Some forty years ago, as a boy of 10 or 11, I strayed some distance from my home. Unknown to me, I was watched. During those times, our neighborhood manifested and nurtured the values we learned at home. There were accepted, community standards of behavior which children were expected to uphold. The world for most of us is quite a different place now, changed by a redefinition of family, an increasingly mobile society and the contracting boundaries of our neighborhoods.
Community standards are more ambiguous, less easy to define.
As a result of these dramatic cultural shifts, expectations of and demands on elementary and secondary school teachers have changed over the past two decades as well. A few decades ago, teachers accepted the reinforcement of parents' standards as part of their responsibility. Now, teachers often are expected to introduce children to the values and standards of behavior requisite to membership in a civil society. At the same time, changes of a different kind have occurred in our system of higher education. We have failed to address as well as we might questions critical to the shaping of our humanity.