achievement and increased rates of juvenile crime, teenage pregnancy and suicide, to the Supreme Court decision banning compulsory, school-sponsored prayer. An interesting notion.
