sample essays of IELTS

28 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
food. 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 1950s and 1960s, the baby boom hit an antiquated
and inadequate school system. Consequently, the custodial rhetoric
of the 1930s and early 1940s 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.