A Decade of Ferment.

The social movements, political forces, and student activism that characterized the 1960s continued, and in some cases intensified in the 1970s, profoundly affecting American education. Antiwar protests led by students continued to disrupt campus life; political activism reshaped educational curricula; the counterculture transformed student lifestyles and interests. Social preoccupations outside the university restructured life within the university. Demands for educational relevance, diversity, and democracy filtered down from the colleges to local schools. Drugs moved from campus dorm-rooms to high-school bathrooms. As James Perkins, former Cornell president explained, "The university is the canary in the coal mine. It's the most sensitive barometer of social change." The seventies were the decade when the sixties permanently altered the nature of American education.

Kent State and After.

In 1970 student-led antiwar protests occurred in massive numbers and on an...